If you’re like me, you use USB flash drives for everything from data portability to portable operating systems to use for troubleshooting. There are instances when you want to know the read/write speeds of your USB drives or if the storage on the drive is stable. That task isn’t easy without the right tools. CheckFlash is an easy-to-use USB drive benchmarking tool that can handle a few important tasks for those administrators who have a need to know their devices are up to the task.In this introduction to CheckFlash, I will show you how to run both the Read Stability test and the Write/Read test on your USB flash drives.
This blog post is also available in PDF format in a free TechRepublic download.
Getting and installing
CheckFlash can be found at the developers’ (Misha Cherkes) Web site. Download the zip file and save it to a known location. There is no actual installation of this tool; CheckFlash is a complete, executable binary file that can simply be double-clicked to launch.
The best thing to do is, upon extracting the zip file, move the ChkFlsh file to a location you will remember. The easiest thing to do is to right-click the ChkFlsh file and select the Add to Quick Launch Menu option. This will add a clickable button to launch the application in the Quick Launch bar that resides on the Task Bar. You could also select the Pin to Start Menu option to add an entry to your Start menu.
Once you have CheckFlash ready to launch, you can either go ahead and launch the application and then insert a USB flash drive or insert the drive and then launch the application. If you launch the application first, you will have to hit the refresh button in order to see your drive listed.
The application will open to the main window.
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