Hey forum members, I'm in the process of doing the biggest USB drive survey Pioneer has ever seen, and I need your help to know what you use and what kind of speeds you're reporting.
How do you do it? Easy - and you don't even need to reformat your drives or anything, all you need is 1GB of free space, then follow these instructions:
Windows
Grab yourself a free download of CrystalDiskMark (I've linked the portable one without advertising), and unzip it to a folder. You'll see two versions, a 32bit and 64bit version - run the one that matches the bit-depth of your version of Windows, but before you do, connect the USB drive you're going to test. I also recommend shutting down any other unnecessary background applications before starting.
When the application opens, you should set your test parameters to match - 5 passes at 1GiB (which I believe are the defaults), and select your USB drive from the drop-down at the right:
Next, click the All button (top left) and the test will begin. It may take a few minutes depending on the speed of your drive. Once it has completed, you should save a report by going to File > Save (save it somewhere easy to find, like your desktop).
The other thing we'll find useful is a system info report. Follow the instructions here to generate a report - be sure not to skip the Run as Administrator step as without that, you won't be able to save the report! Once that report is generated, please delete everything ABOVE System Manufacturer and everything BELOW Virtual Memory: In Use (we don't need that info). Copy and paste the rest into a reply here. If by chance your computer DOES NOT have a USB3.0 port, please indicate in your report that you are using USB2.0 ports for testing!
Below the system report, copy and paste the contents of your drive test results, but remove the top chunk (the first 7 lines) from that as well. Above each drive report, please post the make and model of the drive, its capacity, as well as the USB version of the drive (and put it in bold). Also, if, for some reason, your drive is formatted to something other than FAT32, please indicate so. It should end up looking like this:
System Manufacturer: innotek GmbH
System Model: VirtualBox
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor(s): 1 Processor(s) Installed.
[01]: Intel64 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9 GenuineIntel ~2295 Mhz
BIOS Version: innotek GmbH VirtualBox, 2006-12-01
Windows Directory: C:\Windows
System Directory: C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
System Locale: en-ca;English (Canada)
Input Locale: en-us;English (United States)
Time Zone: (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Total Physical Memory: 4,098 MB
Available Physical Memory: 3,321 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size: 4,802 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 4,050 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use: 752 MB
Corsair Flash Voyager GTX - 128GB - USB 3.0
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 154.936 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 98.967 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 8.839 MB/s [ 2158.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 8.649 MB/s [ 2111.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 265.917 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 143.234 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 7.906 MB/s [ 1930.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 7.621 MB/s [ 1860.6 IOPS]
Test : 1024 MiB [E: 0.0% (0.0/119.2 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/28 22:41:40
OS : Windows 8.1 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
Mac
Go and download a free copy of Xbench. Once installed, connect the USB drive you want to test then launch the application. You'll see the main screen, where you should uncheck all but the Disk Test box, and select your USB drive from the Volume drop-down:
After the test is complete, go to File > Save As... and save a copy of the results, be sure to save it as a Plain Text type instead of the xbench default.
With the Xbench reports, it includes some key info for your system, so we don't really need a system report, but if your computer DOES NOT have a USB3.0 port, please indicate in your report that you are using USB2.0 ports for testing!
Copy and paste the contents of your drive test results. Above each drive report, please post the make and model of the drive, its capacity, as well as the USB version of the drive (and put it in bold). Also, if, for some reason, your drive is formatted to something other than FAT32, please indicate so. It should end up looking like this:
Corsair Flash Voyager GTX - 128GB - USB 3.0
Results 238.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.10.5 (14F1509)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacBookPro9,1
Drive Type Corsair Voyager GTX
Disk Test 238.73
Sequential 142.24
Uncached Write 241.46 148.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 229.85 130.05 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 57.78 16.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 430.84 216.54 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 742.13
Uncached Write 873.10 92.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 341.79 109.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2261.59 16.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1140.85 211.69 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Prizes!
Did I mention there are prizes? Yep! I've got a coveted rekordbox hoodie, several rekordbox T-shirts, and even one of those fantastic* rekordbox USB drives with the glowing crystal tops! (*Disclaimer: The performance of the drive leaves much to be desired, but it looks fantastic!)
Every drive report will earn you one entry into the prize draw, there is no limit to the number of entries you may earn, but each drive must be unique; please do not test the same drive on multiple systems or file fake drive tests as that won't help us get a broad sense of what you guys are using. It doesn't matter if another user has already tested the same make/model as you.
We'll close this report gathering February 29th (leap day!) and winners will be announced Friday March 4th.
Any registered member of the forum is eligible to participate and win a prize, no matter where on the globe you reside. There may be a skill-testing question required based on contest legalities of your country.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please post and I'll help you out.
Happy testing!
