How to check for HDD performance?

Hey,

I have a question about my HDD performance. When I first got my system, my HDD seemed to run pretty well, but then I reformatted to clean it off later and it seems slower now, in fact I know it is. When loading win2000, I can tell the bootup is slower and that was right off the bat. I may have messed with the BIOS settings, but I forget what I changed and I have tried some things to return it to the old speed. I have a Western Digital Caviar 13.6 Gb 7200 rpm drive. The reason I ask the question in the Motherboard area is that I think it may have something to do with the motherboard or BIOS. The drivers for the motherboard piss me off. (KT7a-133) So is there a way to measure my HDD performance to see if its up to speed with others using this board and 7200 rpm drives? I'm thinking a benchmarking program of some kind. Or, if you can tell me what to check for that would be cool too. Thanks.

Athlon 1200c 512Mb
ABIT KT7A133
Creative Geforce2 GTS
Win2000

try using HDTach, that's a pretty good utility to see where your hdd's are at as far as performance. you say this happend after you formatted? i know this should be done automatically (by the OS) but ultra dma is enabled for those channels?

well if luck is a lady, it explains why i have no luck