NTFSToolNTFS speed test results
Real numbers from a real drive, measured with the speed test built into NTFSTool Pro. No marketing multipliers.
Test setup
- Date: October 2026
- Drive: 120 GB USB 3.2 Gen 1 flash drive, formatted NTFS
- Mac: Apple silicon
- Mode: without cache, so the numbers reflect the drive and the driver, not your Mac's memory
What the numbers mean
- A flash drive like this one is the bottleneck. Faster drives give higher numbers with either driver.
- Driver 2 uses Apple's FSKit and needs macOS 15.6 or later. Driver 1 covers every supported macOS version.
- If a drive can't mount with one driver, NTFSTool falls back to the other automatically.
Driver 1 vs Driver 2 on the same drive
| Test | Driver 1 (all supported macOS) | Driver 2 · Apple FSKit (macOS 15.6+) |
|---|---|---|
| Sequential write | 88 MB/s | 118 MB/s |
| Sequential read | 94 MB/s | 291 MB/s |
| 4K random read | 2,480 IOPS | 2,799 IOPS |
| 4K random write | 1,866 IOPS | 956 IOPS |
| Create small files | 337 / s | 600 / s |
| Delete small files | 1,671 / s | 2,946 / s |
On a fast internal SSD, Driver 2 reads at about 1,200 MB/s and writes at about 1,000 MB/s, on par with Apple's own exFAT driver.
Test your own drive
NTFSTool Pro has the same speed test built in: sequential, 4K random and small-file tests, with and without cache. It also tells you when a USB 2.0 port or cable is slowing your drive down.