# How to tell if you are Disk IO bound

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-tell-if-you-are-disk-io-bound/136>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [December 4, 2006, 1:10pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-tell-if-you-are-disk-io-bound/136 "2006-12-04T13:10:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aronrosenberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@aronrosenberg](https://forums.percona.com/u/aronrosenberg)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 1:10pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-tell-if-you-are-disk-io-bound/136/1 "2006-12-04T13:10:12Z")

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I assume that the way you tell if your MYSQL server is CPU bound is by watching the cpu usage percentage in top or ps…but how do I tell if its Disk IO bound?

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**Author:** ![Peter](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/peter/32/2_2.png) [@Peter](https://forums.percona.com/u/Peter)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-tell-if-you-are-disk-io-bound/136/2 "2006-12-04T16:09:58Z")

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I normally check iostat -x and see % busy for disks.

If load is IO bound one of more of them will be close to 100%

You can also check iowait column in vmstat it shows time spent waited on IO