Removable storage media popular today in the form of the most common flash drives and memory cards, when compared with obsolete floppy disks or even relatively new optical disks, alas, are also prone to malfunctions and all kinds of errors, not to mention that they are very they like to settle all sorts of dangerous viral threats. In such situations, you have to look for some kind of program for testing flash drives for errors, bad sectors and viruses in order to fully eliminate possible problems.
But this is only one side of the coin. But sometimes it may be necessary to check the operability of the device in terms of determining its real read / write speed, the performance of which manufacturers (which is a sin to hide) very often overestimate, and the real values are far from the declared parameters. Further, it is proposed to consider several of the most popular applications designed for testing in different areas and evaluate them based on the authoritative opinions of experts and users working with such programs in practice.
The main directions in testing flash drives
To begin, briefly dwell on what kind of tests users may need to evaluate the operation of their drive, identify problems and fix them. Based on the opinion of experts, conditionally almost all programs for testing flash drives can be divided into several main groups:
- verification of the parameters declared by the manufacturer;
- testing for software failures (errors, bad sectors, the performance of controllers, etc.);
- identification of damage with their automatic repair;
- restoration of the factory state of the medium by installing the original factory firmware or formatting.
Despite the huge abundance of applications for performing all kinds of checks, in some situations you can even use the means of Windows systems or utilities specially developed for these purposes directly by Microsoft. But first, let's try to check whether the parameters of the drive’s speed declared by the manufacturer correspond to what users observe in practice.
Programs for testing flash drives on the main characteristics
On Windows, there are no specialized tools for conducting tests of this nature. To track the speed of writing / reading, you can use only copying a large file or group of files. But in this case, you will get only an approximate value, since the type of hard disk installed on a computer or laptop plays an important role here. But how to check the declared speed?
According to user reviews on the Internet, for such purposes it is necessary to use special programs for testing flash drives, the best of which are the following:
- H2testw;
- Checkflash
- CrystalDiskMark;
- Flash Memory Toolkit et al.
The last program on the list is a universal utility designed not only to perform the main performance test, but also to search for errors, quickly clean up disk space, create backup files, restore information and much more.
The principle of using almost all narrowly targeted applications is quite simple.
You just need to connect your drive to a computer or laptop via the appropriate USB port, run the selected application, activate the start of testing and view the results. Immediately it is worth saying that many such programs for testing flash drives are portable, they do not require installation on the hard drive and have minimal dimensions (and some generally consist of a single executable file of the EXE format).
Means of checking flash drives for errors and bad sectors in Windows systems
The appearance of errors and crashes of a software nature is the main scourge of all, without exception, USB-drives. But it’s not always advisable to immediately use third-party utilities for checking tools, since even in Windows you can find a lot of tools for such purposes. If the drive in the system is recognized, but does not work as we would like, you can first perform a check using a standard tool. However, most experts do not trust this tool, and advise using a similar tool, but with launch from the command line. We are talking about the CHKDSK toolkit, in which you can use many additional attributes, including checking and fixing errors found (for example, the sequence / x / f / r).
Sometimes many experts recommend using a special portable application from Microsoft called WinUSB. This program performs testing when removing the device from the corresponding USB port, and then gives a list of fixed or fatal failures. But alas, one cannot completely rely on it either.
Third-party programs for testing flash drives for bad sectors and errors
As for utilities from third-party developers, the most relevant applications for checking removable media for software errors or failures associated with sector damage are:
- Checkflash
- USB Flash Drive Tester;
- Flash Memory Toolkit.
And here, without a doubt, the third utility is the best program for testing a flash drive according to these criteria. It is she, in the opinion of the vast majority of specialists and users, that can both identify failures and eliminate the consequences of their occurrence.
General actions to restore a flash drive
Finally, one of the most common tasks that users face is to restore the device’s performance . The reasons that the flash drive suddenly ceased to be detected in the system, or the information on it became unreadable (or even the files simply disappeared), may be quite a lot. But most often the occurrence of such situations is mainly due to violations in the operation of the controllers (malfunctions in the firmware), physical damage, a change in the file system to an unreadable RAW format, and the effects of viruses. It is such failures that will have to be addressed.
We don’t talk about viruses right now, because the drive can be checked quite simply using some kind of portable scanner, and sometimes you can also get rid of threats in the form of Autorun.inf files by manually unlocking the object using the Unlocker tool and choosing deletion as a subsequent action file.
Identification of identifiers, search and installation of factory firmware
To restore the firmware to use specially designed for this application sometimes is not necessary at all.
So, for example, it is enough to first determine the specific device identifiers PID and VID (similar to how the data for searching for drivers is defined in the “Device Manager”). To do this, you can use a small program called ChipGenius. After that, according to the information found, the firmware is searched for on the Internet, and then it is downloaded to the computer and manually installed.
Using utilities from manufacturers
It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that almost all manufacturers of removable storage media constantly post special automated programs on their official Internet resources that allow you to restore factory settings without user intervention.
A striking example of this is the OnlineRecovery application for JetFlash drives. By the way, many such programs are able to work not only with individual carriers, but also allow you to perform similar operations with devices from other manufacturers. To select the most suitable utility, it is easiest to immediately contact the manufacturer’s website.
General purpose recovery programs
If, for some reason, firmware is needed or no programs are found, general-purpose applications that can work with almost all currently known devices can be used.
It is clear that many such utilities have also been created, however, if you take into account user reviews, one of the undisputed leaders is the notorious program for restoring the D-Soft Flash Doctor flash drive, which allows you to eliminate all detected failures in just a couple of minutes.
Low Level Formatting Applications
But what if there were no means to restore the functioning of the flash drive? What would you recommend using? As a rule, the answer is obvious! It is necessary to perform full formatting of the drive, but not by means of Windows, but by third-party programs designed for the so-called low-level formatting. Of course, you can use, say, the USB Disk Storage Format Tool, in which the user needs to perform a minimum of actions. Among the utilities of this plan you can still find a lot of interesting things. The very same format USB or Flash drive Software package looks very unusual. Yes, of course, these applications have earned their undeniable reputation among the most interesting means of restoring the functionality of removable devices.
However, according to most users and experts, the simplest, but at the same time most powerful program is the HDD Low Level Format Tool application, which is capable of not only performing low-level formatting or deleting boot partitions, which theoretically can be present on a flash drive, but also without difficulty they recognize connected problem devices when both Windows tools and some other utilities refuse to detect them completely.
Information Recovery
In conclusion, we briefly dwell on the restoration of information that could be lost in the event of a failure. Despite the fact that on the Internet it is often recommended to use the simplest programs like Recuva, in fact you will not get a tangible result, since most of the objects found will be marked as those that cannot be restored. But there is a way out. To return the lost files, it is best to use the most powerful, according to most experts, program called R-Studio. It is she who is able to fully find even those objects that were deleted from a flash drive, or memory card after full formatting, after which it restores them from fragments to their original state.