Following description show how to test linux usb mass-storage drivers/devices
Simple mass-storage bench-marking –
Mount usb mass-storage device at /mnt/usb (Note: for embedded target, you may need to use “su” to switch to root user for necessary mount permissions OR For desktop, you will need to use sudo)
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
Use dd command to create a temporary file inside mounted drive as,
$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/usb/testfile bs=1024k count=10000
Above command will create a 10GB File into USB Drive and using “time” command we will know the time required to create ( which is any way write) 10GB file and using this statistics we can identify the write speed of the USB drive which we wanted to test.
Alternatively, to know the “Read Speed” you can copy the create 10GB file from USB drive to your local Ubuntu desktop/laptop.
$ sudo time cp -r /mnt/usb/testfile $PWD
Reference – http://kerneltrap.org/node/6933#comment-202486