Mac software for speed testing hard drives

Bebop

Bebop

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Can anybody recommend a particular software that will enable me to compare my hard drives for read and write speeds please? To run on my MacBook Pro.

I have had an offer of a copy of Digital Media Doctor which I believe will do the job - comes free if I renew my licence to Sandisk Rescue Pro for $30. This is a years licence. I just wondered if there were other options that people would recommend. A search on the App store and google hasn't been particularly forthcoming.
 
SteveA said:
AJA System Test is the other well-known option.
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Thank you. I think Black Magic has served my purpose, but I will have a look just in case there is something else useful to learn. I wish I'd done this years ago.

Edit: I've just downloaded the lite version... might be getting a bit geeky about this now ha ha! At the moment my computer is busy copying files so I'll have a proper look at it later. Thanks again.
 
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The read write speeds depend on all elements including cables or network connection if that is involved. With my Mac I found I need SSD over USB C or NAS over 10Gb network for working drives.
 
TimHughes said:
The read write speeds depend on all elements including cables or network connection if that is involved. With my Mac I found I need SSD over USB C or NAS over 10Gb network for working drives.
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No network for me. I did try a couple of leads where I could, and also connections. An SSD with Thunderbolt (old version) turned out to be slower than my 7200rpm USB 3 drive which really surprised me. I connected the SSD with a USB cable and it was even slower - as expected. I don't have another Thunderbolt lead to test it with to see if that is the weak link. I've demoted the SSD to backup.... after trying First Aid on it and reformatting it - made no difference.

I suspect the amount of data they already hold will affect the speeds too - not sure if it effectively fills gaps where stuff has been deleted or not. - have just checked this after copying across 2TB of data today (onto a new drive) - yes it definitely slows it down.

Tried AJA lite today - I like that it has the progress bar and stops after each test.
 
What read / write speeds are you getting? I’m about 900 MB/s
 
TimHughes said:
What read / write speeds are you getting? I’m about 900 MB/s
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An awful lot less than that. I have a 1TB SSD in my MacBook Pro - which is why I try to keep recent photos on there until I've done lots of culling.

External drives.... The very best I got was 425MB/s read on the SSD with thunderbolt but the write was 101MB/s or less. Everything else is less than 130MB/s on both read and write. The 7200rpm USB disks were writing at 125MB/s - 129MB/s.

I divide my drives into Working Copies (which I'd like to be quick at writing as well as reading) and Backups (which I don't mind being slow)

What drives are you using and how is yours set up? (If you don't mind sharing). I may be limited by my connections at the moment and also my Mac is old.

Any tips welcome!
 
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The working SSD drives are Samsung T7 rated at 1000 MBps connected over USB C to a 2018 Mac Mini. I just tested again and write is a little slower 700-800 today, read still 900.
 
Something of an aside but for years I tested drive speeds on Unix systems using little more than "mkdir", "cp", "dd" and "time" in a batch file. As OS-X is pretty much pure Unix under the bonnet you can always build up your own tests using your own images, which will give a good idea of how each drive performs under the sort of loads you create.
 
TimHughes said:
The working SSD drives are Samsung T7 rated at 1000 MBps connected over USB C to a 2018 Mac Mini. I just tested again and write is a little slower 700-800 today, read still 900.
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That is impressive. I just retested the SSD and one time I managed to get 160 write speed, but just the once. I have a new external Sandisk SSD ordered which hopefully will get me better results. USB/Thunderbolt(old) is limiting me, I suspect.

AndrewFlannigan said:
Something of an aside but for years I tested drive speeds on Unix systems using little more than "mkdir", "cp", "dd" and "time" in a batch file. As OS-X is pretty much pure Unix under the bonnet you can always build up your own tests using your own images, which will give a good idea of how each drive performs under the sort of loads you create.
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Good idea. I think for now though, I have the info I need to go forward and organise the drives I already own.
 
@TimHughes can I ask how you format your drives? Presumably APFS?

I have been using journaled extended or whatever it is called, but I've just realised I'd accidentally left one as ExFat :banghead::banghead::banghead: I had two new drives and have a feeling I formatted the same one twice - doh! It's the one I've copied 2TB of data to as well - the other is empty!

I've never used APFS, but that might eke out a bit more speed perhaps. Hopefully my Mac could use that - I am on OS 10.15
 
Bebop said:
@TimHughes can I ask how you format your drives? Presumably APFS?

I have been using journaled extended or whatever it is called, but I've just realised I'd accidentally left one as ExFat :banghead::banghead::banghead: I had two new drives and have a feeling I formatted the same one twice - doh! It's the one I've copied 2TB of data to as well - the other is empty!

I've never used APFS, but that might eke out a bit more speed perhaps. Hopefully my Mac could use that - I am on OS 10.15
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I'm using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on SSD (and XFS on an unraid NAS.)
 
TimHughes said:
I'm using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on SSD (and XFS on an unraid NAS.)
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Many thanks Tim. I thought I might be the only one still using Journaled.

I've just reformatted one that didn't have much on it, and it does seem to be a tad quicker with APFS than Journaled, by about 10MB/s. It is an empty drive at this point. I will re-format the ExFat one once everything is backed up to another copy. I believe ExFAT ones get more fragmented, so it will be worth changing it.
 
TimHughes said:
The working SSD drives are Samsung T7 rated at 1000 MBps connected over USB C to a 2018 Mac Mini. I just tested again and write is a little slower 700-800 today, read still 900.
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That's curious... I'm using a 1TB T7 Touch on a 2021 M1 Mac Mini with the supplied USB C cable and I've never seen it go above 790 write and 680 read. The M1 Minis have USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports which I think allow faster speeds than I'm getting (10Gb/s, I think?) . 680 is good enough for me but I'm wondering why it's not higher!
 
Carl Hall said:
That's curious... I'm using a 1TB T7 Touch on a 2021 M1 Mac Mini with the supplied USB C cable and I've never seen it go above 790 write and 680 read. The M1 Minis have USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports which I think allow faster speeds than I'm getting (10Gb/s, I think?) . 680 is good enough for me but I'm wondering why it's not higher!
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One of my friends came across this issue with the T7 on his new M1 iMac. He said he found out the way apple have implemented the USB specs on the M1 macs means you only get 2/3rds of the overall speed capability. If you’re getting 680 MBps thats pretty much 2/3rds of the 1000 MBps the T7 is capable of on the M1 macs.
 
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