Query Performance

I am attempting to get a better understanding of why my SQL 2005 setup when running a simple select statement on a large table is displaying very low IO in performance monitor. If i run a single Select * From testtable i see 4mb\sec transfer and Disk reads\sec is around 8-9. This particular table is sitting on a single U320 10k drive so i expecting to see far more substantial IO. Does anyone have any information on how IO is consumed using different SQL operations so i can obtain a better understanding?

Flush the cache. Some, and possibly a lot, of data may be cached in memory.

Also, since a select query does not require any transaction logging or updating of indexes or statistics, a select query would have substantially less IO than an insert, update, or delete query.

Flush the cache and then run: Insert Into testtable Select * From testtable Order By SomeNonClusteredField

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hi

I did flush the cache prior to running this statement. Why doent SQL use the I\O to its full potential if that is the only process running on the box? I was expecting to see the I\O near to saturated.