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Use the power of analytics to diagnose the working condition of your personal computer

Use the power of analytics to diagnose the working condition of your personal computer

Vote: (8 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Crystalmark

Version: 8.0.4

Works under: Windows

Vote:

Program license

(8 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

Crystalmark

8.0.4

Works under:

Windows

Pros

  • Offers a choice of 44 languages
  • Free & open-source
  • Runs quickly
  • Supports a wide variety of hardware types

Cons

  • Can cause damage in inexperienced hands
  • Output may be difficult for first-time users to understand

CrystalDiskMark is an open-source benchmarking solution that works with a wide variety of storage devices.

If you've ever wanted to see exactly how well a drive works, then you'll find CrystalDiskMark's benchmark figures extremely useful. Since it offers a simple graphical interface, you won't have to worry about configuring any command line options. Simply start the program by double-clicking on its icon and you're ready to perform tests.

While CrystalDiskMark is compatible with nearly any drive, it's especially useful for testing how well solid-state storage devices work. You can use it to test external USB dongles as well as SD cards and traditional SSD hardware.

The app reads and writes data through a file system in a way that's dependent on the underlying volume. It generates a number of read/write cycles in both sequential and random positions across the disk with a variety of queue and thread values. Since solid-state modules tend to perform well in terms of random IO, this is an excellent way to test this kind of gear.

When the test has run its course, you'll see a nice readout that gives you a series of histograms depicting the speed your drive executed the app's various subroutines. Since it reports all of this information in terms of megabytes per second, it's very easy for experienced power users to interpret the results without consulting any documentation. Those who might not have as much experience with computer storage devices may want to look online for some projected results before judging any particular outcome.

On the plus side, the app now supports NVMe connections on top of PATA and SATA hardware. That makes it useful for testing even the newest drives. While it can test any ATAPI disk as well, the app will normally return very low numbers for this kind of equipment due to how an EIDE bus can drastically reduce a drive's throughput.

Intel RAID support is built right into the app's menu-driven interface, as is a module to make AAM/APM adjustments. This makes it easy for beginners to perform sophisticated tests even if they haven't had all that much training.

Unfortunately, that also means users can theoretically do a fair amount of damage with CrystalDiskMark if they don't know what they're doing. Nevertheless, that shouldn't be a problem most people that need this kind of software would ever run into. It's clearly aimed at technicians and hobbyists who know their way around a drive controller.

The simple UI and bare-bones design should be a joy to work with for those with a little more experience. In fact, it should help to make CrystalDiskMark a popular choice for gamers and media aficionados who want to know more about their storage media.

Pros

  • Offers a choice of 44 languages
  • Free & open-source
  • Runs quickly
  • Supports a wide variety of hardware types

Cons

  • Can cause damage in inexperienced hands
  • Output may be difficult for first-time users to understand