Storage Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 194 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for storage. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

A number of Phoronix readers have been requesting a fresh re-test of the experimental Bcachefs file-system against other Linux file-systems on the newest kernel code. Your wish has been granted today with a fresh round of benchmarking across Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS using the Linux 6.11-rc2 kernel. This round of testing was carried out on the newly-released Solidigm D7-PS1010 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs that offer very speedy performance for modern Linux desktops and servers.

Solidigm today is formally announcing the D7-PS1010 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs for the data center. The new D7-PS1010 solid-state drives offer phenomenal performance for PCIe Gen 5 servers as I've enjoyed in testing out a few of these D7-PS1010 SSDs the past several weeks and their leading performance that should be especially appealing for modern AI and HPC servers.

While there is a growing number of PCIe 5.0 consumer NVMe SSDs available through Internet retailers, when it comes to PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD data center / enterprise grade solid-state drives there aren't as many yet and even for announced ones they have been relatively in short supply. In preparing for some upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS tests and ahead of next-gen servers arriving, I was recently searching for some new PCIe 5.0 data center solid state drives. Arriving so far are the Kioxia KCD8XPUG1T92 CD8P-R and Kioxia KCMYXVUG3T20 CM7-V PCIe 5 SSDs. Here are a few benchmarks of those drives for those curious about the performance.

In February was the announcement of the Crucial T705 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD while reaching retail channels in March. This is a very speedy PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive that Crucial recently sent over for our Linux testing and review.

Corsair this month released the MP700 PRO NVMe SSD as the company's newest PCI Express Gen5 NVMe SSD. After the initial issues encountered with the Corsair MP700, I was eager to see how well this PCIe 5.0 solid-state drive would perform. Corsair rates their MP700 PRO SSD as capable of reaching up to 12,400 MB/s sequential reads and 11,800 MB/s sequential writes.

Following the news last week of Firefox outperforming Chrome in SunSpider, a Phoronix reader pointed out Mercury that is an open-source web browser claiming to be the "fastest Firefox fork" and making use of Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) and AES instructions along with compiler features like Link-Time Optimizations (LTO) and Profile-Guided Optimizations (PGO). The project advertises as being 8-20% faster than upstream Firefox. Curious I ran a couple benchmarks on my end of this Firefox fork.

Last week Corsair announced the MP700 series as their first PCIe 5.0 NVMe solid-state drives. While the performance is quite speedy for sequential reads and writes, in practice this drive struggled under Linux with real-world workloads. When not adding an after-market heatsink, the MP700 was quick to exhibit EXT4 file-system errors.

This past week saw the first two consumer PCIe 5.0 NVMe solid-state drives released to retail: the Gigabyte AORUS Gen5 10000 and the Inland TD510. I've been testing the Inland TD510 2TB Gen 5 NVMe SSD the past few days. While in simple I/O testing it can hit speeds almost up to 10,000 MB/s reads and writes, for more complex workloads it quickly dropped against popular PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe SSD options. In my testing thus far of this first consumer Gen5 NVMe SSD it's left me far from impressed.

A few months back we looked at the Solidigm P41 Plus NVMe SSD from this company that formed when SK hynix acquired Intel's NAND/SSD business. The P41 Plus was a budget-friendly consumer SSD with QLC memory while recently they launched the P44 Pro as a step-up and based on the SK hynix Platinum P41 design. I've been testing the Solidigm P44 Pro 1TB and 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs under Linux to great performance.

Up on the review block today is the Solidigm P41 Plus as a value-focused solid-state drive. Solidigm is the US company formed when SK Hynix acquired Intel's NAND/SSD business. Since forming Solidigm at the end of last year they have continued to sell products from Intel's existing SSD product line-up while last month they announced the P41 Plus as their first consumer solid-state drive of their own design. Recently I've been testing out the Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB and 2TB drives under Linux for seeing how these affordable QLC drives perform.

Last year Sabrent launched the Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive and left me puzzled for months finding that the Linux performance was coming in short of expectations under Linux. However, Sabrent recently released a firmware update (v1.2) for the Rocket 4 Plus and now the drive seems to be much better positioned under Linux.

Earlier this month Samsung announced the 980 (non-PRO) NVMe solid-state driver offering a combination of speed and affordability for consumers. Many Linux readers have been curious about this Samsung 980 DRAM-less SSD so here are some initial benchmarks of it. Overall, it's been working out well under Linux.

For those continuing to rely on SATA 3.0 storage, last week Samsung introduced the 870 EVO as their latest solid-state drive in the very successful EVO line-up. For those curious about the Linux performance of the Samsung 870 EVO or wanting to run your own side-by-side benchmarks against the data in this article, here is a review looking at the Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SSD.

This month Western Digital introduced the WD_BLACK SN850 as the latest PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive hitting the market. The WD_BLACK SN850 is a surprisingly strong performer if looking to upgrade to PCIe 4.0 solid-state storage, competing with the fastest of the consumer drives currently available.

The Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid-state drives are now available from Internet retailers. For those wondering how these SSDs compare with EXT4 under Linux against other PCIe 4.0/3.0 drives, here are a variety of benchmarks.

The Samsung 870 QVO solid-state drives announced at the end of June have begun appearing at Internet retailers. The Samsung 870 QVO is the company's latest QLC NAND solid-state drive offering 1TB of storage for a little more than $120 USD all the way up to 4TB for $500 and an 8TB variant for $900. For those curious about the EXT4 file-system Linux performance out of the Samsung 870 QVO, here are some benchmarks.

For those looking at an NVMe PCIe M.2 solid-state drive enclosure for connecting to USB 3.1/3.2 systems, Sabrent offers a nice option with their EC-TFNB enclosure that is constructed out of aluminum, 100% tool-free, and runs well. I recently bought this Sabrent USB 3.2 enclosure along with the Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe solid-state drive, which offers nice performance for a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD and the 2TB capacity can be found for just about $250 USD.

For those that have been considering the Seagate FireCuda 520 as a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive, here are some benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux with this ZP500GM3A002 drive.

Given the reignited discussions this week over Btrfs file-system performance stemming from a proposal to switch Fedora on the desktop to using Btrfs, here are some fresh benchmarks of not only Btrfs but alongside XFS, EXT4, F2FS, and for kicks NILFS2 was also tossed into the mix for these mainline file-system tests off the in-development Linux 5.8 kernel.

Last month Crucial introduced their P2 NVMe SSD series as their new low-cost successor to their prior P1 series. The Crucial P2 500GB NVMe solid-state drive retails for $60~65 USD which offers good value and yields better performance than their prior low-cost P1 SSDs.

While some Linux distributions are still using MQ-Deadline or Kyber by default for NVMe SSD storage, using no I/O scheduler still tends to perform the best overall for this speedy storage medium.

Recently a Phoronix reader inquired about seeing some fresh hard drive RAID benchmarks on the current kernel release and using Btrfs / EXT4 / XFS. While we don't often look at HDD RAID performance these days compared to speedier SSD testing, since the reader was a generous Phoronix Premium member I was happy to oblige to his test request. Here is a look at the Linux 5.4 HDD RAID performance per his request with Btrfs, EXT4, and XFS while using consumer HDDs and an AMD Ryzen APU setup that could work out for a NAS type low-power system for anyone else that may be interested.

When it comes to PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, the drives we have been using are the Corsair Force MP600 that have been working out great for pairing with the newest AMD Ryzen systems. But a Black Friday deal had the Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD on sale, so I decided to pick one up to see how it was performing on Ubuntu Linux. Here are benchmarks of the Sabrent Gen4 NVMe SSD, which in the 1TB capacity can be found for $150~170 USD.

One of the first PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs to market has been the Corsair Force MP600. AMD included the Corsair MP600 2TB NVMe PCIe4 SSD with their Ryzen 3000 reviewer's kit and for those interested in this speedy solid-state storage here are some benchmarks compared to various other storage devices on Ubuntu Linux.

With Bcachefs core development being done and the possibility of this file-system being mainlined soon, here are some fresh benchmarks of this file-system compared to Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, XFS, and ZFS On Linux.

This round of benchmarking fun consisted of packing two Intel Optane 900p high-performance NVMe solid-state drives into a system for a fresh round of RAID Linux benchmarking atop the in-development Linux 5.2 kernel plus providing a fresh look at the ZFS On Linux 0.8.1 performance.

With falling memory prices, there's multiple solid-state drives available for around the $30 USD price point that offer 240~256GB capacities. Here are benchmarks of five such drives, four of which are SATA 3.0 SSDs and even one NVMe SSD. There are also comparison points to more premium SSD products.

With iX Systems having released new images of FreeBSD reworked with their ZFS On Linux code that is in development to ultimately replace their existing FreeBSD ZFS support derived from the code originally found in the Illumos source tree, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the FreeBSD 12 performance of ZFS vs. ZoL vs. UFS and compared to Ubuntu Linux on the same system with EXT4 and ZFS.

In the past few months a number of M.2 NVMe SSD to USB adapters have been appearing on the market. Curious about the performance potential on Linux of an NVMe SSD drive attached to a USB 3.1 connection, I recently picked up a QNINE NVMe solid-state drive enclosure for benchmarking.

Announced at the end of January was the Samsung 970 EVO Plus as the first consumer-grade solid-state drive with 96-layer 3D NAND memory. The Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSDs are now shipping and in this review are the first Linux benchmarks of these new SSDs in the form of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB MZ-V7S500B/AM compared to several other SSDs on Linux.