Comment by growt

Here is my $5 digitalocean slice (created a few months ago):

  # dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync
  1024+0 records in
  1024+0 records out
  1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 3.7375 s, 287 MB/s

  # hdparm -tT /dev/disk/by-label/DOROOT

  /dev/disk/by-label/DOROOT:
  Timing cached reads:   16394 MB in  2.00 seconds = 8205.62 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads: 868 MB in  3.00 seconds = 289.17 MB/sec