Benchmark flash memory on Linux
After gathering all flash based memory devices (USB flash memory sticks and SHDC cards) I could get my hands on I wanted to see how they compare to each other.
Quick google search revealed that dd tool could be used for benchmarking so that is what I used. Have you done benchmarks some other way? Please share your method.
Be really, really careful if you choose do to write test, because that will ERASE your existing data so test write speed only on EMPTY flash memory devices. Also triple check which device is your flash memory device. Simple typo could render your data partition unusable!
I didn't want to write on the first 1GB of flash memory because that part is probably most often used, I know there are some wear-leveling chips that should take care of that but you can use skip parameter if you wish to be safe. To prevent measuring your cache performance but actual device performance use iflag and oflag options.
read speed benchmark:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX1 of=/dev/zero bs=1M count=400 iflag=direct
write speed benchmark:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX1 bs=1M count=400 skip=1000 oflag=direct
Results:
| USB memory stick | Read speed | Write speed |
|---|---|---|
| 8GB MX-ES SLC USB 3.0 | 149 MB/s | 61.9 MB/s |
| 64GB Corsair Voyager Vega USB 3.0 | 102 MB/s | 35 MB/s |
| 16GB PQI Mini U603V USB 3.0 | 103 MB/s | 12.5 MB/s |
| 8GB Kingston DT 2.0 | 19.0 MB/s | 16.0 MB/s |
| 8GB Kingston DT SE9 | 20.1 MB/s | 14.9 MB/s |
| 2GB Transceng VF V90 | 19.2 MB/s | 11.6 MB/s |
| 4GB Red USB | 19.8 MB/s | 9.0 MB/s |
| 64GB Kingston DT SE9 | 19.5 MB/s | 8.3 MB/s |
| 4GB Kingston DT 108 | 15.2 MB/s | 7.2 MB/s |
| 8GB Silicon Power SP 810 | 24.8 MB/s | 5 MB/s |
| SDHC Card | Read speed | Write speed |
|---|---|---|
| SanDisk Ultra 32GB mini class U3 | 70 MB/s | 48 MB/s |
| Swissbit 2GB mini class unknown | 22 MB/s | 18 MB/s |
| Samsung 32GB class 6 | 23.5 MB/s | 16 MB/s |
| SanDisk Ultra 8GB mini class 10 U1 | 46 MB/s | 13.7 MB/s |
| Adata 8GB class 10 2014 | 19.7 MB/s | 13.2 MB/s |
| Swissbit 8GB class 6 | 23.5 MB/s | 12.3 MB/s |
| Sony 8GB class 10 2014 | 19.7 MB/s | 12.3 MB/s |
| SanDisk Ultra 16GB mini class 10 | 46 MB/s | 11 MB/s |
| Adata 8GB class 10 | 20.8 MB/s | 10.6 MB/s |
| Sony 8GB SR-8UY class 10 | 57 MB/s | 9.5 MB/s |
| LG 2GB class unknown | 20.9 MB/s | 8.1 MB/s |
| Samsung 8GB Class 6 | 23.5 MB/s | 7.7 MB/s |
| Transcend 2GB class unknown | 23.5 MB/s | 7.5 MB/s |
| Apacer 4GB class 4 | 15.4 MB/s | 3.6 MB/s |
| SSD disks | Read speed | Write speed |
|---|---|---|
| Transcend TS256GMTS400 M.2 256GB (Lenovo T440s) | 410 MB/s | 275 MB/s |
| Samsung MZTE256HMHP-000L7 (Lenovo T440s) | 480 MB/s | 245 MB/s |