CrystalDiskMark vs dperf

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.

dperf is a Linux command-line utility for benchmarking drives to identify storage bottlenecks and performance outliers. It runs tests on multiple drives simultaneously and ranks them by throughput. Measurements use O_DIRECT to bypass the operating system page cache. Users can configure block size, file size, and concurrent I/O operations per drive. Results report read and write throughput, with verbose mode adding per-drive statistics alongside aggregate totals. The tool supports sequential tests, but not random I/O tests, IOPS measurement, or latency measurement. Its README describes deployment as Kubernetes Jobs, CronJobs, or DaemonSets for storage validation, as well as automated checks in CI/CD pipelines. Temporary space requirements are based on file size multiplied by I/O operations per drive for each drive. dperf requires Linux, a kernel and filesystem supporting direct I/O, and write access to target directories. Prebuilt binaries are listed for amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x. It is free under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.