AJA System Test vs Bonnie++

AJA System Test evaluates drive performance so users can estimate whether a drive system can record and play back different resolutions and codecs. It measures read and write speed and overall throughput, including on network mapped drives. In its graphical interface, users select a test type, drive, video size, frame rate, file size, and connected video device. Results can appear in MB/sec or FPS with graphs. The report generator produces text results that users can copy into spreadsheets or other software, and result exports include text report, PDF, and SPX formats. Custom test profiles are supported. Workload areas also include PCIe bandwidth, AJA-device DMA, and combined disk and device I/O; PCIe bandwidth testing is part of the full version included in AJA Desktop Software downloads. The standalone Apple Store and Windows versions are listed as AJA System Test Lite v16.0 at free. The software runs on macOS and Windows, and AJA offers a download path that does not require signing up.

Bonnie++ is a free, command-line benchmark suite for measuring filesystem and disk I/O performance on Linux. It exercises sequential input and output, rewrites, random seeks, and file operations including creation, stat, and deletion of many small files. The project describes these workloads as useful for investigating I/O bottlenecks in I/O-intensive applications, including database work, and for simulating file activity associated with Squid or INN. Bonnie++ can test more than 2 GB of storage on a 32-bit machine. Its -D option enables direct I/O for bulk tests, while -b calls fsync after each write and syncs the directory after file creation or deletion. Semaphore support can synchronize multiple instances. Results can be emitted as plain text or CSV, with companion tools to convert CSV into HTML or formatted plain text. The project is licensed under GPL version 2.0, and the repository includes source code and Debian, RPM, and Sun-related packaging files. Its documentation warns against running the benchmark on live production machines because it can affect services and consume disk space or inodes.