The first thing to know about testing an SSD is that most operating systems don’t have the necessary software built in. Unless you run Windows 10, you will need to install third-party tools to benchmark your SSD properly and compare it with other drives. There are lots of good programs like AS SSD, Crystal Disk Mark, and Anvil’s Storage Utilities that will help you with this task…
Connect the SSD to the computer
The first step is to connect the SSD drive to your computer. After that, you must open your BIOS and look for the boot order. Once you’ve found it, make sure that your new PCIe 5.0 SSD is on top of the list so that Windows can detect it as a bootable device.
If this doesn’t work, try connecting another device, like a CD-ROM or USB stick, and then check if your new PCIE 5.0 SSD is detected on top of these devices. If it’s not there, there might be something wrong with your BIOS settings.
Open Disk Management
Please scroll down and find your PCIe 5.0 SSD card, right-click it, and select Properties. On the General tab, click on Test now. This will start a long process of running tests on your PCIe 5.0 SSD card – this process can take up to two hours or more, depending on your computer’s hardware configuration and how fast it is.
Right-click on the SSD and select Initialize Disk
- Right-click on your blank drive and select Initialize Disk.
- Click Yes when prompted, then click OK at the next window.
- Type in a volume label for the drive (e.g., SSD) and click Next, then select a file system: NTFS or exFAT (NTFS is more common).
- Click Next and Finish to initialize your Disk; it will show as Healthy in Disk Management on Windows 7 and 8 or Healthy (EFI) for Macs with EFI firmware installed. In Disk Utility on Macs with HFS+ firmware, right-click on the partition, then click Verify Disk Permissions and Repair Disk Permissions. If you don’t see this option, make sure you’re not running any applications before proceeding.
Select GPT (GUID Partition Table)
You will need a machine with two hard drives to test your SSD. The first drive should be blank and not formatted. The second drive should be formatted with GPT (GUID Partition Table). Using a laptop, you will need an external hard drive. In Windows 10, open up Disk Management and find the 2nd partition on the new drive.
Click on it and choose Format so that it shows RAW. Once done, reboot your PC. You can now go into Command Prompt or Terminal on Linux or MacOSX and type fsutil 8dot3name set /dev/sda2 (without quotes), where sda2 is what your second partition shows as in Disk Management.
Right-click on the SSD and select New Simple Volume
The instructions will help you create a simple volume on your SSD drive.
- To do this, right-click on your SDD and select New Simple Volume.
- A window will pop up with two options: Drive letter and File System. Click on Drive letter and then use the drop-down menu to select which letter you want for your new volume. Then click Next.
- On the next screen, select Fixed size or Dynamically expanding, and choose how big you want your new volume to be in MB or GB.
Follow the on-screen instructions
The only way to know if your SSD has a problem is when it fails.
SSDs do not have moving parts, meaning there is no physical way for the drive to break down or fail. The only time an SSD will fail is if there are problems with the stored data, such as a bad sector, or when all of its cells become defective (this is referred to as Flash memory wear-out). If you are experiencing problems with your computer that make it seem like your drive may be faulty, check out our guide on fixing PC issues for more help.
Final Thoughts
To get a good idea of what your system will be like, it’s important to make sure that you run some tests on your SSD. This will give you an idea of how long it will take for your computer to boot up and how fast it will be able to load data. You can use benchmarking programs like ATTO Disk Benchmark or CrystalDiskMark and performance monitoring software like HWiNFO or HWMonitor. The tests are quick and easy, so don’t worry about taking too much time for them!
