diff --git a/src/tests/fileio/sb_fileio.c b/src/tests/fileio/sb_fileio.c
index 0b96616..f41ff98 100644
--- a/src/tests/fileio/sb_fileio.c
+++ b/src/tests/fileio/sb_fileio.c
@@ -380,6 +380,9 @@ int file_prepare(void)
       return 1;
     }
 
+    if (test_mode == MODE_WRITE)
+      continue;
+
     /* Validate file size */
     struct stat buf;
     if (fstat(files[i], &buf))
diff --git a/tests/t/test_fileio.t b/tests/t/test_fileio.t
index fc7c310..f8bba0f 100644
--- a/tests/t/test_fileio.t
+++ b/tests/t/test_fileio.t
@@ -244,14 +244,17 @@ GH-196:  fileio: validate file sizes on startup
 ########################################################################
   $ args="$fileio_args --verbosity=2"
   $ sysbench $args --file-total-size=1M prepare
-  $ sysbench $args --file-test-mode=rndwr run
+  $ sysbench $args --file-test-mode=rndwr --events=1 run
   FATAL: Size of file 'test_file.0' is 256KiB, but at least 8MiB is expected.
   WARNING: Did you run 'prepare' with different --file-total-size or --file-num values?
   [1]
   $ sysbench $args cleanup
   $ sysbench $args --file-num=8 prepare
-  $ sysbench $args --file-test-mode=rndwr run
+  $ sysbench $args --file-test-mode=rndwr --events=1 run
   FATAL: Size of file 'test_file.0' is 4MiB, but at least 8MiB is expected.
   WARNING: Did you run 'prepare' with different --file-total-size or --file-num values?
   [1]
   $ sysbench $args --file-num=8 cleanup
+  $ sysbench $args --file-total-size=1M prepare
+  $ sysbench $args --file-test-mode=seqwr --events=1 run
+  $ sysbench $args cleanup
\ No newline at end of file