How to perform I/O tests for the USB drive?

You can specify a file name with the USB drive letter to perform I/O test for the USB device.

1. Insert your USB drive, and check for its drive letter, like "E:".

2. Run SQLIO with a 1 MB data file on the USB drive:

C:\files\SQLIO\test>..\sqlio -b4 -f16 -i16 E:\test.dat

1 thread reading for 30 secs from file E:\test.dat
        using 4KB IOs over 64KB stripes with 16 IOs per run
size of file E:\test.dat needs to be: 1048576 bytes
current file size:      0 bytes
need to expand by:      1048576 bytes
expanding E:\test.dat ... done.
initialization done
CUMULATIVE DATA:
throughput metrics:
IOs/sec:   893.46
MBs/sec:     3.49

3. Run the same test on the hard disk drive:

C:\files\SQLIO\test>..\sqlio -b4 -f16 -i16 C:\files\SQLIO\test.dat

1 thread reading for 30 secs from file test.dat
        using 4KB IOs over 64KB stripes with 16 IOs per run
size of file test.dat needs to be: 1048576 bytes
current file size:      8192 bytes
need to expand by:      1040384 bytes
expanding test.dat ... done.
initialization done
CUMULATIVE DATA:
throughput metrics:
IOs/sec: 11528.48
MBs/sec:    45.03

As you can see, reading data from the hard disk is about 15 times faster than reading data from the USB drive.

⇒ Tuning SQLIO for Your Environment

⇐ "sqlio -k" - Kind of I/O

⇑ Getting Started with Microsoft SQLIO

⇑⇑ SQLIO Disk I/O Benchmark Test Tutorials