What is the Best HDD/SDD benchmark program?

[alrobichaud]

Just like the tiltle says. The reason I am wondering this is because my WEI score shows my OCZ agility 120GB SATA 3 SSD as only 7.4 which my worst score. I know WEI is useless so please don't tell me not to worry about it. It bothers me that I have what I thought was one of the fastests SSD's and it has a crummy score. I also read that you shouldn't benchmark SSD's but I can't find any relevant info to back that statement up. I would post a screen shot of my WEI score but I am at work right now on my laptop. I will post add it later. Any help or general thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
Al

 

[Hawkeye22]

Any drive benchmark will not jive as they use different algorithms for benchmarking. I mean, 7.4??? What does that tell you exactly other than it's better than the 5.9 it assigns to hard drives.

You can use something like HDTune or HDTach, which will list transfer rates and such, but it still doesn't give you all the answers. Knowing which software is being used and how the computer is being used will give better real world results than some synthetic testing.

 

[correon]

You can use the Atto Disk Benchmark

 

[alrobichaud]

Thanks. I will try those suggestions. I am curious to see if I even get close to the read and write speed that OCZ advertises. My next question is who is getting a perfect score if all I can get is a 7.4?

 

[Wisecracker]

Did you update the firmware before you installed the OS ??

CrystalDiskMark works for me ...

 

[jrbraswell109]

Thanks. I will try those suggestions. I am curious to see if I even get close to the read and write speed that OCZ advertises. My next question is who is getting a perfect score if all I can get is a 7.4?

I switched to AHCI on my new build last night with an OCZ agility 3, gigabyte board and i5 2500K and got a 7.9 when i re-ran the WEI.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

As you can see here, the Agility is a "tier 8" SSD.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-price-ssd,3070-6.html

The fastest 120's are at Tier 3 ....

The chart has been structured so that each tier represents a 10% difference in performance.

So tier 8 -> Tier 3 = 1.10^5 or a Tier 3 should be about 161% of the performance of a tier 8

 

[RetiredChief]

I have two agility III 120 gig SSDs in my I5-2500k. WEI is 7.9, that said, they are middle of the road, ie much lower performance than my 2 128 gig M4's (also 7.9) in my laptop. Plan on replacing the Agility 3 (One with OS = Programs) with a M4 (or samsung 830) in the near future.

On Benchmarks. To obtain "advertized" performance the Benchmark must use compressable data (Use programs suggested by Hawkeye22). This is not real life. Prefer PCMark vantage which is closer to real life. My second choice (which I use) is AS SSD which uses compressed data for the tests. While still not real life it is closer than using data that is highly compressable.

On running the bench mark. One reason is the High writes that are performed. The 2nd reason, and the reason you should not run back to back is that it will create a "fagmented" state and subsequent runs will produce lower scores, untill trim has had a chance to return the drive to near factory condition.

For a OS + Program drive, ignore the Sequencial performance. Just use to verify getting manuf specs. Manufs use the Sequencial speeds for advertizement purpose, But this is the least important matrix for a boot/program drive. Becomes important for a data drive when working with LARGE file structures.

 

[jrbraswell109]

I have two agility III 120 gig SSDs in my I5-2500k. WEI is 7.9, that said, they are middle of the road, ie much lower performance than my 2 128 gig M4's (also 7.9) in my laptop. Plan on replacing the Agility 3 (One with OS = Programs) with a M4 (or samsung 830) in the near future.

On Benchmarks. To obtain "advertized" performance the Benchmark must use compressable data (Use programs suggested by Hawkeye22). This is not real life. Prefer PCMark vantage which is closer to real life. My second choice (which I use) is AS SSD which uses compressed data for the tests. While still not real life it is closer than using data that is highly compressable.

On running the bench mark. One reason is the High writes that are performed. The 2nd reason, and the reason you should not run back to back is that it will create a "fagmented" state and subsequent runs will produce lower scores, untill trim has had a chance to return the drive to near factory condition.

For a OS + Program drive, ignore the Sequencial performance. Just use to verify getting manuf specs. Manufs use the Sequencial speeds for advertizement purpose, But this is the least important matrix for a boot/program drive. Becomes important for a data drive when working with LARGE file structures.

A lot of that is why I bought the cheap OCZ on Black Friday. I wanted to use it for my learning curve with SSD's which has gone quickly except for the fact that I cannot see my 2nd Hard drive (750GB Seagate Barracuda). i have ACHI enabled and my boot disc is the OCZ with Win 7 Pro, but the BIOS sees the drives in the boot order as SCSI-0 and SCSI-1. Can someone please help me to realize my two drives so I can configure the 750 for storage? They are on Port 1 and Port 3 of my system. I am not trying to hijack the op's post, but no one replied to my thread yet.

 

[RetiredChief]

^ Recommend starting your own thread. Problem not related to this thread

 

[alrobichaud]

Thanks for all the help. I did not update the firmware and OCZ says to make sure you back up the disk since there is a chance the update will cause you to lose all data. I am still recovering from a BIOS flash gone wrong so I will save the firmware update until the next time I reinstall windows. Switching to AHCI will apparently cause windows 7 to not boot from what I have read, so again, I willl have to wait until I wipe my drive and reinstall before I attempt that. I forgot to mention it is the agillity 3. Not sure what the difference is between it and the agility and agility 2. I know there are better SSD's on the market than what I have I just figured that a sataIII ssd should give you a 7.9 regardless of the cost/quality. In regards to updating the firmware, I am guessing I will need to set this drive up as a secondary in another system since you can't update a drive that is running windows. If I plug it into my external 2.5" usb case will I be able to update the firmware using my laptop and then reinstall in my pc without screwing things up?

 

[RetiredChief]

1) Firmware update. OCZs recommended method is to use a linux boot cd. Download from OCZ. Disconnect all drives except the SSD. Boot computer from cd and update following their method (Check OCZ forum). Was a Piece of cake for my two 120 gig Agility III SSDs. (latest firmware was 2.15 I think)

As I indicated, I'm getting a 7.9 for my Agility III. The get that the SSD must be set up properly. Bios set to AHCI (For Intel can also be set to Raid). SSD must be on a SATA III Intel Sata III port - NOT on a Marvel controler SATA III port!!!). And since you have a Intel chip set, The Latest RST driver should be installed (Ver 10.5 or 6). In AS SSD the intel driver should show up as iaSTor.

 

[alrobichaud]

Ok. Thanks for the tip. I will check their forum for instructions on how to update the firmware. Will probably be a few days before I get around to doing it.

 

[alrobichaud]

I updated to V2.15 firmware and changed BIOS setting to AHCI. Still only getting a 7.4 after re-run. Could it be the sata 3 controller card I am using that is my bottleneck? It has the latest drivers installed. I will be switching back to a sata 3 motherboard when mine comes back from RMA.

 

[RetiredChief]

If the SataIII card is a marvel based controller - YES!!

 

[alrobichaud]

Thought that is what you meant by Marvel sata 3 controller but I wasn't sure.

 

[alrobichaud]

Best answer selected by alrobichaud.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey