An Explanation of Read and Write Speeds

Read write speeds determines the performance of storage drives. Either it’s external hard drive, thumb drive, SSD drive, storage area network speed matters.

Read and Write Speeds

Reading means the time to access certain data from the drive and writing means the time it takes to save something on the drive.

How to Test Read/Write Speeds

You can test read/write speeds with a free software CrystalDiskMark which is compatible with Windows and allows you to test your external hard drive speeds. You can choose between 500 MB and 32 GB, either choose random data or just zeroes, the drive to test as well as how many passes you want to check to get more realistic results.

Similarly, there are a lot of other tools like ATTO Disk Benchmark and HD Tune which you can use to test your drive read and write speed.

Typically, the read and write speeds are represented with “ps” letters when the measurement ends. For instance, a drive that has 32 MBps writing speed can store about 32 MB of data in each second. At this point, you should be aware of the MB to KB conversions.

Compared to HDD the SSDs are faster and can read and write data at a much faster speed than hard drives. Let’s see some scores of HDDs and SSDs.

Samsung 850 Pro

Available Capacities: 128 GB to 1 TB
Interface: SATA III 6 Gbps
550 MB per second read (256 GB)
520 MB per second write (256 GB)
SanDisk Extreme Pro

Available Capacities: 240 GB to 960 GB
Interface: SATA 3 to 6 Gbps
550 MB per second read
520 MB per second write
Mushkin Striker

Available Capacities: 240 GB to 960 GB
565 MB per second read
550 MB per second write
Corsair Neutron XT

Available Capacities: 240 GB to 960 GB
560 MB per second read
540 MB per second write

Hard drives were introduced after floppy disks by IBM in 1956. Hard drives uses magnetic disks to store data on a rotating platter and that data is accessed by a floating head. The faster it spins the faster HDD gives the performance. HDDs are much slower than SSDs. SSDs can go about 128 MB/sec whereas the HDDs cannot go at this speed but compared to price HDDs are much more inexpensive.