The real speed of the SSD. Real SSD speed SSD read speed

Until recently, when buying a new computer and choosing a drive to install, the user had only one choice - the hard disk drive HDD. And then we were interested in only two parameters: spindle rotation speed (5400 or 7200 RPM), disk capacity and cache size.

Let's take a look at the pros and cons of both types of drives and make a visual comparison between HDD and SSD.

Principle of operation

A traditional storage device or as it is commonly called a ROM (read only memory) is required to store data even after complete shutdown nutrition. Unlike RAM (random access memory) or RAM, the data stored in memory is not erased when the computer is turned off.

A classic hard drive consists of several metal "plates" with a magnetic coating, and data is read and written using a special head that moves over the surface of the disc rotating at high speed.

Solid state drives have a completely different way of working. The SSD has no movable components at all, and its "insides" look like a set of flash memory chips located on one board.

Such chips can be installed both on the system motherboard (for especially compact models of laptops and ultrabooks), on a PCI Express card for stationary computers or a special slot in a laptop. The chips used in SSDs are different from those we see in a flash drive. They are much more reliable, faster and more durable.

Disc history

Hard magnetic disks have a very long (of course, by the standards of the development of computer technology) history. In 1956, IBM released a little-known computer IBM 350 RAMAC, which was equipped with a huge by those standards storage device of 3.75 MB.

These cabinets could store as much as 7.5 MB of data.

To build such hard disk 50 round metal plates had to be installed. The diameter of each was 61 centimeters. And this whole gigantic structure could store ... just one MP3-song with a low bitrate of 128 Kb / s.

Until 1969, this computer was used by the government and research institutes. Even some 50 years ago, a hard disk of this size was quite suitable for humanity. But standards changed dramatically in the early 1980s.

Floppy disks of the 5.25-inch (13.3 centimeters) format appeared on the market, and a little later, 3.5- and 2.5-inch (laptop) versions. Such floppy disks could store up to 1.44 MB of data, and a number of computers at that time were supplied without a built-in hard drive. Those. to start the operating system or software shell, it was necessary to insert a floppy disk, then enter several commands and only then start work.

Throughout the history of the development of hard drives, several protocols have been changed: IDE (ATA, PATA), SCSI, which was later transformed into the now famous SATA, but all of them performed the only function of a "connecting bridge" between the motherboard and the hard drive.

From 2.5 and 3.5-inch floppy disks with a capacity of 1,500 kilobytes, the computer industry has moved to hard drives of the same size, but thousands of times more memory. Today, the top-end 3.5-inch HDDs reach 10 TB (10,240 GB); 2.5-inch - up to 4 TB.

The history of solid state drives is much shorter. The engineers thought about the release of a memory storage device that would be devoid of moving elements back in the early 80s. The appearance in this era of the so-called bubble memory was greeted with very hostility and the idea proposed by the French physicist Pierre Weiss back in 1907 did not take root in the computer industry.

The essence of bubble memory was the breaking up of magnetized permalloy into macroscopic regions that would have spontaneous magnetization. The unit of measurement for such a storage device was bubbles. But the most important thing is that there were no hardware moving elements in such a drive.

Bubble memory was quickly forgotten, and only remembered during the development of a new class of drives - SSD.

SSDs appeared in laptops only in the late 2000s. In 2007, a budget laptop OLPC XO-1 entered the market, equipped with 256 MB of RAM, an AMD Geode LX-700 processor with a frequency of 433 MHz and the main highlight - 1 GB NAND flash memory.

OLPC XO – 1 was the first laptop to use solid state storage. And soon the legendary line of Asus EEE PC netbooks with the model 700 joined him, where the manufacturer installed a 2 GB SSD-drive.

In both laptops, the memory was installed directly onto the motherboard. But soon the manufacturers revised the principle of organizing the drives and approved the 2.5-inch format connected via the SATA protocol.

The capacity of modern SSDs can be up to 16TB. Most recently, Samsung introduced just such an SSD, albeit in a server version and with a price that is cosmic for an ordinary man in the street.

Pros and cons of SSD and HDD

The tasks of drives of each class are reduced to one thing: to provide the user with a working operating system and allow him to store personal data. But both SSDs and HDDs have their own characteristics.

Price

SSDs are much more expensive than traditional HDDs. To determine the difference, a simple formula is used: the price of a drive is divided by its capacity. As a result, the cost of 1 GB of capacity in currency is obtained.

So, a standard 1 TB HDD costs an average of $ 50 (3300 rubles). The cost of one gigabyte is $ 50/1024 GB = $ 0.05, i.e. 5 cents (3.2 rubles). In the SSD world, everything is much more expensive. An SSD with a capacity of 1 TB will cost on average $ 220, and the price for 1 GB according to our simple formula will be 22 cents (14.5 rubles), which is 4.4 times more expensive than an HDD.

The good news is that the cost of SSDs is rapidly declining: manufacturers are finding cheaper solutions for the production of drives and the price gap between HDD and SSD is narrowing.

Average and maximum SSD and HDD capacities

Just a few years ago, there was not only a numerical but also a technological gap between the maximum capacity of an HDD and an SSD. It was impossible to find an SSD that could compete with HDD in terms of the amount of stored information, but today the market is ready to provide the user with such a solution. True, for impressive money.

The maximum SSD capacity offered for the consumer market is 4TB. A similar option in early July 2016. And for 4 TB of space, you will have to shell out $ 1499.

The base HDD memory for laptops and computers manufactured in the second half of 2016 ranges from 500 GB to 1 TB. Models similar in power and characteristics, but with an installed SSD-drive, are content with only 128 GB.

SSD and HDD speed

Yes, it is for this indicator that the user overpays when he prefers SSD storage. Its speed is many times higher than the indicators that HDD can boast. The system is able to boot in just a few seconds, it takes much less time to launch heavy applications and games, and copying large amounts of data turns from a multi-hour process into a 5-10 minute one.

The only "but" - data from the SSD drive is deleted as quickly as it is copied. Therefore, when working with an SSD, you may simply not have time to press the cancel button if one day you suddenly delete important files.

Fragmentation

A favorite "delicacy" of any HDD-hard drive is large files: movies in MKV format, large archives and images of BlueRay disks. But as soon as you load the hard drive with hundreds or two of small files, photos or MP3-compositions, the reading head and metal pancakes become confused, as a result of which the write speed drops significantly.

After the HDD is full, deleting / copying files multiple times, the hard disk starts to work slower. This is due to the fact that parts of the file are scattered over the entire surface of the magnetic disk, and when you double-click on any file, the read head is forced to search for these fragments from different sectors. This is how time is wasted. This phenomenon is called fragmentation, and as a preventive measure to speed up the HDD, a software and hardware process is provided defragmentation or arranging such blocks / parts of files into a single chain.

The principle of operation of an SSD is fundamentally different from an HDD, and any data can be written to any sector of memory with further instant reading. This is why defragmentation is unnecessary for SSD drives.

Reliability and service life

Remember the main advantage of SSDs? That's right, no moving elements. That is why you can use a laptop with an SSD in transport, off-road conditions, or in conditions inevitably associated with external vibrations. This will not affect the stability of the system and the drive itself. The data stored on the SSD will not be damaged even if the laptop is dropped.

The HDD is exactly the opposite. The read head is located just a few micrometers from the magnetized discs, and therefore any vibration can lead to the appearance of "bad sectors" - areas that become unusable. Regular jolts and careless handling of a computer that runs on the basis of an HDD will lead to the fact that sooner or later such a hard drive will simply “crumble” or stop working, speaking in computer jargon.

Despite all the advantages of SSDs, they also have a very significant drawback - a limited cycle of use. It directly depends on the number of cycles of rewriting memory blocks. In other words, if you copy / delete / re-copy gigabytes of information every day, you will very soon cause the clinical death of your SSD.

Modern SSDs are equipped with a special controller that takes care of the even distribution of data across all SSD blocks. Thus, it was possible to significantly increase the maximum operating time to 3000 - 5000 cycles.

How durable is an SSD? Just take a look at this picture:

And then compare with warranty period operation, which is promised by the manufacturer of your particular SSD. 8 - 13 years for storage, believe me, not so bad. And do not forget about the progress that leads to a constant increase in SSD capacity at an invariably decreasing cost. I think in a few years your 128 GB SSD can be classified as a museum piece.

Form Factor

The battle of storage sizes has always been caused by the type of devices in which they are installed. So, for a stationary computer, it is absolutely uncritical to install both a 3.5-inch and a 2.5-inch disk, but for portable devices such as laptops, players and tablets, a more compact version is needed.

The smallest serial version of the HDD was considered to be the 1.8-inch format. This was the disc used in the discontinued iPod Classic.

And no matter how hard the engineers tried, they did not succeed in building a miniature HDD-hard drive with a capacity of more than 320 GB. It is impossible to break the laws of physics.

In the SSD world, things are much more promising. The generally accepted 2.5-inch format has become so not because of any physical limitations that technology faces, but only because of compatibility. In the new generation of ultrabooks, the 2.5 '' format is gradually being abandoned, making the drives more compact and the body of the devices themselves thinner.

Noise

Rotation of disks even in the most advanced HDD-hard drive is inseparably associated with the occurrence of noise. Reading and writing data set in motion the disk head, which rushes at an insane speed across the entire surface of the device, which also causes a characteristic crackle.

SSD-drives are absolutely silent, and all processes taking place inside the chips pass without any accompanying sound.

Outcome

Summing up the comparison between HDD and SSD, I would like to clearly define the main advantages of each type of drives.

Advantages of HDD: capacious, inexpensive, affordable.

Disadvantages of HDD: slow, afraid of mechanical stress, noisy.

SSD advantages: absolutely silent, wear-resistant, very fast, fragmentation-free.

Disadvantages of SSD: expensive, theoretically have a limited service life.

It is no exaggeration to say that one of the most effective methods for upgrading an old laptop or computer is to install an SSD instead of an HDD. Even with the most recent version of SATA, you can achieve a threefold increase in performance.

Answering the question, who needs this or that drive, I will give several arguments in favor of each type.

Now more and more users are thinking about switching from HDD to SSD. This issue is especially acute for owners of mid-priced gaming systems, since a hard drive looks preferable in the budget segment, while in the top-end segment users can easily afford a capacious and fast solid-state drive. In the mid-price one, you have to think about which part of the system to strengthen in a limited budget: take a more powerful processor or video card, install more RAM, or buy an SSD.

Therefore, for testing, we used a stand based on an overclocked 4-core processor. The motherboard, a 16GB Patriot Viper 4 RAM kit in DDR4-3200 mode and a video card have not gone anywhere.

Test stand:

• AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• MSI X370 SLI PLUS
• be quiet! Silent Loop 240mm
• 2 x 8 GB DDR4-3400 Patriot Viper 4
• Colorful GTX 1060 SI-6G
• Kingston SSDNow KC400 (SKC400S37 / 256G)
• Seagate IronWolf ST2000VN004 2TB
• be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
• be quiet! Pure Base 600 Window Orange
• AOC U2879VF

To begin with, we note that this SSD combines Toshiba A19 MLC memory chips, 1 GB cache memory and a 4-core Phison S10 controller. It is opposed by a 2-terabyte Seagate IronWolf series HDD with a spindle speed of 5900 rpm and 64 MB of cache memory. Both use SATA 3.0 interface.

In synthetic tests, the advantage of the GOODRAM Iridium Pro series model does not raise any questions at all. When working with incompressible data in CrystalDiskMark sequential read and write speeds were 564 and 530 MB / s, respectively. With a small block load of 4KiB files, the indicators reach 34 and 110 MB / s. The competitor's sequential speeds are much lower - 137 and 121 MB / s, respectively. And with small files everything is very bad, like all hard drives.

Working with compressible data in a test ATTO Disk Benchmark also makes the solid-state drive a leader: if the hard disk read and write indicators are in the region of 130-140 MB / s, then the SSD's they reach 530-560 MB / s.

In terms of data access time and other tests, the solid-state drive also looks much more interesting. You can see more in the video below. And we are moving on to gaming benchmarks.

Just to begin with, let's clarify two points. First. Previously, we previously ran almost all tests once or twice in order to load the necessary objects, and only then turn on the recording and carry out control measurements. Now testing took place the first time, as if we launched the game and immediately rushed into battle.

Second. It is well known that SSDs make games load faster, but how much is not always known. We also decided to measure this moment at the beginning of each test.

So let's start with Assassin's Creed Origins with a very high graphics preset. The waiting time for the launch of the benchmark was a little more than 4 seconds in the presence of an SSD, and with the HDD it was necessary to wait more than 14 seconds. But the test itself turned out to be not very indicative, since both systems gave approximately the same results. And the Frame Time graph in the case of the hard drive was even better.

When changing from hard drive to solid state, benchmark load times Ghost recon wildlands, decreases from 24 to 11 seconds, or 55%. In the course of the test, the frame time graph in both cases was approximately the same, but still the system with the SSD gave 1 FPS more at the minimum frame rate.

Very interesting results were found in WATCH_DOGS 2 with a high profile of graphics settings. Firstly, it takes almost 4 times longer from the HDD to load the game: 27 seconds versus 8. Secondly, during the first pass, the system with a hard drive slows down noticeably: freezes reach 6 FPS, so playing is unpleasant. But there are no such problems with the SSD, because the minimum indicator was 56 frames / s, and the Frame Time graph was smoother.

After that we turned around, reset the counters and drove down the same street again. And since all the main objects have already loaded, there was no big difference between the indicators: the minimum speed was 53 - 55 FPS, and the average speed was 61.

Online multiplayer Battlefield 1 at ultra settings, it loads to the SSD almost twice as fast: 21 seconds versus 41. There is no difference in terms of the minimum indicator, but the frame timeline is better in a system with an SSD, so the smoothness and comfort of the gameplay should be higher. And in terms of average frequency, it turned out to be ahead: 75 against 69 FPS.

Developers Need for Speed ​​payback They approached loading the level in a very original way: instead of a splash screen, they used a stretched cutscene, so it was not possible to determine the loading time. We did not feel much difference in performance, although there is still a slight advantage of a bundle with an SSD: 73 against 70 frames / s at the minimum speed and 106 against 104 at the average.

If you replace the hard drive with a solid-state drive, then the benchmark launch time Gta v decreases from 31 to 14 seconds, or almost 55%. But we did not record any noticeable difference in the Frame Time charts. The speed indicators also turned out to be the same: 64 FPS with drawdowns up to 45.

A more interesting picture is observed in Third Witcher at maximum presets. First, the download time is reduced from 37 seconds to 14 seconds. Secondly, the Frame Time graph becomes smoother: even when we ran in the opposite direction, large drops were observed in the system with the HDD, although the objects should have already been loaded. As a result, we have a big advantage in the minimum frequency: 45 versus 55 FPS in favor of a bundle with an SSD.

The benchmark was also exemplary. Rise of the Tomb Raider at very high settings. The reduction in start-up time from 12 to 5 seconds is no longer particularly surprising, but the Geothermal Valley scene deserves close attention: when using HDD, some objects are missing or loaded along the camera's movement, so the system is less loaded and gives a higher frame rate. With an SSD, all objects are in place, so the speed is lower. As a result, we took the results of the "Syria" scene for the graph.

In benchmark Middle-earth Shadow of War with a high profile, the highest difference in download speed was observed: 6 seconds versus 22. Interestingly, the test itself in a system with an SSD was faster, so I had to tinker a bit with the synchronization. The final results recorded a parity in average frequency and a 50% margin in minimum in favor of a bundle with a solid-state drive.

Ends the test session PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds at high settings. We stopped the loading timer only when all the objects were completely loaded. The speedup from using an SSD was 33%. And in terms of speed indicators, I was pleased with the 6% increase in the minimum frame rate. The parity is fixed on the average.

Comparison of game load times:

	Loading time from HDD, sec	Boot time from SSD, sec	Difference, %
WATCH_DOGS 2, High
GTA V, Very High
The Witcher 3, Max
Average rate

As a result, we see that replacing the hard drive with a solid-state drive leads to a decrease in the loading time of games by an average of 59%, in other words: loading is more than 2 times faster. In some cases, the timeline of the frame becomes smoother and the minimum FPS increases, that is, the comfort of the gameplay improves.

Comparison of the minimum and average frequency in games:

	SSD vs HDD, min FPS,%	SSD vs HDD, avg FPS,%
Assassin's Creed Origins, Very High
Tom Clancy "s Ghost Recon Wildlands, High
WATCH_DOGS 2, High, Pass 1
WATCH_DOGS 2, High, Pass 2
Battlefield 1, Multiplayer, Ultra
Need for Speed ​​Payback, Ultra
GTA V, Very High
The Witcher 3, Max
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Syria, Very High
Middle-earth Shadow of War, High
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, High
Average indicator

The average increase in the minimum frequency was 88%, but all thanks to WATCH_DOGS 2. If you exclude this result, you get 12%. But the average speed indicator increased by less than 1.5%, which can be attributed to the measurement error.

Outcomes

Thus, does the gaming experience increase from replacing the HDD with an SSD? Our answer: Yes! Is this replacement critical and mandatory for the average gaming PC? There is someone like that.

After all, you can still play with the HDD, although in some projects it may take time to load all the objects at first. Therefore, if it is the level of performance that is important, then it is better to direct free finances to a more powerful processor, a newer video card or more fast RAM. And if you are interested in the comfort of the game and the operation of the computer as a whole, including loading the operating system, starting programs, deploying updates, etc., then an SSD will be a very useful purchase.

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In this article, we will find out how and to what extent SSDs affect performance in real-world use.

If you have long wanted to see the real performance of SSDs in comparison with conventional HDDs, or if you were thinking of transferring the system to an SSD, but did not know if it was worth it, this article is for you!

It makes little sense to test the disk under ideal conditions, because this does not happen in life, so I intend to consider tests on examples from real life, when the disk is full of thousands of files, games, cache files of browsers and video processing programs, etc.

In general, stock up on popcorn, sit back, and let's get down to business.

What is the problem with HDD drives?

The problem is that the usual HDD disks that we still use in computers have not changed since the 1990s wiki, when it was first decided to ref make HDDs running at 4300 rpm and 5400 rpm (revolutions per minute).

It was 2016 - 20-25 years later, we still have the same 5400 rpm disks operating at 60-90 MB / s, but the needs of users have changed a long time ago, now we are working with huge projects and a large number of files in multitasking mode, requiring a lot of bandwidth and disk responsiveness, even if several other programs are already running in the background.
Beginning in 2001, some manufacturers began to release drives in the user segment operating at 7200 rpm, instead of 5400, but this did not change anything, the increase from 90 MB / s to 120 MB / s (33% - 5400-7200) is still does not give a significant effect.

Tests | synthetic (potential disk speeds)

Below is a synthetic benchmark that compares the performance of the most important aspect - the work of a disk with small data blocks (in particular, 4 kb):
For operations - read (read)

• HDD slower 94 times(0.68 MB / s vs 63.6 MB / s) vs. SSD
• HDD slower 53 times(0.36 MB / s vs.19 MB / s) vs. SSD

During operations - write (write)

• HDD slower 178 times(0.78 MB / s vs 139 MB / s) vs. SSD
• HDD slower 86 times(0.64 MB / s vs 55 MB / s) vs. SSD

Why are we mainly interested in the result of a disk with small data blocks?
The point is that whether you open a browser, or import a project consisting of hundreds of files into a program like Unreal Engine, it doesn't matter what you do, in all such cases, the computer processes a huge number of small data blocks (mainly reads , so read speed is usually more important than write speed)
Sequential speed (“Seq Q32T1” and “Seq” in the screenshot above) is important when writing / reading large files (MB or GB), which happens less often, and does not affect the responsiveness of the system, to the same extent as working with thousands of small ones blocks.

Why are Apple computers so much more responsive than regular PCs and "never" slow down?

In the world of computers, it is believed that the whole trouble is in the operating system - Mac OSX on Apple computers"Optimized", "never slows down", "no blue screens of system crashes"

Maybe it's because:
Apple computers (not counting the cheapest configurations): have all the same components, except for one - the m.2 SSD / proprietary counterparts:
- Runs at speeds (700 - 1100 MB / s) via NVMe, with the ability to handle 65,000 wait threads executing 65,000 commands each
- Having systems for preventing data loss, overheating protection systems, helping to prevent errors and freezes when working with several GB of data, consisting mainly of small blocks, in multitasking mode
- etc. etc.
While, experience with Windows pc formed when working with computers that have:
- Regular HDD 5400 rpm (noisy and vibrating during operation, due to the presence of moving parts), which has the ability to handle 1 standby thread, executing 32 commands
- Running at speed (60 - 110 MB / s)
- Constantly forcing all users to observe the "Not responding" state, to observe the mockingly slow reaction when working in multitasking mode, not only with small, but also with relatively large blocks of data.

Leaving all other components of the computer in place, swap the disks by installing 5400 rpm HDD on Apple, and m.2 SSD on Windows PC, and it turns out that the disk is really the most important (for performance and responsiveness) part of the computer. a regular HDD is very slow, and makes the whole system wait until it finishes processing all the task queues from programs and OS, which slows down a lot when working in multitasking mode, in addition, having applications doing work in the background, which can be enough a lot - from auto-updating project dependencies to tasks set for processing by the user himself.

Now, let's move on to the tests!

Test configuration | Real-world tests

All test results were obtained on a laptop with these components:
OS: Windows 10
CPU: i7 3610qm
RAM: 12 GB
Subjects:
HDD: Toshiba MQ01ABF050 | 465 GB (SATA)
SSD: Kingston HyperX Fury | 120 GB (SATA)

| Upgrading clean Windows 7 to Windows 10

SSD Total time: ~ 9 minutes - Faster by 188% (2.9 times)
HDD Total time: ~ 26 minutes

The first 4 lines are the process Windows updates 10
The last line is a test to make sure the update process is complete and the PC is ready to go.

| Windows 10 startup time

SSD Time to start Windows and programs in the tray: 0:16 | Total time: 0:23 - Faster by 217% (3.17 times)
HDD Time to start Windows and programs in the tray: 0:48 | Total time: 1:13
PDF opened immediately after the desktop appeared
The countdown ended after loading programs in the tray and fully opening PDF file

| Application start time

SSD Application launch time | Total time: 1:44 - 274% faster (3.74 times)
HDD Application launch time | Total time: 6:29

| Time to complete tasks in applications

SSD Performing Tasks in Applications | Total time: 2:29 - 175% faster (2.75 times)
HDD Performing Tasks in Applications | Total time: 6:50

results

Judging by the tests and sensations, our experimental HyperX Fury SSD bypassed HDD in all parameters in 100% of cases, solving a headache, in all areas requiring high system responsiveness, such as game creation, video / audio processing, particle simulation, post-processing, work with hundreds of GB of data or thousands of OpenEXR.

After switching to an SSD disk, you no longer notice any problems with freezing, whether it concerns the processing speed problem in AE, due to the fact that your sublime text downloads dependency updates using 100% of the disk at this time, or stoppages from - because you have BVH in the background before rendering in blender, or while Maya, for several hours, creates alembic cache files, preventing you from even accessing the Internet without freezing.
Not noticeably more and no waiting for Audacity to hang, after reducing the audio track, every 2 minutes and no waiting for all HDR or EXR in the folder to be loaded every time for 1-3 minutes (!). You no longer have to stop the work of one application in order to speed up the responsiveness of others. it loaded the disk at 100%. You don't have to wait a few seconds after each action in Unreal Engine, for any aspect of work, from importing files to applying and testing assets.
Not to mention the speed of rebooting the system after updates, which happens in seconds instead of minutes, and opening applications, which now happens "relatively" instantly.

And so on and so on. SSD anyway.

From personal experience, I noticed that while you work on a computer with an HDD, you do not notice how unproductive and irritating the work is due to constant expectations, and the “not responding” status, especially if your work at the computer is not limited to surfing the Internet.

Bottom line - do you need an SSD?

If you need a disk:

• Works absolutely silently (unlike HDD, which has moving parts that create noise and vibration)
• A disk that does not make you nervous because of endless expectations and slow operation of programs from the stage of opening the program - working in it - and until it is closed, only because, unlike all other components of a pc and programs, the speed of HDD drives of a consumer segment has not evolved for the past 20 years.
• If you need a disk that has several times the speed and responsiveness advantage over HDD in all types of tasks, from browsing the Internet to multitasking, typical of code / game development, working with 3D graphics, animation, particle simulation / video processing, audio / etc.

Then SSD is for you

Hello everyone! I guess it's no secret that one of the most important components inside your computer or laptop is the storage drive that contains the operating system. Quite a logical consequence is the question of how to perform a hard drive speed test (or SSD, if the computer is fresher).

If your operating system installed on a slow hard drive, it doesn't matter how powerful your CPU is or RAM- Windows itself and installed programs will be very reluctant to start and you will not be able to enjoy full-fledged multitasking.

In the age of the Internet, there are a lot of publications that will tell you about almost any model of the drive on sale. In addition, there are a huge number of programs for testing the speed of a hard drive, the result of which will be an understanding of what your drive is capable of.

There are many paid utilities like PCMark or PassMark that can test the entire system and quite often they can be found in tests from well-known publications. We're taking a different path and I'm going to share with you four free ways to test the speed of your hard drive or solid state drive.

The real performance of an HDD or SSD in Windows (and not only) is determined not only by the rotation speed of the magnetic disk or the memory of the drive chips, but also by many other important factors. The drive controller, the SATA version on the motherboard, the driver of the controller itself, the mode of operation (ACHI or IDE) - all this affects the performance of the disk subsystem (even CPU or RAM can affect performance)

Method 1. CrystalDiskMark is our main tool

Probably the most popular hard drive speed test tool is CrystalDiskMark. Almost no drive testing is complete without this utility - this situation will help you compare your results and draw the right conclusions. A big plus is the ability of the program to test not only HDD / SSD, but also flash drives and other storage media.

The application has both a distribution kit and a portable version that does not require installation. Download as usual on the official website (I recommend portable as always).

Working with CrystalDiskMark is outrageously easy. We launch the utility, select the size of the test block (in the picture below we chose 1 GB), the number of test repetitions (I chose 5 - the more repetitions, the more accurate the result) and the drive itself. Press the "all" button and wait for the program to run all tests (by the way, you can run a separate test for each mode).

The screenshot on the left is the SSD speed test, and on the right is the HDD. Just so you know how big the difference is between them and how much performance gain you will get by replacing only one component in the system

Method 2. CrystalDiskInfo - detailed information about the HDD / SSD drive

At the very beginning of the post, I already wrote that the test of the speed of a hard disk or SSD will not be entirely correct if we do not find out the factors affecting the performance of the disk subsystem. The CrystalDiskInfo utility will tell you a lot of interesting things about your drive, but we are only interested in one nuance - download the application from the official website and run it.

Pay attention to the line "Transfer mode", in the picture below I have it (SATA / 600 | SATA / 600). These parameters must match, i.e. by connecting the SSD drive to the SATA / 300 port (this is the SATA II standard), we will get the maximum exchange rate with the disk of 300 MB, and if we look at the performance test in the first method, we see that the maximum read speed was far beyond 300 ...

By connecting such a high-speed drive to a SATA or SATA II port, its performance will simply rest on the performance of the controller (with classic HDDs it is not so critical, since even SATA capabilities are abundant)

In general, CrystalDiskInfo can tell you about temperature, drive time and many other useful indicators. For owners of classic HDDs, the Reallocate Sector item will be useful - thanks to it, you can predict the failure of the device

Method 3. AS SSD Benchmark - a healthy competitor to CrystalDisk from the Germans

The Germans know how to make not only adult films, but also excellent utilities for testing the speed of a hard drive or SSD. In this case, I want to acquaint you with the AS SSD Benchmark application, the functionality of which is very similar to CrystalDiskMark, but in contrast to it, it also shows the access time to data (and in general there are still minor differences).

You can download from the official website (it is in German, the download link is at the end of the page), the application itself is in English (many bloggers have a version exclusively in German)

The utility is portable and does not require installation, just run the application, mark the necessary tests and press START, everything is the same as in the first method. On the left is my home SSD, on the right is a classic HDD.

Please note that the TOOLS menu contains a couple of interesting tests that can predict the performance of the drive when copying ISO files, programs or various toys - CrystalDiskMark does not have such functionality.

Method 4. HD Tune is a good tool with visual graphics

HD Tune is probably the most famous hard drive speed test app, but it comes in last in today's rankings for a reason. The fact is that the free version of HD Tune has not been updated since February 2008 ... but it still works in 2Q17 on latest Windows 10. Download, as always, from the official website (unfortunately, there is no portable version)

After passing the test, a visual reading graph will be available to us (along with the maximum and minimum values, as well as the speed of data access). In general, the information is useful, but there is no way to test the write speed on the disk, which is a little upsetting ...

In view of its antiquities the application may incorrectly detect modern drives, but this does not affect the test results in any way

Conclusion about programs for testing hard disk speed

It's time to draw conclusions. We tested the speed of a hard drive or SSD using four different programs (or rather, there are only three applications for testing, and one more utility to be sure that the tests will be objective).

In reality, there are many more programs that allow you to check the speed of a hard drive, but I decided to introduce you to the leaders of this niche ... but if you have anything to add, I’m waiting for you in the comments.

Good day!

Most often, you need to test the read / write speed on an SSD after purchasing a new drive (sometimes to diagnose the slow operation of a computer, individual programs). There is no built-in Windows tool to do this job - of course not 😉 ...

Actually, in this article I will give several utilities with which you can quickly enough (within 3-5 minutes!) evaluate the speed of the SSD.

By the way, many drive sellers also provide test results from these programs. (therefore, the information is also relevant for those users who are looking for a new drive and want to see the difference by comparing the indicators with their current drive).

Addition!

How to check the status of an SSD drive (utilities for diagnosing the "health" of an SSD) -

Important!

To start testing: disable all programs that load the disk (games, editors, torrents, etc.). Also note how much free space is on your drive (it is recommended that this number be at least 20-25% (affects the test results)).

How to check the read / write speed of an SSD drive

Option 1: CrystalDiskMark

Very simple and free program to test the speed of disks (HDD, SSD, and other drives). To start the test you need:

1. download and extract the utility from the archive (you may need it);
2. after starting the program, specify the number of read / write cycles (by default, it costs 5), file size for test (default 1 GB), and select a drive letter. In most cases, you can immediately specify the drive letter and leave the rest unchanged;
3. press the "All" button and wait for the operation to end (see the screenshot below).

I will decipher some points:

1. Seq - sequential read / write speed (i.e. if you, for example, copy a large file to this disk, the copying speed will be approximately 470 MB / s, see the screen above). Many manufacturers mainly indicate this parameter on packaging (and advertising);
2. 4KiB - Random Read / Write 4KB Blocks (the program implements several such tests with different depths and flow)... I recommend paying attention, first of all, to the 4KiB Q1T1 line.

Remark!

In general, many users (mostly) look at sequential read / write speed (Seq). However, according to statistics, more than half of the operations (>70%) with a disk falls into small files.

And the performance of many programs (the same Windows) is much more dependent on the read / write speed of an SSD of random blocks of 4 KB (which, usually, no one informs about in advertising. You can find out about real tests on specialized sites, for example, one of these plates, relevant today, is given below).

Option 2: AS SSD Benchmark

Free utility for testing the speed of SSD drives. The program also allows you to get detailed information about the drive itself. (manufacturer, model, etc.), current drivers, used / free space.

The presentation of the results is not much different from the previous utility: a small plate with the read / write speed to the disk under various conditions is also displayed (unless the scores still appear here, and the test results can be sent to a screenshot or an XML file).

Option 3: SSD-Z

A relatively little-known utility that offers a fairly rich functionality. With it you can:

1. test the speed of the SSD drive (see the "Benchmark" section);
2. find out the SMART indicators (drive self-diagnostics);
3. see the temperature;
4. find out the operating time, capacity, supported interfaces;
5. determine the serial number, model, manufacturer;
6. learn about supported technologies (the same TRIM), etc.

By the way, I can't help but note that although this utility specializes in SSDs, it also works with most HDD disks, offering similar functionality.

I will add that SSD-Z does not need to be installed (i.e. the program can be written to any of the flash drives and always have it at hand).

Option 4: HD Tune

Multifunctional software for working with hard drives (HDD), solid state drives (SSD), USB sticks, etc. With HD Tune you can:

1. test performance and performance (see the "Tests" and "File Tests" sections);
2. view SMART readings;
3. scan the disk for errors;
4. find out the current temperature of the drive;
5. get information about serial number disk, its size, clipboard, firmware, etc.;
6. adjust the noise level (relevant for);
7. delete files from the disk so that no one can restore them.

As for the speed test: the program shows not only a specific indicator (value), but also builds a graph (ideally, it should resemble a straight line without large waves). An example is in the screenshot above.

Where to see real disk tests

This data can be useful for you when buying a new SSD (to choose the fastest drive based on your capabilities). After all, it is always better to trust the figures that are obtained in practice than the promises of manufacturers on the packaging 😉 ...

By the way, if you are picking up a drive for a laptop, then some of the basics and points that you should pay attention to - you can learn from one of my last articles (link below).

How to choose a drive for a laptop, which is better: SSD drive or HDD (hard drive) -

A very convenient site for comparing the performance of CPUs, video cards, hard drives, SSD, etc. The site contains real tests of SSD disks (almost 1000 pcs.). The results are presented in a table that can be sorted by any of the columns (volume, write / read speed, price, user rating, etc.).

Thus, it is quite easy to select for yourself exactly what you need.

By the way, here on the site you can download specials. utility and check the performance of its main components: CPU, memory, video card, etc.

Table with SSD drives at https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/ (Clickable)

A similar site (although there are much more tables here). In addition to SSD, statistics are collected on processors, video cards, RAM, HDD and other components.

That's all for now ...

Happy work!