Measure Disk Latency With ioping

Send small I/O requests and report response time and jitter.

LinuxperformancediskDiagnosticsLow risk

Run ioping -c 10 /var/log to measure latency with ten requests.

01Command

Command

$ ioping -c 10 /var/log

02What it does

ioping reports min, avg, max and deviation for small reads, which exposes a slow or thrashing disk far more clearly than throughput numbers. It is quick to run on any machine and easy to embed in an alerting script.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

Requirementssudo apt install ioping

!Warning: Running it against a busy production volume adds load; keep the count small or test a scratch directory.

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

ioping.1.en.html manual page (Debian bookworm)
Debian · technical · 2026-09-20
Evidence: Documents ioping, which measures I/O latency with a ping-like interface.

Last verified: 2026-10-13 · Category: System & Settings

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