Embodiments of the invention provide a method and an apparatus for detecting disk performance in a distributed file system. The method comprises the steps of detecting the service time and an input output (IO) time delay of a disk; according to the service time and the IO time delay of the disk, determining a disk in a first state, wherein the disk in the first state is a disk with the characteristics that the sliding average value of the service time exceeds a first preset value and the sliding average value of the IO time delay exceeds a second preset value; detecting a DIO time delay of the idle disk in the first state; and when the DIO time delay exceeds a third preset value, determining the disk to be a slow disk. With the adoption of the scheme provided by the invention, the slow disk with the poor performance can be detected in the distributed file system, so that the IO performance of the distributed file system is ensured.