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Daily Mac App: Disk Speed Test

Disk Speed Test

You've got a shiny new SSD-equipped machine, but you're wondering just how fast that SSD really is. Disk Speed Test from Blackmagic will give you a quick, straightforward answer.

It's incredibly easy to use. Disk Speed Test writes large chunks of data to your chosen disk and then reads that data, giving you a real-world read/write speed in MB/s. The program then tells you what kind of uncompressed video that drive will be able to handle and allows you to save the results as a screenshot.

As you can see from the image above, my magnetic hard drive-equipped MacBook Pro isn't going to win any speed awards. It also couldn't handle anything above uncompressed SD video according to the app -- but then again that's not the sort of thing I would even dream of trying. If you're looking to capture uncompressed video direct to a disk, Disk Speed Test will give you an indication of whether it's going to be up to the job.

So, if you're curious about your hard disk speed, regardless of whether it's just a simple magnetic hard drive, an internal SSD, a network mounted disk array, or even a beast of a Thunderbolt SSD drive -- Disk Speed Test will quickly and easily answer that for you with just one click.

Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test is available for free from the Mac App Store.



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Software Mac

You've got a shiny new SSD-equipped machine, but you're wondering just how fast that SSD really is. Disk Speed Test from Blackmagic will...
 

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Adam Tomczynski

The item you've requested is not currently available in the US store.

October 24 2011 at 4:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kargod

Edit: "It's incredibly [easy] to use"

October 24 2011 at 3:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter Wargo

We do a good deal of video work where I am, and this tool (and previous versions) are heavily used to test local and iSCSI as well as network drives.

So far, the best performance we've gotten is on a four-drive rotating media stripe on a 2010 Mac Pro: 566 MB/s write, 492 MB/s read. If I had the budget and didn't need the space, I'd try SSDs. Still, it's nice to know that a bit of work can give you decent speed at a low price. Of course, a four-drive stripe is just a magnet for Mr. Murphy, but that's all scratch space anyway...

October 24 2011 at 3:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Peter Wargo's comment
ns5x

Thats dancing dangerously close to the devil...

October 25 2011 at 10:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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