CrystalDiskMark — The Complete Guide: Benchmark SSDs, USB Sticks and Network Drives
CrystalDiskMark, from the same developer as CrystalDiskInfo, runs a set of fixed read and write tests on a drive you choose and shows the results in MB/s. It is open source (MIT) and free for any use. Here too, download the Standard Edition rather than the installer variants marked Ads.
CrystalDiskMark
Crystal Dew World (hiyohiyo)
Measures sequential and random read and write speeds of disks, SSDs, USB drives and network drives.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Sequential read and write — speed when copying large files such as a model or a video.
- Random access — small-block performance, which decides how fast a project with thousands of files opens.
- Drive choice — internal SSD, external disk, USB stick or mapped network drive.
- Quick comparison — check whether a new SSD delivers what was promised.
- Copy to a report — results copy out as text.
How to read the results
This is a synthetic measurement: it shows the drive’s limits, not necessarily what you will feel in a given program. Run it with no copies going on in the background, and repeat a few times. The test writes a temporary file and does not delete data, but it does not check health — that is what CrystalDiskInfo is for.
Related tools
To check drive health — CrystalDiskInfo. If the drive is fast but full — WizTree shows what takes the space. For S.M.A.R.T. checks on any operating system — GSmartControl.
CrystalDiskInfo
Crystal Dew World (hiyohiyo)
Checks the health of HDD, SSD and NVMe drives from S.M.A.R.T. data, with temperature, alerts and background monitoring.
Get it from the vendor
WizTree
Antibody Software
An extremely fast disk-space analyser — finds huge model, mesh and result files in seconds.
Get it from the vendor
GSmartControl
Alexander Shaduri
A graphical front end to smartctl for checking disk health, running S.M.A.R.T. self-tests and spotting early signs of failure.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
One number that ends the argument about whether the drive is really slow. Light, well known and easy to paste into a report.