Storage Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 192 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for storage. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

Last week I posted some initial Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 SSD Linux benchmarks. Since those results, which were rather disappointing when factoring in the cost of this solid-state storage, I've run some more tests. While the performance has improved with a newer Skylake Linux system, the results are still not as great as advertised and I'm just returning the darn drive.

While recently I've posted a number of Linux solid-state drive benchmarks from low-end SATA 3.0 SSDs being used in Linux test systems not frequently being stressed by disk/file-system workloads, here are some benchmark results using a higher-end M.2 SSD. Benchmark results today are from the Kingston HyperX Predator 240GB M.2 Gen2 x4.

One of the latest solid-state drives at Phoronix that's been up for testing is the Crucial BX100, a mid-range SSD with the 120GB version retailing for around $60 USD.

My benchmarking entertainment this weekend, besides getting to benchmark with a sledgehammer, was testing out Btrfs RAID 0/1/5/6/10 arrays across a set of four USB 3.0 flash drives.

The PNY CS1211 120GB solid-state drive retails for under $60 USD and is one of this memory company's value SSD lines.

It's been a while since last benchmarking any Linux file-systems on a USB 3.0 flash drive to see how the performance compares, given that F2FS and friends are being optimized for flash storage. However, off the Linux 4.2 kernel for kicks I've run some benchmarks on a 16GB USB flash drive the EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and F2FS file-systems.

In routinely needing more storage devices for our dozens of automated Linux benchmarking systems powering LinuxBenchmarking.com and the rest at Phoronix Media, when recently seeing a deal on a Transcend TS256GSSD370S 256GB SATA3 SSD for $70 USD I decided to try it out.

Earlier this month I posted a few benchmarks of one of the cheapest, sub-$40 SSDs under Ubuntu Linux. In needing another solid-state drive for one of the systems in the test lab that's focused on tracking other areas of the Linux kernel's performance on a daily basis, I went searching for another low-cost solution. This latest SSD purchase was the Silicon Power 120GB S60, which retails for about $50 USD.

If you are in the market for a new solid-state drive but aren't too concerned about speed or storage capacity but just need something very affordable to get the job done, the ADATA SP600 is available in a 64GB model for less than $40 USD.

With the recently released ZFS On Linux 0.6.4.2 there is added support for the Linux 4.1 kernel. After carrying out the recent 6-way file-system comparison on Linux 4.1 I decided to run some fresh tests of this popular, out-of-tree file-system.

A few days ago I set out to try out BCache on the Linux 4.1 kernel now that this caching feature has matured in the mainline Linux kernel for a while. BCache serves as a cache to the Linux kernel's block layer whereby a solid-state drive (or other faster drive) can serve as a cache to a larger-capacity, traditional rotating hard drive.

Earlier this month I posted some Btrfs RAID 0/1 benchmarks on Linux 4.1 as a prelude to some larger Btrfs RAID benchmarks. Today the rest of those results are available with using five disks and testing Btrfs on this newest version of the Linux kernel while testing the RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 levels.

With the Linux 4.1 kernel coming together nicely I've begun my testing (separate from all the fully-automated Git testing done each day via the LinuxBenchmarking.com systems) of this new kernel under a variety of different workloads, stressing different systems, and focusing on the changes in the major subsystems. One of the systems this week has been running some fresh Btrfs RAID Linux file-system benchmarks. From an eight-disk server I've started this Btrfs RAID testing as some fresh numbers since my Btrfs RAID tests from a few months back on an older server.

The latest solid-state drive being added to one of our Linux test farm systems is the Samsung 850 EVO. Prior to commissioning this drive in one of the systems, I ran some benchmarks against a few other solid-state drives while testing with the EXT4 file-system on Ubuntu Linux.

For those looking for a very economically priced SSD that's still reliable and from a well known vendor, the OCZ ARC 100 series might be the most tempting drive line-up yet. With the OCZ ARC 100 series, a 256GB SSD costs only $90 USD or a 480GB SSD for $197. Though in this article the OCZ ARC 100 120GB SSD is being tested and it retails for less than $70 USD.

It's been ten years since last testing any Transcend products, back in the days of DDR2 memory and 1GB flash drives. However, that changed when recently picking up a Transcend SSD370 256GB solid-state drive.

If you've been wondering about the impact of enabling full-disk encryption when doing a fresh install of Fedora 21, here's some reference benchmarks comparing the Anaconda option of this latest Fedora Linux release.

For those wondering what Linux file-system is most performant on a USB 3.0 flash drive, here are some benchmarks using Fedora 21.

The latest solid-state drive being tested at Phoronix is the 120GB OCZ Vector 150. This solid-state drive is quite affordable but has been reviewed favorably by Windows users, so we figured we'd see how well it works when adding it to one of the constantly-running Linux benchmark systems.

In my recent articles doing RAID 0/1/5/6/10 benchmarking on Btrfs/EXT4/XFS/F2FS, I've been using four 120GB Intel 530 Series SSDs. I went with these four solid-state drives for getting a deal on them and having been pleased with numerous Intel SSDs I've used in the past and still running in a few Linux test systems, but how does the Intel 530 Series SSD on Linux compare to other modern solid-state drives? If you've been eyeing the SSDSC2BW12 SSDs, here's some fresh single-drive SSD benchmarks using Btrfs compared to drives from OCZ, Corsair, and Samsung.

Following the recent Btrfs RAID: Native vs. Mdadm comparison, the dual-HDD Btrfs RAID benchmarks, and four-SSD RAID 0/1/5/6/10 Btrfs benchmarks are RAID Linux benchmarks on these four Intel SATA 3.0 solid state drives using other file-systems -- including EXT4, XFS, and Btrfs with Linux 3.18.

Last month on Phoronix I posted some dual-HDD Btrfs RAID benchmarks and that was followed by Btrfs RAID 0/1/5/6/10 testing on four Intel solid-state drives. In still testing the four Intel Series 530 SSDs in a RAID array, the new benchmarks today are a comparison of the performance when using Btrfs' built-in RAID capabilities versus setting up a Linux 3.18 software RAID with Btrfs on the same hardware/software using mdadm.

Earlier this month I published Btrfs RAID benchmarks on two HDDs but as some more interesting results are now Btrfs RAID file-system benchmarks when testing the next-generation Linux file-system across four Intel Series 530 solid-state drives. All RAID levels supported by the Btrfs file-system were benchmarked atop Ubuntu 14.10 with the Linux 3.18-rc1 kernel: RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 levels along with testing a Btrfs single SSD setup and a Btrfs file-system linearly spanning all four drives.

As a follow-up to this week's Btrfs RAID HDD testing on Ubuntu 14.10, I ran some benchmarks of Btrfs in RAID0 while benchmarking every major kernel release from Linux 3.10 to Linux 3.18-rc1.

With the Btrfs file-system continuing to stabilize while still adding more functionality and is generating continued interest from more Linux distributions and other open-source projects, I've found it time to run some fresh Btrfs RAID benchmarks to see how the next-generation Linux file-system is performing with its built-in RAID handling.

Our latest solid-state storage Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at Intel's 530 Series SSD within the M.2 form factor.

The latest solid-state drive in our office is the Corsair Force LX 256GB SATA 3.0 that's been put through its paces under Linux and is working out quite well.

Crucial is out with a new solid-state drive line-up that's generating a lot of interest due to its lower price-per-Gigabyte than competing drives or even their former drives. The Crucial MX100 is the new SSD series and today we're testing out the Crucial MX100 128GB SSD, which costs just $80 USD (or about $0.62 per GB while the higher-capacity MX100 SSDs are comparatively even cheaper with the 512GB version costing less than $0.50 per GB).

Being benchmarked today at Phoronix under Linux is the HGST Travelstar 7K1000 1000GB 7200RPM Serial ATA 3.0 2.5-inch internal HDD.

The Seagate ST2000DM001 is a two terabyte Serial ATA 3.0 hard drive that retails for less than $90 USD and is the subject of this weekend's benchmarks at Phoronix.