Test SD Card Speed on Raspberry PI


Raspberry PI has a SD card slot. It boots from the SD card, which can be supported up to 32GB. (For bigger size, the SD card has to be partitioned). The SD card is virtually the ‘hard drive’ for Raspberry PI, so we want it as fast as it can be. So practically how fast it can be on Raspberry PI and how do we test it?

Under Raspberry PI, we can install the package hdparm by sudo apt-get install hdparm and use the command sudo hdparm -tT /dev/mmcblk0 to test the speed of SD card. Do it at least twice to get a average reading speed.

The hdparm gets/sets the SATA/IDE device parameters.

For 32GB Sandisk SDHC Class 10 SD Card (as advertised up to 45MB/s),

5d8633ae4a6aa2ece1ca7034bdad0e00.jpg Test SD Card Speed on Raspberry PI hardware Raspberry PI Technology tools / utilities

sandisk-sd Test SD Card Speed on Raspberry PI hardware Raspberry PI Technology tools / utilities

For 32GB Integral Ultimal Pro SDHC Class 10 SD Card (as advertised up to 45MB/s),

a69d51b8d46f66974049586f6d00a68d.jpg Test SD Card Speed on Raspberry PI hardware Raspberry PI Technology tools / utilities

intergal-sd Test SD Card Speed on Raspberry PI hardware Raspberry PI Technology tools / utilities

Both SD Cards (Class 10)  are described as the same speed e.g. up to 45MB/s. Both are 32 GB. The performance vary slightly as tested on Raspberry PI, although the Sandisk SD card is a bit more expensive than the Integral one. I have also tested both cards using USB Check software just in case that SD cards are damaged/corrupted. Both passed the tests but on windows, Sandisk SD cards are much faster in reading/writing compared to Integral Pro Ultimal. Both cards won’t achieve the maximum speed (i.e. 45MB/s) on Raspberry PI maybe because the data bus width is limited on Raspberry PI e.g. 20MB/s (maybe?)

Raspberry Pi

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