AJA System Test vs fio
AJA System Test
aja.comfio
fio.readthedocs.ioSide by side
| Figure | AJA System Test | fio |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Disk Benchmark Software | 8.6 (#1) | 8.1 (#6) |
| Founded | 1993 | 2006 |
| Intended users | AJA describes the tool as useful for production and postproduction workflows that need drive bandwidth sufficient for their demands. | The author describes fio as a tool for simulating specific I/O workloads without repeatedly writing tailored test programs. |
| Platforms | The product page links to Mac and Windows downloads and identifies them as standalone System Test Lite v16.0 versions. | The documentation lists Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSX, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Windows, FreeBSD, and DragonFly as supported platforms, while noting that some features vary by platform. |
| Purpose | AJA System Test evaluates drive performance so users can estimate whether a drive system can record and play back different resolutions and codecs. | fio simulates user-defined I/O workloads to test performance or reproduce bugs. |
| Reporting | The report generator creates text results that can be copied into spreadsheets or other software for analysis and archiving. | fio can output normal, terse, JSON, and JSON+ reports. |
| Support | AJA says technical support is available free of charge to answer questions or help resolve issues. | The project mailing list is intended for discussion, bug reports, questions, and development; the documentation also directs bug reports to the mailing list reflector or GitHub page. |
Plans
In their own words
AJA System Test
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.
fio
fio is a free command-line tool for simulating user-defined I/O workloads for performance testing and reproducing bugs. Users can describe a workload in a job file or set parameters on the command line, including I/O patterns, block and I/O sizes, engines, queue depth, target files or devices, and threads or processes. Results can be reported in normal, terse, JSON or JSON+ formats. fio can run as a backend server and receive jobs from clients on other hosts; its HTTP engine supports HTTP and S3 access. It supports random and sequential tests, IOPS and latency measurement, and platforms including Linux, macOS, Windows and several BSD variants. On Windows, the documented minimums are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and Cygwin is required for building. The --readonly option is intended to prevent writes and trims; fio also aborts destructive jobs on devices that appear mounted unless allow_mounted_write is set. Root access is only needed when the selected files or devices require it. fio is free software under version 2 of the GNU GPL.