Blackmagic Disk Speed Test App Reviews

I am confused by the negative reviews - this may not be the simplest application out there, but it is not complicated. And, it is free... I just needed to check the speed of my sdxc card and this application was recommended. A simple download, click the settings icon, tell it which drive to test and the size of the test units ( I chose the 5G ) and then hit start. You see it write and then you see it read - the dials give the speeds of each activity in real time as the tests shift back and forth each test cycle. I have a MBP and have no issue with the graphic fitting on the screen, but maybe if your resolution is low - this might cause an issue, I did not see this issue myself. However, if you need, you can move the window to see the upper or lower parts of the window. I went ahead and tested my internal ssd flash drive while I was there - happy to say that the read is so fast that it appears to max out the programs ability to measure, about this I have no complaint… My thanks to BlackMagic.

I have installed and uninstalled this app at least three times now, and I cant even get it to open. When I click it from my dock it bounces once, then goes still and never opens. Im working on 10.6.8. Installing a new SSD into my mid 2009 MBP and wanted to test my speed before and after. Does anyone know of another app that can do this? I havent been able to find one and obviously Blackmagic is useless.

Works well on my iMac. Checked against other apps and read/write is the same. Doesn’t take alot of intelligence to figure out how it works. Great free app.

This doesnt run on 10.6 and I cant download version 2.1 again because all the site for downloading direct you to this site. Just another another example of how the App Store ruins good software.

Works well enough to test my primary disk, but there is a bug that causes the program to crash when you try to change the target drive (I’m using 10.9.5). Doing a quick search it appears this problem has been going on for at least a year and the developer has yet to fix it.

This is a one trick pony that delivers. It tests the read and write performance of your drives, and it does it very well. I’m a video editor by trade and often need to test drives to make sure they’re above a minimum speed and this helps me figure that out quick and easily. I’ve never seen so many people whine over absolutly nothing.

I have used this in the past with no issues; however, recently I installed a new external HDD and wanted to test the speed. As soon as I try to change the target drive to test, it crashes. I have the latest version and I tried reinstalling. Running OSX Mavericks on an iMac.

To the review that says it will not write to their SSD, it is because you are selecting the drive at the root level. Select the drive at the user level and it works fine. COmaparable results to AJS System Test and Speedtool Utilites.

If I run against my internal FileVault 2 encrypted drive it says it’s readonly. Same for external USB drive encrypted too.

I installed the program and it told me that this drive was read only. I then opened up the Info button and added myself as a user with Read and Write auth. for the drive then it works perfectly. The drive is set to system, wheel and everyone. you need to add your login name and set the privaege to read and write.

Sometimes it might be useful. Works good.

Upon choosing the menu item ‘select a target drive’ the app crashes. I can’t get past this. The ui seems rather sparse with information, the two large dials taking up a silly amount of screen real estate on my 15” mbp.

I was motivated to write my first ever review on App Store after seeing a large number of negative reviews about this product. In my experience, the app is just perfect. It helps me pick the right flash disks for each purpose: I’ve discovered a 300 Mbps one among my disks. That became my Yosemite installer. Turns out I also have very slow thumb drives, as slow as 20 Mbps. Those are the ones I give out to people.

No problems with this application. It does exactly what it says and its FREE!

This is an excellent tool that provides experienced users with valuable information about the performance of their hard drives, especially whether the drives can keep up with the demands of video at varying formats, resolutions, and bit depths. It was extremely valuable to me as I evaluated the performance of a 1TB SSD when I moved it from my Mac Pro’s built-in SATA II controller to a plug-in SATA III controller. It’s a great way to assure that a SATA III controller is not being bottlenecked by using too few lanes in a PCI Express slot. My one word of warning about this tool has to do with lifespan of SSDs. The tool will happily run as long as you let it, but SSDs have a limited lifespan for writes. After running for a while, some will show a significant slowdown during the write portion of the test, recovering when the test is rerun later. I recommend that you not start it and walk away. Run it long enough to establish the speed and then stop the test. Many of the complaints about this tool appear to be from users who are out of their depth. One user complained that it said his drives were read-only. He was almost certainly telling the application to test the root directory of the drive or some other directory to which he does not have write permissions. He should have chosen something like his documents directory or downloads directory. Another complained about it not showing what drive was under test — but it always defaults to the primary drive and only changes when the user selects another drive. Other complaints are inexplicable, with several users bemoaning the large interface and speed indicator dials — just like the screenshot shows! They must be a joy to go to lunch with; “waiter, I want to return this pizza because it looks just like the photo in the menu."

I checked about 5 of my drives in about 20 minutes and now know what is the fastest drive.Very simple. Its hard to understand why this is free but thanks from a Audio Guy!

If youre looking for a tool to confirm how fast your storage is, this one is useless. On my 2015 15" retina MBP, write line just goes to 45MB/s then the read line goes to 15MB/s neither of which are accurate for this drive. Works fine for a USB drive connected, which is reporting about 250MB/s

Does what I need it to do, as described.

Super easy to use. This worked well on my 2012 MBP on both Mavericks and Yosemite, and an older ~2010 MBP on Yosemite for testing my local HD and network HDs, including my Synology NAS. Results approximately match spec for the local HDs and match what the Synology registered locally for data throughput as well as a couple of other command line test tools. Occasionally crashed when quitting, or if I switched network interfaces from wifi to wired without closing the app first, while reading/writing to a network drive. (I understand this is a disk speed tester, but network is involved when writing to servers or NAS over the network, which it does fine. ) Sometimes would get hung in a really bad way and I’d have to reboot to clear it, but that was rare. For a free app, if you’re careful with how you quit it, it seems to work great.

I used it to compare the speeds of several SD cards and drives. The results seemed accurate and easy to understand. I would suggest a button for selecting the target drive on the main screen instead of burried in Settings but no big deal. I figured it out in 10 seconds.