Storage Speed Comparison Tool for SSDs and Hard Drives

How to Read These Numbers

Sequential speed is how fast a drive moves big files, like a game install or a video. Random speed, counted in IOPS, is how fast it handles small pieces of data scattered across the drive, as Samsung explains.

Makers rate their drives at their best. Many SSDs write into a fast cache that slows down once it fills, and in TechPowerUp's testing, the Samsung 870 QVO drops below 100 MB/s after about 42 GB.

A PCIe 5.0 drive still works in an older PCIe 4.0 or 3.0 slot, but only at that slot's speed. Hard drive makers list one sustained speed and rarely publish random IOPS, so those show as not published.

SSD or Hard Drive?

The fastest hard drive here reads at 285 MB/s. Even the slowest SATA SSD beats it at 500 MB/s, and the fastest PCIe 5.0 drive reaches 14,900 MB/s.

Put Windows and your games on an SSD, where the speed shows. A hard drive still works for backups and big media files you open less often.

Planning a bigger upgrade? The upgrade planner ranks what to change first, and the bottleneck checker shows whether your CPU and GPU are balanced. A faster drive won't fix a PC that's short on memory, so check your RAM setup too, and see whether a game will run with the game compatibility checker.

Where the Specs Come From

Every speed, endurance and warranty figure comes from the maker's own spec sheet or product page, linked on each drive's card. Each drive is listed at one capacity, since smaller and bigger versions are often rated differently.

When a maker doesn't say whether a drive has its own DRAM cache or which flash it uses, the card links the review that does. These are the makers' "up to" ratings, not our own tests.