takeahike If you want a supported benchmarking application that can run on an older Windows OS, then this is something you can use. The version that I showed in my screenshot is the “Standard Edition” in .ZIP format which is the portable version and is for more modern Windows operating systems. If you want this software for Win9x or WinNT, there are separate downloads specifically for those versions. Win NT 3.51 requires a specific patch made available here in order for it to run. CrystalMark Retro is useful for a wider range of Windows Operating Systems.
I personally don’t bother with benchmarking my NVMe drives as I’m not concerned about performance scores. It is true that if you repeatedly run any kind of SSD benchmarking software, you are going to put some wear on the drives in order to test their performance. Many people don’t mind doing this, so I suppose this software is aimed at those who either got a brand-new drive or wish to test an older drive. Repeated testing on the same drive is not recommended and not very useful.
I’m not sure if you could exactly compare a benchmarking tool to a defragmentation of an SSD/NVMe, but that is an interesting analogy. Defragging serves no purpose on an SSD/NVMe; no performance gains. Benchmarking is used to see if you can archive the manufactures advertised speeds while defragmenting is used solely on a mechanical hard disk drive to optimize disk performance. Any intense writes to an SSD/NVMe is going to put a bit of wear on it, I’m just not sure how much when it comes to benchmarking software vs defragging.
