All kinds of removable drives in the form of the most common flash drives and memory cards have recently become increasingly popular, due to their compact design and very impressive capacity (just the other day, the world's first terabyte carrier was announced). However, they are often required to be checked for operability, at least to prevent the occurrence of failures, to test for compliance with the specifications declared by the manufacturer, or even to recover after the appearance of critical errors.
Let's briefly dwell on some types of flash drive test programs for performance, touching on the main aspects of the actions performed. But for starters, we will consider in which areas testing may be necessary, which will automatically affect the choice of an application in each particular case.
Programs to test the flash drive for performance: the main directions of action
Among the main actions that most users may need, the following can be singled out separately:
- checking the drive for errors;
- testing for compliance with factory parameters (determining the real read / write speed);
- restoration of performance in the event of critical failures (installation of factory firmware with the restoration of microcontrollers);
- partial recovery of information that could have been lost due to errors, formatting, or virus exposure.
System error checking
First of all, pay attention to the means of Windows-systems. Of course, there are not as many powerful tools in all known modifications as we would like, however, there is still something to check the drives for software failures.
Most likely, many have already guessed that this is a disk verification tool built into the system, which can be launched either through the graphical interface, using the properties section of the connected media in Explorer or from the command line with additional attributes. You can get full information about all the options for using this applet directly in the command console by running the chkdsk /? (in this case, running the console as administrator is completely optional). Select one of the options and check. Possible errors and failures, unless they are classified as fatal, will be corrected automatically.
Programs for checking flash drives for errors
Alas, Windows tools do not always give the desired result, so it is much more advisable to use third-party applications. For example, in order not to search for any highly targeted utility, you can use any application designed to check hard drives (for example, applets of the CrystalDiskInfo class or Victoria HDD).
But for ordinary users, if we are talking exclusively about USB-drives, you can recommend a portable program for checking the flash drive for performance called Check Flash.
It is enough to set the parameters shown in the image above, activate the start of testing and wait for the results to appear.
Applications for testing read / write speed
The above-described free program for checking a flash drive is useful even if you really need to make sure that the read and write speeds fully comply with the parameters declared by the manufacturer. In this case, you just need to change the direction of the test.
But the most relevant utility, according to many experts, is the program for checking flash drives in Russian FlashMemory Toolkit.
It allows you to perform any of the above tests, including even a low-level test, and is able to recover data damaged due to failures. That's just the application itself is paid, but for one or two tests as a trial (shareware) version is optimal.
Applets for recovering drive firmware
The most unpleasant situations are when the system does not recognize the connected drive or displays a message stating that it is necessary to format it. But usually all such attempts fail, and Windows says that the process cannot be completed. This is due to the fact that special controllers (microcircuits) do not work in the drive itself, which is a direct result of damage to the device firmware.
If possible, among flash drive repair programs, it is best to immediately look for the applet developed by the drive manufacturer itself. As a rule, such applications are available on official websites and are completely free (unless the device manufacturer does not provide any applets to restore flash drives).
But in this situation, you can use universal utilities like D-Soft Flash Doctor.
You can also try to restore the firmware yourself by identifying the device identifiers VID and PID (for example, in the ChipGenius application), then searching for the firmware using this information, downloading the appropriate software and installing it yourself.
Programs for recovering lost information
So, flash drives figured out the programs for checking the operability. Now we turn to the most burning issue related to the possibility of restoring information. It is not recommended to use the simplest applets like Recuva for this, since after scanning almost all objects will be marked as those that cannot be restored. But domestic software development in the form of R.Saver and R-Studio applications allows you to find and bring to life any files even after the drive is fully formatted (but not after a low-level one).
Often, the most powerful R-Studio utility of its kind finds even those deleted or damaged objects that the user is not aware of and restores them without problems!