YOU’LL NEED THIS

CRYSTALDISKMARK 6

https://crystalmark.info/en

ANVIL’S STORAGE

UTILITIES 1.1.0

https://anvils-storage-utilities.en.lo4d.com/windows

Beyond that, around 30GB of mixed files, ideally from a game install, is required.

SURELY THE MOST MERCURIAL of PC components, solid-state drives have long presented a moving target when it comes to benchmarking. Early SSDs were all about headline transfer speeds. Then it became apparent that performance fell off rapidly as the drive’s capacity was used. As solid-state technology matured, random access to small data sets emerged as a more relevant measure of real-world performance. But even now, the best test regimes can’t fully capture the character of an SSD. After all, there’s no substitute for hammering a drive with day-to-day storage for years.

However, it is possible to capture a pretty good idea of the performance of a drive in relatively short order using freely available software. Our approach involves testing both peak throughput and arguably more relevant 4K performance, along with an added real-world element in terms of file transfers and prepping the drive for testing. The latter involves filling the drive entirely before running benchmarks. That can be quite time-consuming with very large drives, in which case you can opt to skip it. Where practical, and especially with a brand-new drive, however, it can help to make benchmarking more realistic as well as shake out any serious flaws in sustained performance.