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ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.
The ATTO results of 557MB/s read and 461MB/s write are a bit lower than the advertised 560MB/s read and 520MB/s write at high sequential disk access.
CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64
Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill/compressible) or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Many new SSD owners who cant wait to test the performance of their SSD often grab this program and run a quick test, not realizing that they are testing with incompressible data rather than compressible data used in testing by manufacturers. The following results will show 0Fill data (compressible) on the left with random data sample results (incompressible) on the right.
Its a bit of a funny trade off as we see that the high sequential writes are below average once again in contrast to the excellent 4k random write disk transfer speed of 97MB/s shown on the left. Remember, those small 4k random writes are a key element in the visible upgrade we see in performance when moving from a hard drive to a SSD.
ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL
You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing. Recently, we published the exclusive public release here and, if you happen to check it out, there is a FREE download of the software! Lets see how the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD fares on the Anvil Pro:
Anvil Pro software truly takes us that much further in evaluating SSDs with things such as full system and SSD identification, Response Time, MB Read as well as IOPS in addition to the typical transfer speed result. Although the high sequential write transfer looks a bit low once again, many great characteristics, such as the almost instant response times and low 4k random write transfer speed of 83MB/s, are displayed. In fact, the 4kQD16 result of 80000 IOPS is one of the highest recorded to date. Lets see if we can push the IOPS count just a bit higher:
Listed specifications for the Chronos Deluxe are 90,000 IOPS which are the highest we have seen advertised. Although we never reached that, the result of 84088 IOPs for 4k aligned random write disk access is one of the best results we have attained yet. Throw in the fact that this IOPS high only deviates slightly when we conduct the mixed test as seen on the right and these are the best IOPS scores we have seen yet on the single 2.5″ form factor SSD.
INDEX
Pg1 – Introduction, Components & Test Protocol
Pg2 – ATTO, Crystal DiskMark & Anvil Storage Utilities
Pg3 – HDTune Pro Benchmarks