A friend once told me that he had bought a bunch of 64giga USB sticks for a handful of euros… Thinking of getting a good deal, he quickly disillusioned because he noticed that these famous USB keys had a serious problem: they we
re losing data! A big deal for a storage device!
What was the cause? It's pretty simple, it was rigged USB keys, whose actual capacity was not 64 gigas and whose data you saved on it is re-written over the old ones to simulate a 64 gigas capacity loop, which gave only files or were corrupt because they were missing a part.
How do I discover the fake USB sticks?
Well already, if it's much cheaper than normal, it's because there's a problem somewhere, so beware of bargains! As they say, when it's too good to be true, it's usually the case!
Then you can check for yourself by filling in the key and checking that all files are present and not corrupted.
Or use software that will do it for you: H2testw
Much more convenient to do it yourself, because the greater the advertised capacity, the more painful it will become to check everything manually!
H2testw will fill your device and then check at the end if everything is ok. In addition, it will also give you the actual writing and playback speeds of the USB device. There is always a difference between the theoretical speed that manufacturers give you and the actual speed, thanks to this program you will also be able to see how much this difference is!
Using h2testw
This program is not in French, but it is not complicated:
- Download it here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/H2testw.shtml
- Decompress it or you want it on your computer
- Launch h2testw.exe
- Put in "English" to have it in English, or if you are more comfortable with German, leave it in German.
- If your device you want to test is new, take the next step, otherwise, format it after backing up your data to another storage medium beforehand.
- Click "Select target" to choose which device to test
- and finally click "Write-Verify" to launch the check-up
If in the end it does not tell you any errors, it is that everything is ok, otherwise, well, it is that there was a problem somewhere!
This program can be used for any type of storage: USB key, internal hard drive, external hard drive, memory card (SD, microSD, etc…), …