GRC Readspeed utility now available, part of the tech for the next version of SpinRite

[FlyingPenguin]

This is a highly accurate hard drive benchmark. It does some interesting things that other drive benchmarks don't do. For one thing, it tests the speeds in five different locations on the drive, at the beginning, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100% locations.

Why? For spinning drives, access times will generally be faster at the outside edge. This is not an issue with SSDs but Steve has noticed a problem with SSDs where the first part of the drive's memory, because it gets used more often, will start wearing out, and it'll be slower than the rest of the drive.

ReadSpeed is actually a side effect of Steve's work on SpinRite 6.1. ReadSpeed uses the new faster drive access technology that will go into SpinRite 6.1. He is releasing it so people can test it on a variety of hardware to make sure it's compatible.

https://www.grc.com/readspeed.htm

[FlyingPenguin]

Here's the results on my workstation PC. And yeah, you can see some slow down at the beginning of all the SSDs.

[psypher]

The SSD I use for backups, was a bit slower at the beginning, rest was fine. No NVME driver, so couldn't test anything else.