Testing removable media

[Gema Gomez]

Hey Jeff,

On 15/08/12 14:07, Jeff Lane wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> I wanted to ask a quick and dirty question:
> 
> What would you consider a "Stress" test of removable media like USB Keys
> & SD/SDHC cards?

What are you trying to test exactly, the speed of the HW itself or the
throughput that you get from a particular driver/implementation? The
file-system on that media? The time it takes to wear off? What is it
that you are trying to stress?

> 
> I'm working on enhancing a script and so far, the only idea put forth
> was to do multiple simultaneous read/writes (like 100 at a time). But is
> that a realistic stress test for something meant to be small, light but
> with a very slow transfer speed?

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. There are many
variables and there are file-system implementations that can interfere
with your measurements.

> Or would it be more appropriate to do something more realistic like,
> transfer increasingly large files up to a pre-determined size (perhaps a
> 2GB file size max?)

Maybe for an SD card more realistic would be to transfer 3-4 MB files,
but tons of them, like people do with cameras/music. Again back to my
question of what you are trying to stress.

Thanks,
Gema

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jeff
> 


-- 
Gema Gomez-Solano        <gema.gomez-solano at canonical.com>
Ubuntu QA Team           https://launchpad.net/~gema.gomez
Canonical Ltd.           http://www.canonical.com