In Configuration->Preferences->Disk, select the USB drive to be tested, set the File size to be 1% and the block size to the maximum (currently 1024KB). In Configuration->Test Duty Cycles, select the Disk test, set Disk Duty cycle to 100%, duration to 0 (or a long period of time) and set number of cycles to at least 100.
Use BurnInTest with the following settings to test that the storage is really there. This should (approximately) match the stated drive capacity, which is usually printed on the outside of the drive, and / or on the box. From Explorer, navigate to the USB drive and right-click properties and check the Capacity shown.
(You can use the eval edition of BurnInTest, but the eval edition is limited to 15min runs which might not be not run long enough to test large drives) Step 1Ĭheck that Windows Properties shows that the drive has the size stated. This process assume you already have a licensed version of the the BurnInTest software. BurnInTest can be used to write, read and verify large amounts of data to and from the drive, detecting oversize capacity and poor quality drives in the process. Using BurnInTest you can actually test whether your USB flash drive has the amount of storage it claims or not, and test the ability of the drive to store and retieve data without corruption. Of course this only works for well known documented cases of counterfeit drives.
While many stores, such as Ebay and other online auctions, provide information on how to detect some of these fake USB flash drives, they generally rely on physical markings on the drive, such as incorrect serial numbers or typing mistakes on the packaging. These drives might have the capacity they state on the box, but be of such low quality that they corrupt files or lose data stored on them. There is also a similar problem of low quality drives (which may or may not also be counterfeit). The counterfeit drives we have examined appear to have the stated capacity in Windows Properties and it is not until you test the drive with BurnInTest that you see that there is significantly less real space. This is sometimes refered to as fake 'oversize capacity'. This device SHOULD have been sold to you as a >4 GB device.There are many fake capacity USB flash drives on the market that claim a particular capacity, but only delivery somewhat less than this (particularly the larger drives). The capacity this drive reports itself as having is accurate. The MBR (incl partition table) would probably add another 16K or soģ) Opting to perform a quick check, as opposed to using this utility’s more thorough option. This is pretty “normal” in the industry and done to make products sound better than they actually areĢ) Slight errors of a few KB in the testing process due to only checking the partition area of the drive selected. This is “normal”, and can be caused by several things:ġ) Manufacturers pretending that there are 1,000,000 bytes to the MB instead of 1,048,576. a 64MB drive may be reported here as only having 61MB of storage. Note: The *actual* capacity of the drive shown above may well be less than was claimed when it was sold to you as (e.g. This sounds a bit dodgy, though it’s not unheard of with some flash cards, and is less than twice the blocksize we’re using to test (1048576 bytes), so we’ll let it slip here… Verified max bytes writable: 33549189120 (31995 MB)Īble to write more data to the drive than we could successfully read back. Media type : 0x0B (Removable media other than floppy.)
The results:Įrror at range : device write error.Įrror at range : device read error.ģ2GB cards bought from eBay seller acence050
Is there a manual that will help me understand my scan results? 28 errors.