Linux Disk, USB and LAN Benchmarks
Contents
General
The benchmark tests are based on those produced for Windows, where details and results can be found in
DiskGraf Results.htm and
CDDVDSpd Results.htm.
The tests comprise:
- Writing and Reading Large Files - Five files each of 8 MB, 16 MB and 32 MB are used.
System is instructed not to cache the data.
- Writing and Reading Cached Data - Five files of 8 MB are used. Performance normally
reflects memory speed.
- Reading Bus Speed - The same data is read repetitively at block sizes between 64 KB and
1 MB. This normally reads data from the disk’s buffer to show maximum bus speeds.
- Random Reading Speed - 1 KB blocks are read randomly from 7 file sizes between 2 MB
and 128 MB. Results reflect the disk's buffer size and rotation speed.
- Writing and Reading Small Files - 500 files are written, read and deleted at 6 different
file sizes each between 2 KB and 64 KB. Besides speed, milliseconds per file is provided
to reflect overheads.
- Run time parameters - These are provided to write and read larger files and to specify
the drive and file path to be used.
Besides testing disk and flash memory drives, it was intended to use the (drivespeed) benchmarks for measuring speed over such as Local Area Networks (LANs). In order to avoid data being cached in main memory by the Operating System, the program uses direct I/O (file open parameter O_DIRECT for Linux). This prevented directories being mounted over a LAN, so a second program (lanspeed) was produced, identical except with no direct I/O parameter. Compilations at both 32 bits and 64 bits were produced - drivespeed32, lanspeed32, drivespeed64 and lanspeed64.
The lanspeed tests can be used to measure speeds between Linux platforms and also between Linux and Windows systems. A Windows program, drivespeed32.exe is also provided and this can also be used as a LAN speed test.
It was noted that a more modern flash drive was particularly slow and another quite fast. Then, it became apparent that Random Writing could be particularly slow. The latter function was included in a Revised Version and further tests carried out, including using the two new flash drives See below.
The execution files, source code along with compiling and running instructions, can be downloaded in
linux_disk_usb_lan_benchmarks.tar.gz (revised).
The benchmarks are simple execution files and do not need installing. Details are displayed when the tests are running and performance results are saved in a .txt file.
Details of other Linux benchmarks can be found in
linux benchmarks.htm.
DriveSpeed32.exe can also be found in
drivespeed32.zip.
To Start
Running The Programs
Mouse Click - The Linux varieties are provided with script files. Subject to Execute and Write permissions (for test files and log file) being possible, clicking on the script icon provides a menu selection of “Run In Terminal” or “Display”. Running this way is useful on portable drives for maintaining a record of results from various systems.
It seems that the drivespeed programs fail using an NTFS formatted partition, because of that O_DIRECT parameter.
With the drivespeed32.exe file in a Linux shared directory and opened on a Windows based PC, clicking on the icon runs the program under Windows with data written and read over the network to the directory on the Linux system drive.
Terminal Command - The benchmarks can, of course, be run by changing the current directory to the one containing the execution file and using the usual ./program_name command or from the home directory including the path (like ./test/disk/drivespeed64). External devices are mounted in the /media directory. Unless the volume label has been given a suitable name, the external drive will have a convoluted identification name (see example DriveSpeed log below), but this can be copied from the /media listing and pasted as part of the command.
Run Time Parameter - The programs can be run using a parameter to define the file path, for example ./drivespeed64 F test/disk or ./drivespeed64 FilePath /media/new. This runs the program and saves the log file in the current directory, with data on the file path drive.
The other parameter is for file size, for example ./drivespeed64 MB 32 writes and reads 32, 64 and 128 MB large files and eight tests using 500 small ones between 2 KB 256 KB. The defaults are 8, 16, 32 MB and 2 to 64 KB.
Permissions - Being new to Linux, I have difficulty in understanding permissions. I have no problem in running these benchmarks from within my home directory but that is not the case when the programs are on attached drives. The procedures required to force programs to run appear to be different using Abuntu and Fedora, the two systems tried. Example Linux or program error reports or failures are:
- No such file or directory - No execution permission
- Shell script fails to run program - No execution permission
- Free Disk Space not available - No read permission
- Cannot open results file - No directory write permission
- Cannot open data file for writing - No file write permission
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To help other newcomers, I found some of the following necessary. On connecting an external device, it appears by volume name or ID code in /media. With inadequate permissions, the drive can be unmounted and remounted as shown in example 1 below, the /dev ID being obtained from Disk Utility. Alternatives for file type include vfat, ntfs and ext3 and empty directory /new has to be created beforehand. This provides full permissions and the benchmark can then normally be executed by clicking on the script file or executed by changing directory paths in Terminal. A copy of the benchmark in the home directory can be used to write and read data on the external drive as show in example 2.
Sometimes the benchmark can be run from the home directory, without unmounting/remounting, using Example 3 or 4. In other cases, where the script file fails to execute the program, it can be run from the destination directory as in Example 5.
1. Home directory - sudo umount /dev/sdb4
sudo mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sdb4 /media/new
2. Home directory - ./drivespeed64 FilePath /media/new/drivespeed2
3. Home directory - ./drivespeed64 FilePath /media/6449-7525/drivespeed2
4. Home directory - sudo ./drivespeed64 FilePath /media/6449-7525/drivespeed2
5. Destination directory - ./drivespeed64
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To Start (More Below)
LAN Benchmarks - The LAN version was intended for use between Linux systems and Linux to Windows PCs. For this, Samba software is needed. Under Ubuntu, this was installed, as shown below, to use smbfs for mounting remote files locally. Then a different procedure was used to
install Samba under Fedora
This uses the CIFS protocol for file services and can also be used with Ubuntu instead of smbfs.
After Samba is installed, the first step is to create a local folder where remote directories and files are mounted (and viewable). The mounting function requires the remote address. In my case, it was more appropriate to use the IP address, such as 192.168.0.3. The examples shown include (such as dir_mode=0777) for setting permissions and not always needed. Sometimes user=xxx and password=yyy will be required.
Ubuntu Procedure Command
Install smbfs (and Samba) ---------- sudo apt-get install smbfs
Load the kernel module ------------- sudo modprobe smbfs
Create folder for shares ----------- sudo mkdir /media/public
Define permissions ----------------- sudo chmod 0777 /media/public
Mount Windows shared drive --------- sudo mount -t smbfs -o dir_mode=0777,
or cifs intead of smbfs file_mode=0777 //192.168.0.4/d /media/public
Change directory ------------------- cd /media/public/Test
Run program, files in D:\Test ------ ./lanspeed64
Or from Linux benchmark directory -- ./lanspeed64 FilePath /media/public/Test
Mount Ubuntu shared directory ------ sudo mount -t smbfs -o user=roy,dir_mode=0777,
or cifs intead of smbfs file_mode=0777 //192.168.0.2/all /media/public
Fedora mount Windows shared drive -- sudo mount -t cifs -o dir_mode=0777,
file_mode=0777 //192.168.0.3/d /media/public
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To Start
Example DriveSpeed Results Log
Following is an example log file of the 64-Bit version running on a 3 GHz quad core AMD CPU with 64-Bit Ubuntu and using a 7200 RPM eSATA disk drive. In this case, Ubuntu was loaded from a USB flash drive, access to the eSATA disk being via /media.
###############################################################
Assembler CPUID and RDTSC
CPU AuthenticAMD, Features Code 178BFBFF, Model Code 00100F42
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor
Measured - Minimum 3013 MHz, Maximum 3013 MHz
Linux Functions
get_nprocs() - CPUs 4, Configured CPUs 4
get_phys_pages() and size - RAM Size 7.81 GB, Page Size 4096 Bytes
uname() - Linux, roy-64, 2.6.35-22-generic
#33-Ubuntu SMP Sun Sep 19 20:32:27 UTC 2010, x86_64
###############################################################
Current Directory Path:
/media/f816ec76-8bf2-4dd3-9e98-62934909a779/roy/all64/drivespeed2
Total MB 11263, Free MB 9513, Used MB 1750
Linux Storage Speed Test 64-Bit Version 1.1, Tue Feb 1 14:20:39 2011
Copyright (C) Roy Longbottom 2011
8 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 4.33 76.73 76.15 82.40 105.84
Reading MB/sec 57.37 86.62 83.40 80.74 82.34
16 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 73.94 108.16 72.53 116.19 116.12
Reading MB/sec 70.39 103.31 120.31 121.53 121.48
32 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 113.01 76.67 73.20 115.83 116.05
Reading MB/sec 105.19 102.41 113.15 121.55 120.59
---------------------------------------------------------------------
8 MB Cached File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 1271.71 1503.73 1496.38 1493.27 1491.68
Reading MB/sec 3406.70 4015.11 4079.82 4081.24 4080.77
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bus Speed Block KB 64 128 256 512 1024
Reading MB/sec 84.93 102.31 112.31 121.03 116.41
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 KB Reads File MB > 2 4 8 16 32 64 128
Random Read msecs 0.43 0.39 0.45 3.01 4.49 5.93 6.69
---------------------------------------------------------------------
500 Files Write Read Delete
File KB MB/sec ms/File MB/sec ms/File Seconds
2 7.54 0.27 7.67 0.27 0.015
4 17.19 0.24 22.27 0.18 0.018
8 20.24 0.40 27.21 0.30 0.017
16 33.27 0.49 47.16 0.35 0.019
32 52.67 0.62 67.20 0.49 0.016
64 55.43 1.18 75.49 0.87 0.015
End of test Tue Feb 1 14:21:29 2011
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To Start
Disk Drive Results
All the following results are from disk drives connected to the quad core AMD CPU that provided the above log file. The first column is from the main SATA disk with NTFS formatting, using the Windows version of the benchmark. Its notable achievements are that it is the only one where the bus test demonstrates SATA 2 300 MB/second and the fastest random access, reading data from its 16 MB buffer.
Results are provided for two drives connected to eSATA. Note that eS1 would not run properly under Windows 7, writing speed being pathetically slow, but there were no problems using Windows Vista on another PC. The disk is a 2009 7200 RPM drive, with a 16 MB buffer, in a SATA 1 external enclosure. The first 12 + 12 GB are Ext4 format (with Ununtu 64), the next 134 GB NTFS and the final 153 GB FAT32. Results are for Ext4 and FAT, using Ubuntu and Fedora.
Here writing large FAT files is slower than with Ext4, probably as the last partition has less data per track. Next Ubuntu is the fastest reading cached data and, with FAT, Fedora is slow on all examples of writing cached files. Again with FAT, Fedora is slow writing small files and, with all and 16 KB sectors, writing and reading 16 KB files can be faster than smaller ones.
The second eSATA disk, eS2, is a 250 GB ultra-portable Seagate FreeAgent drive that runs at 5400 RPM via an optional eSATA attachment, and has an 8 MB buffer. Results are also given using the alternative USB attachment. The first half is formatted as FAT32 and the remainder as Linux Ext4. Results are also included for the Windows benchmark using FAT.
Performance of the large files is worse using Ext4, with less data per track and the bus is clearly running at SATA 1 speeds of up to 1.5 Gbps. Random access times reflect the disk rotation speed and buffer size. Writing small files is much slower using the FAT partition, Fedora producing the worst performance but, on reading, Windows is slowest with data larger than the buffer.
The USB performance of up to 36 MB/second is limited by bus speed but this does not affect random access times much. On Windows FAT files, unlike the “Enable Write Caching” setting via eSATA for better performance, the default for USB is “Optimise For Quick Removal”. This can be expected to save the File Allocation Table for every file written, producing slow writing speed on small files. Running with “Optimise For Performance”, file transfer time is much faster, similar to Ubuntu FAT speeds. Fedora and FAT demonstrate the “Quick Removal” performance.
Maximum Speeds
Disk HD eS1 eS1 eS1 eS1 eS2 eS2 eS2 eS2 eS2 USB USB USB USB USB
Size GB 230 145 11 145 11 119 119 117 119 117 119 119 117 119 117
OS Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo
Format NTFS FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4
8 MB File
Write MB/s 110 84 106 81 108 83 81 70 62 67 25 33 33 31 36
Read MB/s 84 102 87 102 105 75 82 70 81 67 30 35 35 36 36
16 MB File
Write MB/s 89 84 116 76 122 82 81 68 73 70 25 32 34 32 36
Read MB/s 88 101 122 101 122 78 82 67 82 70 30 35 35 36 36
32 MB File
Write MB/s 97 85 116 81 122 83 80 64 77 69 25 32 35 31 36
Read MB/s 91 100 122 101 112 79 82 70 82 69 31 35 35 36 36
8 MB Cached File
Write MB/s 1618 1119 1504 628 1318 1900 1114 1556 491 1301 24 1124 1535 491 1304
Read MB/s 2517 4077 4081 3318 3709 2106 4085 4037 3728 3712 623 4073 4033 3664 3737
Bus Speed
Read MB/s 260 131 121 125 124 127 115 117 119 119 31 34 31 34 33
Disk HD eS1 eS1 eS1 eS1 eS2 eS2 eS2 eS2 eS2 USB USB USB USB USB
OS Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo Win7 Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo
Format NTFS FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext4 FAT Ext4
Random msecs
File MB
2 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.9 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.7
4 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.7
8 0.1 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.4 3.7 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.0 4.0 3.8 3.9 3.8 4.1
16 0.2 2.8 3.0 2.8 2.7 5.3 6.1 5.8 5.5 5.5 5.7 6.2 5.8 5.9 5.9
32 3.2 4.8 4.5 4.9 5.3 6.4 6.9 6.2 6.8 6.4 6.7 6.8 7.6 6.9 7.2
64 5.7 5.8 5.9 6.6 6.2 7.1 7.7 8.0 7.2 7.7 7.7 7.7 8.2 7.4 7.9
128 6.9 7.1 6.7 7.0 7.0 8.1 8.2 8.0 7.7 8.0 8.3 7.8 8.1 8.5 8.5
Write 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 1.3 1.6 0.3 9.5 0.4 0.9 1.7 0.4 8.1 0.5 7.9 2.1 0.8 9.2 0.6
4 0.6 1.6 0.2 9.0 0.4 1.0 1.7 0.3 9.0 0.5 8.7 2.4 0.6 8.1 0.7
8 0.5 1.7 0.4 7.1 0.7 1.1 1.7 0.5 11.6 0.7 8.6 2.3 1.0 7.4 0.9
16 0.6 1.4 0.5 5.3 0.7 0.9 1.5 0.5 5.9 0.7 8.7 2.5 1.2 6.9 1.2
32 0.8 1.6 0.6 6.6 0.8 0.9 1.7 0.8 7.0 1.1 9.5 3.0 1.8 8.0 1.9
64 1.2 3.0 1.2 7.3 1.2 1.4 3.3 1.7 8.7 1.5 11.9 3.8 5.4 10.1 2.6
Read 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 0.7 0.2 0.3 2.2 0.2 1.7 0.5 3.3 2.7 2.7 2.1 0.8 2.9 0.8 0.8
4 0.3 1.1 0.2 1.1 0.2 1.7 1.6 0.4 2.9 0.3 3.0 0.9 0.6 1.6 0.7
8 0.5 1.1 0.3 0.3 0.3 1.7 1.5 0.3 1.5 0.6 3.1 1.0 1.0 2.5 0.8
16 0.4 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.4 1.8 0.3 0.7 0.6 0.7 3.4 1.0 1.7 1.0 1.1
32 1.1 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 2.3 0.5 0.8 0.6 1.0 4.0 1.3 3.3 1.7 1.4
64 1.0 0.8 0.9 1.0 0.9 3.0 1.0 4.2 1.1 3.5 5.6 2.2 3.3 2.6 2.7
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To Start
USB and FireWire Disk
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All these results are on a 2008 laptop with a 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. Results for the Windows benchmark are via Vista. The first column is for the 5400 RPM laptop drive where, except for bus speed, is no faster than the disk on USB and FireWire.
The other results are for a 7200 RPM disk drive in an enclosure with USB and FireWire connections. The first 30 GB has 32-Bit Ubuntu installed with Ext4 formatting, then 10 GB swap space, and the final 80 GB as a FAT32 partition. The disk is capable of producing a data transfer speed greater than 60 MB/second, but limited by external bus speed.
The Linux operating system used was 64-Bit Fedora, with FAT and Ext4 tests via USB and FireWire. Results via Windows Vista are included for comparison purposes.
Maximum data transfer speed of USB is 480 Mb/second, faster than FireWire at 400 Mb/s. Writing the large files via Windows appears to be faster using FireWire but USB is faster using Fedora. Windows reading speed is again somewhat better using FireWire but little different on Fedora tests. However, repetitive reading from the disk’s buffer in the bus tests indicates that FireWire is the faster on all results shown.
There are significant differences in speed when data can be cached in main memory between Windows and Fedora, also FAT and Ext formatting. Random access times reflect the 7200 RPM revolution speed and the 8 MB disk buffer.
As for the earlier USB disk drive, the Windows tests were run with the “Optimise For Quick Removal” setting, resulting in slow writing speeds, unlike with FireWire. With “Optimise For Performance” the average writing times slowly increased from 1.1 to 3.4 milliseconds but there was little difference on file reading times.
Using Fedora, both USB and FireWire connections were slow writing the small files but both fast with Ext4 format.
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Maximum Speeds
Disk HD FW USB FW USB FW USB
Size GB 71 76 76 76 76 28 28
OS Win Win Win Fedo Fedo Fedo Fedo
Format NTFS FAT FAT FAT FAT Ext4 Ext4
8 MB File
Wrt MB/s 22 25 21 24 26 25 26
Rd MB/s 33 35 29 34 33 32 34
16 MB File
Wrt MB/s 28 25 19 15 23 16 26
Rd MB/s 32 36 29 34 33 29 29
32 MB File
Wrt MB/s 26 24 21 23 26 16 26
Rd MB/s 31 36 30 33 33 29 30
8 MB Cached File
Wrt MB/s 31 31 24 180 246 503 513
Rd MB/s 792 756 660 1106 1054 1097 1096
Bus Speed
Rd MB/s 115 39 31 40 36 39 36
Random msecs
File MB
2 0.3 0.3 0.7 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4
4 2.4 0.2 0.9 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4
8 4.4 1.0 1.6 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.7
16 6.1 3.8 3.9 3.8 3.6 3.7 4.0
32 7.5 4.7 5.0 5.0 5.6 5.1 5.0
64 7.2 5.8 6.1 5.5 5.8 5.6 6.3
128 8.3 5.9 7.1 6.2 6.1 6.8 6.7
Write 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 1.5 0.8 5.6 4.6 5.6 0.6 0.8
4 0.8 0.8 6.5 5.1 5.5 0.7 0.8
8 0.8 1.0 6.4 5.3 5.7 0.7 0.9
16 0.8 1.4 7.6 5.8 7.0 1.3 1.2
32 1.9 2.2 8.4 7.0 7.0 2.2 1.7
64 3.3 3.4 10.3 9.8 9.3 5.5 5.3
Read 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 3.0 2.1 3.3 1.3 1.7 0.4 0.5
4 2.5 2.1 3.4 1.4 1.9 0.4 0.7
8 2.8 2.3 3.7 1.5 1.9 0.5 0.7
16 3.1 2.7 3.8 1.7 1.6 0.8 1.8
32 3.7 3.7 5.1 1.1 1.5 2.8 4.4
64 5.1 6.2 8.3 2.6 2.3 3.6 3.7
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To Start
USB Flash Drives
Flash memory originally had a performance rating where 1 is 0.15 MB/second, the same as that for CD discs (or a rating of 100 is 15 MB/second). Unfortunately, the specifications are not often published. Based on disk drive results, greater than 36 MB/second appears to be as good as it gets on High Speed USB 2.0.
Results for large files and bus speed indicate reading speeds of 10 to 28 MB/second, generally reflecting age of the device. These particular devices are much slower on writing, the range being 3 to 9 MB/second, but devices, with writing at a similar speed to that for reading, can be found.
All of these results are from a PC with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU with Windows results via Vista. The latter produces the slowest performance on handling the cached files.
Note that random access times are mainly 0.5 milliseconds at all file sizes, much faster than disk drives on the larger files. Examples where the time is much longer also produced around 0.5 milliseconds for all results on other test runs.
The benchmarks do not run at the larger file sizes if the time for writing and reading five files has reached more than 60 seconds. Examples are shown below.
The highest variations in speeds are with small files, particularly on writing. Surprisingly, in some cases, average writing times can be less at at larger files sizes and result are mainly consistent on repeating the tests. Reading speeds via Windows are slower than Linux and writing times exceptionally longer. It is known that Windows “Optimise For Performance” option is not available for flash memory on XP and later. With “Optimise For Quick Removal” File Allocation Tables are saved for every file written. This also affects the recorded delete times for the 500 files of at least 8 seconds for the Disgo drive and 14 seconds for the other two (Stap and Cru4). All Linux deletion times are less than 0.02 seconds.
Maximum Speeds
Drive** Stap Stap Stap Disg Disg SD Cru4 Cru4 Cru4 PNY Cr16 Cr16 Cr16
Size MB 475 475 3004 489 489 3718 95 95 3473 3567 484 484 8819
OS Win Ubun Ubun Ubun Win Ubun Ubun Win Ubun Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo
Format FAT FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext3 FAT FAT Ext3 Ext3 Ext4 Ext4 LVM
8 MB File
Write MB/s 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 4 4 8 4 5 3
Read MB/s 10 10 10 11 10 10 19 17 19 23 28 28 28
16 MB File
Write MB/s 3 3 3 4 4 5 5 4 5 8 4 5 4
Read MB/s 10 10 10 11 10 10 19 17 19 23 28 28 28
32 MB File
Write MB/s 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 9 4 4 4
Read MB/s 10 10 10 11 10 10 19 23 27 27 27
8 MB Cached File
Write MB/s 3 577 928 539 4 515 73 4 523 525 671 754 754
Read MB/s 1584 3549 3184 3492 1666 3378 3475 1624 3581 3619 3457 3378 3171
Bus Speed
Read MB/s 10 10 10 11 10 10 19 17 18 11 28 26 26
Drive** Stap Stap Stap Disg Disg SD Cru4 Cru4 Cru4 PNY Cr16 Cr16 Cr16
Size MB 475 475 3004 489 489 3718 95 95 3473 3567 484 484 8819
OS Win Ubun Ubun Ubun Win Ubun Ubun Win Ubun Ubun Ubun Fedo Fedo
Format FAT FAT Ext4 FAT FAT Ext3 FAT FAT Ext3 Ext3 Ext4 Ext4 LVM
Random msecs
File MB
2 0.6 0.5 0.5 1.0 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.5 1.4 0.5 0.5 0.5
4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.6 0.5 4.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
8 0.5 0.5 1.7 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.5 4.8 0.5 0.5 0.5
16 0.5 0.4 2.1 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.5 5.8 0.5 0.5 1.0
32 0.5 0.4 2.1 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.5 4.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
64 0.5 0.4 1.8 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.5 1.1 0.5 0.5 0.5
128 0.5 0.5 2.0 0.5 0.5 0.8 2.3 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Write 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 324.0 6.0 7.9 19.0 33.2 4.6 11.9 51.2 3.4 8.3 10.0 8.3 13.6
4 321.7 9.6 9.6 25.8 34.4 3.7 14.0 40.7 1.8 5.2 14.5 11.7 7.0
8 325.0 20.1 17.1 29.3 38.6 7.3 13.3 42.6 3.2 3.0 18.6 17.0 13.2
16 345.4 29.7 33.4 43.0 52.3 19.3 16.2 47.2 6.1 5.8 20.6 19.7 19.3
32 45.2 18.1 17.0 29.9 38.2 13.6 10.9 15.3 31.1 29.4 23.9
64 56.4 25.8 33.8 39.6 45.0 35.3 25.6 16.6 12.8 12.7 10.4
Read 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 2.6 1.0 1.2 0.7 2.4 0.9 0.6 2.7 0.5 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.5
4 2.8 0.9 1.3 1.0 2.5 0.9 0.8 2.8 1.2 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.6
8 3.2 1.4 1.3 1.4 2.9 1.2 0.9 2.9 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.7
16 4.1 2.2 2.3 2.1 3.7 2.0 1.5 3.4 1.7 1.3 1.0 1.0 1.0
32 5.7 3.7 3.7 3.6 5.2 3.2 2.5 2.0 1.5 2.3 1.6
64 9.2 10.7 7.0 6.4 8.1 6.9 4.4 4.0 2.7 2.6 2.8
Drive** Stap = Staples 4 GB, Disg = Disgo 512 MB, SD = Maxell SD card 4 GB
Cru4 = Cruzer 4 GB, PNY = PNY 4 GB Cr16 = Cruzer 16 GB
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To Start
Revised Benchmark
The benchmarks drivespeed32, drivespeed64 and drivespeed32.exe have had an extra test function included to measure random writing speed, when it became apparent that this could be a problem. Results are provided below, including all measurements on a slow flash drive and a fast one driven via both Windows and Linux.
Results from two disk drives, via Linux and Windows, are provided for comparison with USB flash drives. On these, random writing time on larger files is faster than random reading time, probably a buffering effect. The Windows disk is NTFS formatted, avoiding the poor performance when FAT is used.
The fast USB drive is an 8 GB Patriot Rage XT, with quad channels for fast writing speeds. The first three sets of results are via the same PC, where Windows is somewhat faster than Ubuntu on writing large files but slower on reading. Random reading performance is quite similar with random writing time subject to wide variations. Writing and reading times of small files is quite similar with Ext4 and FAT formatting and Ubuntu. FAT formatting under Windows produces slow reading speed of small files and particularly slow writing times, due to “Optimise For Performance” being unavailable, necessitating too frequent updating of the file allocation table.
The other tests on this drive, using a different PC and a smaller partition, provide few differences that require explanation.
The slow one is an 8 GB Sigma drive, with extremely slow large file writing times and reading speed half as fast as might be expected, on large files and random access. Random writing times were consistently excessive, at up to 0.3 seconds, on small and large partitions via Windows and Ubuntu. Writing Windows small files was faster in a smaller partition but still much worse than using Ubuntu. Worst by far was using Windows and a single 8 GB partition. Here, more than 2 minutes was needed to write 500 small files and 80 seconds to delete them.
Drive HD1 HD2 Pat Pat Pat Pat Pat Pat Sig Sig Sig
Size Bytes 11G 230G 6G 8G 8G 8G 336M 336M 1G 8G 8G
OS Ubun Win7 Ubun Ubun WinV Win7 Win7 Ubun Win7 WinV Ubun
Fornat Ext4 NTFS Ext4 FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT
8 MB File
Write MB/se 126 75 10 16 18 18 21 16 2 3 4
Read MB/sec 122 92 31 33 29 26 26 34 14 15 16
16 MB File
Write MB/se 126 95 11 12 16 21 22 13 4 4 4
Read MB/sec 122 92 31 31 29 26 26 32 14 15 16
32 MB File
Write MB/se 121 92 10 12 20 20 18 12 3 4 4
Read MB/sec 122 97 31 31 29 26 26 32 14 15 16
8 MB Cached File
Write MB/se 942 1222 948 568 18 18 21 612 2 4 566
Read MB/sec 3331 2468 3449 3518 1359 936 1058 3561 1049 1137 3305
Bus Speed
Read MB/sec 125 261 28 31 29 25 25 32 14 15 16
Drive HD1 HD2 Pat Pat Pat Pat Pat Pat Sig Sig Sig
Size Bytes 11G 230G 6G 8G 8G 8G 336M 336M 1G 8G 8G
OS Ubun Win7 Ubun Ubun WinV Win7 Win7 Ubun Win7 WinV Ubun
Fornat Ext4 NTFS Ext4 FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT
Random Read msecs
File MB
2 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 6.8
4 0.4 0.1 0.9 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
8 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
16 2.8 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
32 5.2 3.1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
64 6.1 5.8 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
128 6.9 6.9 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.8 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.6 1.0
Random Write msecs
File MB
2 1.4 0.5 9 3 4 4 3 5 42 68 36
4 1.5 0.9 10 8 4 4 6 6 40 40 53
8 2.0 0.9 3 6 4 5 3 3 166 139 125
16 2.7 1.3 14 3 3 3 4 45 235 275 262
32 3.1 1.3 51 5 64 49 52 89 290 289 330
64 4.5 1.7 51 9 106 86 106 91 303 302 341
128 3.2 2.2 122 100 25 21 76 95 316 348 331
Write 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 1.0 2.5 9.2 9.1 32.7 36.9 40.6 8.8 72.1 283 22.8
4 0.6 0.7 7.1 6.6 29.7 36.5 38.2 9.7 52.9 259 14.2
8 0.3 0.7 9.7 6.8 29.9 39.8 40.0 8.5 35.5 310 2.6
16 0.5 0.8 10.6 7.6 31.1 37.4 38.3 8.1 36.5 291 5.4
32 0.7 1.1 9.1 7.0 30.3 37.3 39.4 7.3 42.3 325 9.4
64 1.2 1.2 7.6 4.3 32.9 40.0 40.2 5.3 52.9 338 17.1
Read 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 0.2 2.5 0.6 0.7 2.8 5.5 4.2 0.7 6.8 4.0 1.8
4 0.2 0.7 0.7 0.7 2.9 6.4 4.4 0.7 6.1 4.7 1.9
8 0.2 1.1 0.9 0.8 3.0 6.1 4.4 0.8 7.6 5.1 2.1
16 0.3 1.0 1.2 1.0 3.7 7.7 4.7 1.3 8.1 5.3 2.6
32 0.5 1.2 1.8 1.6 3.6 6.8 5.1 1.8 6.2 5.0 2.8
64 0.8 1.4 2.7 2.4 4.6 7.2 6.0 2.7 9.3 7.2 4.6
Delete 500 Files seconds
0.01 0.10 0.01 0.01 9.5 11.7 11.3 0.01 10.4 80.9 0.01
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To Start
Example LanSpeed Results Log
Following is an example log file of the 64-Bit version running on a 3 GHz AMD CPU.
###############################################################
Assembler CPUID and RDTSC
CPU AuthenticAMD, Features Code 178BFBFF, Model Code 00100F42
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor
Measured - Minimum 3014 MHz, Maximum 3014 MHz
Linux Functions
get_nprocs() - CPUs 4, Configured CPUs 4
get_phys_pages() and size - RAM Size 7.81 GB, Page Size 4096 Bytes
uname() - Linux, roy-64Bit, 2.6.35-24-generic
#42-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 2 02:41:37 UTC 2010, x86_64
###############################################################
Selected File Path:
/media/public/
Total MB 181552, Free MB 116182, Used MB 65370
Linux LAN/WiFi Speed Test 64-Bit Version 1.1, Thu Feb 24 17:53:08 2011
Copyright (C) Roy Longbottom 2011
8 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 51.00 52.49 54.27 51.11 51.00
Reading MB/sec 38.20 39.61 38.61 20.13 37.29
16 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 49.93 49.74 49.93 51.63 51.59
Reading MB/sec 38.13 38.24 37.86 37.73 36.67
32 MB File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 50.32 49.86 51.14 50.13 50.51
Reading MB/sec 38.05 37.65 37.13 35.66 34.52
---------------------------------------------------------------------
8 MB Cached File 1 2 3 4 5
Writing MB/sec 48.35 54.17 49.09 49.06 48.69
Reading MB/sec 36.70 37.12 38.94 36.80 36.50
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bus Speed Block KB 64 128 256 512 1024
Reading MB/sec 9067.93 9376.58 9015.02 4643.32 4603.90
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1 KB Reads File MB > 2 4 8 16 32 64 128
Random Read msecs 0.46 0.45 0.45 0.46 0.57 0.46 0.46
---------------------------------------------------------------------
500 Files Write Read Delete
File KB MB/sec ms/File MB/sec ms/File Seconds
2 0.95 2.15 1.27 1.61 0.212
4 1.88 2.18 4.00 1.02 0.193
8 3.47 2.36 8.70 0.94 0.209
16 6.68 2.45 16.98 0.96 0.204
32 11.70 2.80 25.13 1.30 0.221
64 18.97 3.46 31.11 2.11 0.286
End of test Thu Feb 24 17:54:18 2011
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To Start
LAN and WiFi Results
Below are are range of results for 100M and 1G bits per second wired LAN connections with others involving 54M bits per second wireless transmissions. Results include those using the lanspeed 64 bit and 32 bit Linux varieties with others via the Windows (drivespeed.exe) version.
Large Files - Wireless to wireless speeds via the router are disappointingly slow. With wireless to LAN connections, speed from the new cheap netbook is 25% faster than the 2008 expensive laptop. The results via 100M bits per second LAN are the most efficient and consistent. Data transfer speed using Linux over 1G bits per second LANs can be half of what might be expected, whereas the Windows benchmark can achieve expectations. These results might be influenced by the latter using direct I/O and the former allowing the file cache to be used. However, for the cached test, there is no difference in the mode of operation.
Bus Speed Test - As indicated earlier, this test repetitively reads the same block of data to measure bus speeds from a disk’s buffer. At least with these tests using Windows, LAN speed is measured, but Linux appears to be rereading data from a local buffer, reflecting RAM speed.
Random Reading Time - On reading 1 KB out of different file sizes, the time is constant for a particular environment, often being faster than reading from a disk drive. It appears to be safe to assume that the data is being read from the remote PCs memory. Then, reading time depends on network speed. The 64 bit Linux benchmark appears to be faster than the 32 bit version and, with Windows, Win7 might be faster than Vista.
Small Files - Reading and writing times of 500 different sized files, of up to 32 MB total space, are again buffered in remote RAM and can be mainly dependent on a constant overhead that decreases with increasing network speed. There are variations that might depend on differing packet sizes and, in this case, the Widows versions produce slower speeds than the Linux tests.
Version 32b 32b 32b 32b 32b 64b 32b 64b 64b 64b Win Win
CPU used Net Lap Lap Net Net C2D Net Net C2D Phen C2D Phen
Remote Lap Phen C2D Phen C2D Net C2D C2D Phen C2D Phen C2D
From Wifi Wifi Wifi Wifi Wifi L100 L100 L100 L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb
To Wifi LAN LAN LAN LAN L100 L100 L100 L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb
8 MB File
Write MB/s 1.6 2.7 2.7 3.4 3.4 9.7 10.2 10.2 53 54 76 102
Read MB/s 1.3 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 8.4 8.3 8.3 44 40 52 58
16 MB File
Write MB/s 2.7 2.7 3.4 3.4 9.7 10.2 10.2 64 52 76 107
Read MB/s 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 8.3 8.3 8.2 44 38 51 64
32 MB File
Write MB/s 3.4 3.3 9.7 10.2 10.2 56 51 89 111
Read MB/s 2.8 2.8 8.3 8.3 8.3 44 38 51 56
8 MB Cached File
Write MB/s 1.6 2.7 2.7 3.4 3.4 9.5 10.2 10.2 54 54 56 102
Read MB/s 1.3 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 8.4 8.3 8.2 44 39 65 94
Bus Speed
Read MB/s 1622 3599 3549 1594 1591 4928 1739 1501 6818 9377 53 57
Version 32b 32b 32b 32b 32b 64b 32b 64b 64b 64b Win Win
From Wifi Wifi Wifi Wifi Wifi L100 L100 L100 L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb
To Wifi LAN LAN LAN LAN L100 L100 L100 L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb L1Gb
Random msecs
File MB
2 8.4 4.3 4.1 4.2 4.1 1.0 1.5 1.0 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.7
4 8.4 4.2 4.0 4.0 3.9 0.9 1.5 0.9 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.6
8 8.5 4.5 4.3 4.2 4.1 0.9 1.4 0.9 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.6
16 10.6 4.2 4.1 4.0 3.9 0.9 1.4 0.9 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.5
32 8.4 4.4 4,2 4.1 4.1 0.9 1.5 0.9 0.4 0.6 0.3 0.6
64 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.0 0.9 1.4 0.9 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.5
128 4.0 4.0 0.9 1.5 0.9 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.6
Write 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 14.4 7.3 6.5 6.1 5.9 4.0 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.2 8.9 3.7
4 15.3 7.3 6.7 6.6 6.5 4.0 2.9 3.2 2.5 2.2 6.2 3.3
8 20.7 9.4 8.1 7.7 7.6 4.5 3.3 3.6 2.6 2.4 6.0 3.7
16 12.4 11.5 9.9 12.8 5.4 4.0 4.4 2.7 2.5 6.2 3.5
32 14.7 14.4 6.9 5.3 5.7 2.9 2.8 6.0 4.6
64 25.8 24.8 10.5 8.9 9.4 3.7 3.5 6.8 4.7
Read 500 Files - ms/file
File KB
2 8.6 5.7 5.9 4.9 4.6 2.8 2.0 2.2 1.0 1.6 3.2 2.6
4 10.4 5.6 5.4 5.3 5.3 3.0 2.1 2.5 0.8 1.0 3.2 2.7
8 13.0 7.0 7.3 6.4 6.3 3.3 2.6 2.8 0.8 0.9 3.2 2.7
16 9.7 9.4 8.9 8.9 4.0 3.4 3.7 0.8 1.0 3.3 2.7
32 15.1 14.9 5.9 5.4 5.6 0.9 1.3 3.5 3.6
64 28.1 27.3 9.8 9.3 9.5 1.2 2.1 4.5 4.0
Systems Used Network
Net - Netbook, 1.6 GHz Atom WiFi - Wireless
Lap - Laptop, 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo L100 - 100 Mbps LAN
C2D - Desktop, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, Vista L1Gb - 1 Gbps LAN
Phen - Desktop, 3.0 GHz QuaD Phenomm Win7
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To Start
Roy Longbottom March 2012
The Main Internet Home for my PC Benchmarks is via the link
Roy Longbottom's PC Benchmark Collection
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