Freeware utility to test suspicious USB flash drives?

[Austinian]

I'm posting this FYI as this issue has been discussed on DPR.

I have not tried this myself. Steve Gibson has been around for ages (in computer years!) and has aroused considerable controversy both pro and con. I have no opinion, as I haven't used his stuff in decades. Perhaps others here have opinions?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-usb-drives-with-inflated-capacity

GRC | ValiDrive

ValiDrive, Fraudulent and Fake Drive Detection

www.grc.com

 

[BobKnDP]

Thanks. I don't buy a lot of large USB drives of unfamiliar brands, but the utility could be useful. (If only showing I'd been cheated.)

I had a little trouble finding the download link, but it's there. Slightly unusual presentation (?).



It seems to work. Nice that it's a portable application (no installation).

Might be a bit slow to check a 2TB drive. Seem to take a while to check a real 128GB drive. (It's supposedly USB 3.0, but it has slow writes.)

 

[kelpdiver]

back in that era when we first saw SD cards false represent their capacity, I would use h2testw which would write a series of 1mb or 1gb (can't recall) objects until it filled the drive, and tell you the performance. You could optionally do a verify but that would roughly double the time.

You can do the same manually, of course - copy a bunch of DVD isos and measure how long, but slightly more involved than just pushing the easy button on these utilities.

 

[Eric Carlson]

Awesome. And he's updating Spinrite. It's been many years since the last version. Not sure it as useful as in the old days: It was very useful before IDE drives were a thing. I wonder if us Spinrite owners will have to pay much for the update.

 

[Austinian]

Awesome. And he's updating Spinrite. It's been many years since the last version. Not sure it as useful as in the old days: It was very useful before IDE drives were a thing. I wonder if us Spinrite owners will have to pay much for the update.

It's been so long I can't remember anything about my registration; almost certainly whatever email address, etc. I used back then is long gone. I did appreciate his firewall test; at the time computer security was just coming into my awareness.

 

[Eric Carlson]

Awesome. And he's updating Spinrite. It's been many years since the last version. Not sure it as useful as in the old days: It was very useful before IDE drives were a thing. I wonder if us Spinrite owners will have to pay much for the update.

It's been so long I can't remember anything about my registration; almost certainly whatever email address, etc. I used back then is long gone. I did appreciate his firewall test; at the time computer security was just coming into my awareness.

I hope I can find my info when the time comes. I should look for it now.

 

[David Lal]

Is it enough to run chkdsk x: /f where x is the drive letter of the USB flash drive? That's what I have been doing anyway, just every now and then.

 

[Austinian]

Is it enough to run chkdsk x: /f where x is the drive letter of the USB flash drive? That's what I have been doing anyway, just every now and then.

Interesting question. I don't know enough about chkdsk's operations or the internal structure of USB flash drives to even guess, but if that was a viable test I suspect we'd have seen it recommended by now.

 

[David Lal]

Is it enough to run chkdsk x: /f where x is the drive letter of the USB flash drive? That's what I have been doing anyway, just every now and then.

Interesting question. I don't know enough about chkdsk's operations or the internal structure of USB flash drives to even guess, but if that was a viable test I suspect we'd have seen it recommended by now.

Well, I am in the same boat as you. I don't know enough either. A short while ago I ran chkdsk against about 10 USB sticks that I had that had just been sitting in a drawer for between 6 months and 12 months, unused. Capacities mainly between 32 and 64gb. Chkdsk said 9 were fine and they were but one was faulty, and it fixed that one.

I Googled this topic and found a couple of references:

1. https://www.easeus.com/storage-medi... download a reliable,system of the USB device.

2. https://www.minitool.com/news/run-chkdsk-on-external-drive.html

USB flash drives are not my favourite form of storage!

 

[Austinian]

Is it enough to run chkdsk x: /f where x is the drive letter of the USB flash drive? That's what I have been doing anyway, just every now and then.

Interesting question. I don't know enough about chkdsk's operations or the internal structure of USB flash drives to even guess, but if that was a viable test I suspect we'd have seen it recommended by now.

Well, I am in the same boat as you. I don't know enough either. A short while ago I ran chkdsk against about 10 USB sticks that I had that had just been sitting in a drawer for between 6 months and 12 months, unused. Capacities mainly between 32 and 64gb. Chkdsk said 9 were fine and they were but one was faulty, and it fixed that one.

I Googled this topic and found a couple of references:

1. https://www.easeus.com/storage-medi... download a reliable,system of the USB device.

2. https://www.minitool.com/news/run-chkdsk-on-external-drive.html

Sure, but does it work against deliberate falsification of the USB drive's capacity? IDK.

USB flash drives are not my favourite form of storage!

Or mine. Transfers of small numbers of files from one PC to another and Macrium rescue boot drives, are about all I use them for nowadays.

 

[Sean Nelson]

Is it enough to run chkdsk x: /f where x is the drive letter of the USB flash drive? That's what I have been doing anyway, just every now and then.

Interesting question. I don't know enough about chkdsk's operations or the internal structure of USB flash drives to even guess, but if that was a viable test I suspect we'd have seen it recommended by now.

Chkdsk /f doesn't deal with the entire drive, it merely fixes file system metadata errors.

Chkdsk /r is supposed to verify every block on the device, so if the device claims to have, say, 256GB then one would expect Chkdsk /r to check each one of those 256GB, which I would expect to reveal any chicanery. I haven't tested it, though, so I'm not claiming that it works. One could imagine, for example, that it copies a specific test pattern to each block and then reads it back again, but that could potentially fail to detect a problem if the drive merely "wraps around" writes to blocks above 64GB back into the lower 64GB again.

I personally use the "copy 256GB worth of files and then verify them" method because that's specifically what the card is supposed to be able to do and if it does it then I know for sure that it's OK.

 

[David Lal]

Chkdsk /f doesn't deal with the entire drive, it merely fixes file system metadata errors.

Chkdsk /r is supposed to verify every block on the device, so if the device claims to have, say, 256GB then one would expect Chkdsk /r to check each one of those 256GB, which I would expect to reveal any chicanery.

Thanks for your insight Sean. I just tried it on a 128gb flash stick - it certainly seems more thorough. Of course it takes longer though ...