This post explains what SSD benchmark is and introduce threee popular SSD benchmark tools as well as benchmark measruement rules to help you know your SSD's performance.
SSD benchmark is the process of running software which can accurately help you measure transfer speeds under different disk access scenarios such as sequential, random 4k, deep queue depth. The purpose of the process is to get the fighters in MBps that can summarize the speed characteristics of a disk. There is much free software you can download to benchmark your own disk.
A SSD benchmark tool can tell you something which you may not know. It can offer insight into how many writes it already absorbed, how long until it fails and the firmware number. Together with this information, you can know whether your drive needs a firmware upgrade.
Benchmark tool determines the speed of your drive. Usually, it reveals the problem of your SSD. For instance, if you benchmark your drive and it has poor write performance. Then you must have a malfunctioning trim command.
There are different benchmark tools in the market and they can provide various reports. It may be confusing for you to pay attention to which tests. Because there are many factors that will affect your test results such as PC configuration, options made by user in the tool. There are 3 main types of benchmark tool include: Synthetic, Trace-Based, Application-Based.
Synthetic Tool Synthetic tool imitates the stress that a drive may experience during different kinds of workloads using patters. Test data is either Non-Random or Random. No matter which one it is, the performance of SSD will be affected due to the difference in firmware design, DRAM cache, NADA components, and controller technology. Some Synthetic tools enable users to assign Sequential or Random data access patters.
Trace-Based Tool Trace-Based tool is a recording of a real Input/ Output requirement from a real-world process such as running Microsoft PPT, Windows Media Center. It can record the time it uses to complete a full trace on a particular system configuration. This tool is much more realistic than Synthetic.
Application-Based Tool Application-Based Tool is different from the two tools mentioned above. With this tool, you should install applications and run them, the performance is recorded. Due to all SSDs work fast there is small difference between SSDs.
β Sequential Read speeds are reported in. This shows the speed of SSD finishing the task such as accessing large files, game level loading, and some types of game play. This is the speed at which the drive can read data from contiguous memory spaces. β Sequential Write speeds report in MB/s. the speeds show the time SSD finishes the task like backing up document. The time is the drive writing data to sequential memory spaces. β Random Read speeds, reported in Input/output Operations Per Second (IOPS) which is the speed of SSD complete tasks like browsing web, loading application, starting PC. This is the speed the drive reads data from non-contiguous memory spaces. β Random Write speeds reports in IOPS showing the speed the drive completing tasks such as web browsing, compression files, loading applications. This is also the speed the drive reads data from non-contiguous memory spaces.
Every measurement mentioned above will have different results on the same SSD due to the various systems.
For instance, the report of IOPS will be different due to the queue depth, data block size, the tradeoff between read and write operations. Besides, as for Synthetic tool, Random Write performance will be various depending on the test range. For example, write tests that have small ranges will not use the internal parallelism of the NADA chips. This will cause low performance. So in order to know the complete performance of your SSD, you should observe the different test results together.
In a word, SSD benchmark tool is a good way to show the performance of the SSD and it can help you get the most from SSD. You can do SSD optimization now and then to extend its service time. Maybe SSD will replace traditional hard drives in the future, so know this knowledge in advance is absolute benefit for you.