Interface Overkill: Benchmark Alternatives

This blog post references my cover story 'Interface Overkill? Is eSATA Necessary For Your Next System Design?' in EDN's May 10, 2007 edition. It's one of a series of web addendums to the print writeup.

As mentioned in my writeup, before beginning my own work I surveyed a large number of print- and web-published analyses done by others in order to assess what testing methods they used. Below is a list of storage synthetic benchmarking utilities (in alphabetical order) that my survey uncovered, other than the SiSoftware Sandra suite I ended up using. Real-life benchmarks (video editing, server database and other storage-centric programs) also found common use as test benches.

• AIDA32
• ATTO Disk Benchmark
• Blackmagic Designs' Disk Speed Test
• c't Magazine's h2benchw
• EFD Software's HD Tune
• Futuremark's PCMark05
• Intel's IPEAK Storage Performance Toolkit
• Iometer
• Iozone
• Microsoft's Timethis
• No Design Software's Disk Bench
• PC World's WorldBench
• Simpli Software's HD Tach
• The Storage Performance Council's SPC-1 and SPC-2
• WinBench 99
• X-bit labs' FC-Test

If you encounter any other benchmarking programs that you find useful, please let me and your fellow readers know via the comments.