CrystalDiskMark vs Illumine IT disk-benchmark

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.

Illumine IT disk-benchmark is a lightweight console program for benchmarking hard drives, SSDs, SAN disks, HBAs, RAID adapters and storage controllers. It can test physical or virtual disks that are local or remote, using multiple threads to simulate concurrent reads and writes. Test options include random file sizes, random delays, write-only runs and configurable read and write buffer sizes. Results show read and write timings per thread and as averages, summary results, and CPU and wall time. Output can be reduced to values for spreadsheet use, and the program can print system I/O information to help set buffer sizes. Continuous runs can monitor cloud-drive QoS, disk replication and active/passive RAID swaps. The tool is free and described as an open-source C command-line program. Listed platforms are Linux and Windows; its broader supported-platform list also names POSIX and MS-DOS. Linux build instructions require GCC and list POSIX Threads as the only dependency. The README warns that continuous runs with many threads, large files and no delay can fill the tested disk and cause high CPU load.