TEST & COMPARE THE SPEED OF YOUR SSD

Before – and after – you tweak your SSD’S settings to boost its performance, it’s useful to get accurate information about its read and write speeds. After all, reliable data about how efficiently your drive is able to perform everyday tasks is a much better means of assessment than a vague impression that it ‘seems a bit slow’.

You can benchmark your SSD using the brilliant free tool Crystaldiskmark (www. snipca.com/45481). This provides quick but thorough tests of SSDS (and traditional hard drives), and presents its results in a clear, concise manner.

The developer warns that “Crystaldiskmark may shorten SSD life”, but this is only a problem if it’s used excessively – running the tool once a month is enough to gauge your drive’s performance without wearing it out. Here’s how to use Crystaldiskmark.

1

Download the

Standard Edition of

Crystaldiskmark from www.snipca.com/45483 - click the green Installer button below the screenshot on the website and watch out for the deceptive ads on the page. Install and launch the program, and select your SSD in the dropdown drive menu 1 . You can also change the number of times the program performs each test – the default is five 2 , which produces the most accurate results, but decreasing the number will save you time.

2

Crystaldiskmark runs four tests, split into ‘read’ (where data is copied from your SSD) and ‘write’ (data copied to your SSD). The first two tests 1 use sequential data that’s stored in adjacent blocks, while the second two 2 use data that’s spread out randomly across your SSD. Once you’re familiar with the program, you can run these tests individually to get specific information, but for an initial performance overview, click the All button 3.

3

The tests take a few minutes to complete, depending on the size of your SSD. Our results show our drive’s read speeds 1 are considerably faster than its write speeds 2 , except for the final random test – the first sequential Write result is the most important. This difference is normal for a SATA SSD like ours, though it suggests there’s potential to speed up our drive. To save the information to compare it with results from future tests, click the File menu 3 and choose ‘Save (text)’.

4

To see how your SSD’S speed compares with other users, go to www.snipca. com/45488. Click the ‘Form factor’ box 1 and choose your SSD type – 2.5" covers most SATA devices – then the Brand box and select the manufacturer 2 , and look for your SSD model or one with similar specs. Compare the result from your first write-speed test with the figure in the ‘Write MB/S’ column 3 . To also compare read-speed results, click the ‘Add columns’ button 4 and choose Read.