2022 Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks

It has been a while since I covered storage benchmarks on the Raspberry Pi because every time I sat down to write it I ended up adding new features to the SBC storage benchmarks web site. I missed my 2021 update for this reason but it’s definitely time to do a hard cut off and give an update. Definitely make sure you check out the Pi Benchmarks web site as it will always give you up to date benchmarks!

There definitely have been some changes since my last coverage of this with the Compute Module 4 now dominating the charts by taking advantage of real NVMe via PCIe adapters to achieve speeds never seen before on the Pi. Let’s get right into it!

Benchmarking / Testing Storage

If you want to verify your drive’s performance you may want to run my storage benchmark with:

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheRemote/PiBenchmarks/master/Storage.sh | sudo bash

If you search for the model of your drive on Pi Benchmarks you can compare your score with others and make sure the drive is performing correctly!

Best Performance

SSD (Solid State Drive)

The fastest performing drives can always be seen on the Pi Benchmarks “Fastest” Page. For this year’s roundup the minimum # of tests to make the list was 10.

The Compute Module 4 has changed the game significantly. The performance “ceiling” on the Pi 4 is something around 10,000-11,000 points or so. This is where you start to bottleneck due to the USB 3.0 bus. On the Compute Module 4 you can bypass USB and use NVMe directly which is allowing people to achieve far beyond the previous USB 3.0 bottleneck!

Due to this the average score is trending above the universal 11,000-12,000 point ceiling for USB 3.0 this year! As more people adopt the Compute Module 4 (or if a Pi is released that supports USB 3.1 or higher) these numbers will continue to rise.

Here’s the drives:

#	Brand	Link	Average	Fastest Score	Slowest Score	Total Benchmarks
1	Intel Optane P4800X Series*		23,750	25,387	22,357	15
2	Western Digital Black SN850 Series*		19,845	23,302	2,766	11
3	Samsung 970 Pro*		16,266	28,322	7,332	24
4	Western Digital Black SN750 Series*		16,247	27,732	2,219	140
5	Samsung 960 Pro*		15,502	20,810	8,057	13
6	Western Digital SN520*		13,963	18,667	7,285	34
7	Western Digital SN530*		13,827*	19,765	6,943	11
8	SKHynix BC511*		13,598	15,854	7,228	12
9	Samsung 980 Series*		12,808	22,561	1,312	57
10	KingSpec NE Series*		12,779	18,652	2,757	69

SD Card

The fastest performing SD cards can always be found at the fastest SD cards Pi Benchmarks page.

Application class (A1 and A2) cards continue to dominate and expand their leads on the charts. In 2022 I am comfortable definitively saying you should *not* be using a SD card that is not application with your Pi in 2022.

Application class cards excel at 4k random read/write performance which is the most important metric for operating system disk / application disk performance. Here are the results:

#	Brand	Link	Average	Fastest Score	Slowest Score	Total Benchmarks
1	Kingston Canvas Go! Plus*		1,991	2,769	1,098	112
2	PNY Pro Elite*		1,970	1,986	1,954	12
3	SanDisk Extreme*		1,602	1,709	1,349	543
4	SanDisk Extreme Pro*		1,673	1,712	712	251
5	Samsung EVO+*		1,599	1,966	1,068	153

Cheap Popular SSDs

It’s comforting to have at least something that hasn’t radically changed in 2022! The results here for the cheapest and most popular SSDs are relatively unchanged here.

#	Brand	Link	Average	Fastest Score	Slowest Score	Total Benchmarks
1	Kingston A400S Series*		5,964	9,890	1,461	1,915
2	SanDisk SSD Plus Series*		5,567	9,244	865	904
3	Crucial BX500 Series*		6,230	11,478	1,251	867
4	Kingston A400M Series*		6,114	13,523	1,529	521
5	Samsung 860 EVO Series*		6,778	12,954	1,316	515

Other Resources

For information on where to find Pis during the Raspberry Pi shortage check out my Raspberry Pi Shortage Survival Guide

To know the best adapters to use for SSDs (NVMe, M.2 NVMe, M.2 SATA, etc.) check out my Best Storage Adapters for Raspberry Pi guide

For information on benchmarking other SBCs see Benchmarking SBC Storage Performance article

For information on the new PC support for the benchmark see my PC support announcement here