To test real life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
We use the following folder/file types:
- 100GB data file.
- 60GB iso image.
- 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files.
- 50GB File folder – 28,523 files.
- 12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files).
- 10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of .png, raw and .jpeg images).
- 10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files).
- 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
- BluRay movie.
Patriot's PXD is a fast external drive especially dealing with larger file sizes. It took just 2m 52s to transfer the 60GB iso image to the PXD and 2m 7s going back the in the other direction. Even small bity data is dealt with pretty efficiently, with our 60GB Steam folder taking 6m 2s to be copied to the drive and 5m 35s for the return journey.
To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSDss we use the same files but transfer to and from a 512GB Toshiba OCZ RD400:
Swapping over to the NVMe drive saw the write speeds notch up when dealing with the large file sizes in the media folders. Reads are also raised but not quite as much.