Bonnie++ vs CrystalDiskMark

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.

CrystalDiskMark is Windows software for benchmarking disk and storage performance. It measures sequential and random read, write and mixed workloads, with Peak, Real World and Demo measurement modes. Users can create custom test profiles, and results can be exported as UTF-16LE text with a BOM, PNG, JPEG or BMP. The download page lists Standard, Aoi and Shizuku editions; Standard is available as an installer, ZIP or source code. Listed system support spans Windows XP through Windows 11 and Windows Server 2003 through 2025, across x86, x64 and ARM64. However, the installer and x64 version do not support XP or Server 2003. The maker warns that benchmarking may shorten SSD or USB memory life and that results cannot be compared across different major versions. Results may also vary with test file size and position, fragmentation, storage controller, CPU speed and, for some SSDs, test data pattern. The free desktop edition costs nothing. A separate Microsoft Store edition costs 9.99 USD once.