CrystalDiskMark vs fio

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.

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.