Drive Testing Software

As I mentioned earlier, solid state drives require a controlled environment for obtaining accurate test results. Giving apples to apples test results is the only way to rank a products true value when compared to other products it is competing with. Our ultimate goal is to keep the field level for all products and give you, the readers the information required to purchase the best product at the price point you are looking to purchase at.

Benchmark Testing Order

Some tests require the drive to be partition free and others require the drive to be partitioned. Instead of going back and forth we start our testing with the unpartitioned tests and then perform the partitioned tests. For solid state drives we go back and retest the write speed in an unpartitioned state to see if the drive has suffered a performance penalty. All tests are run back to back without the system going into a sleep state.

To get started, install your drive into your machine and turn your system on. After the system has found your drive and you receive confirmation that the drive is installed, restart your system. This is an important step and if not completed the Everest Access Tests will not run properly.

Here is the benchmark test running order.

HD Tune Pro STR Read

HD Tune Pro STR Write

HD Tune Pro Random Access Read

HD Tune Pro Random Access Write

HD Tach Read and Write

Everest Access Time Read

Everest Access Time Write

Crossover (going from an unpartitioned to a partitioned state)

HD Tune Pro File Benchmark

ATTO

PC Mark Vantage

PassMark Advanced Disk Test File Server

PassMark Advanced Disk Test Web Server

PassMark Advanced Disk Test Workstation

PassMark Advanced Disk Test Database

Crystal Disk Mark Info

Crystal Disk Mark 50MB Test

Crystal Disk Mark 100MB Test

Crystal Disk Mark 500MB Test

Crystal Disk Mark 1000MB Test

Crossover (going from a partitioned to an unpartitioned state)

HD Tune Pro STR Write

Piece of cake, right? - Not exactly. Many of these tests have different user selectable variables that can change the results. Let's move on and see the exact settings used along with some video demos to make things clear.