Software

Portable flash memory storage devices like USB flash drives (pen drives) and SD cards are in increasing demand these days, owing to their simple usage and portability. This has also lead to foray of many fake devices resembling the actual ones. They even outdo the original in looks but it is while using it actually only that you would come to know it is fake. A good USB flash drive should both read and write the data. But the fake device would fail either in writing or reading data from the device.

But until now there is no way to detect these corrupted devices. However, there is a small freeware (Windows only) that checks for write/read errors in storage media like USB flash drives, memory cards, hard drives and network cards for errors.

The usage is pretty much simple: Just download the H2testw zipped file, extract and run H2testw.exe. Select the target, the drive which you want to check for errors. Choose the amount of available space for which you want to verify the disk and hit “Write + Verify” button. You might want to free up the occupied space by formatting the device and choose the “all available space” option under the Data Volume section for more precise check.

Even if you have some files on your drive before running the scan, the files won’t be damaged or altered by the program if the drive is not malfunctioning. The program will create a “.h2w” file whose file size would be equivalent to the data volume you chose while scanning, You can manually delete these files after the tests are completed. If you click on “Verify” which would be enabled after the initial test, the option actually uses these .h2w files instead of running all over from the beginning again, so harm in deleting these files created by the program.

Download H2testw

If you have got a USB flash drive (pen drive), learn how to install Windows 7 from your USB stick.