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H2testw was developed to test USB sticks for various kinds of errors.
It can also be used for any other storage media like memory cards,
internal and external hard drives and even network volumes.
After it is done the software leaves its test files on the medium.
You can erase them if you like or verify them again -- if it's a USB
stick for instance with another PC.
The check box "endless verify" does just that: It puts the verify
routine in an endless loop that stops only if an error is found. This
is meant to be used as a long-time test to find sporadic data transfer
errors.
A remark on the estimated time remaining: For intact flash memory the
estimate should be pretty exact since it has a constant data rate.
With defective media we have seen massive drops in the transfer rate
resulting in the estimate increasing instead of decreasing. Hard
drives are slower on the inner tracks than on the outer tracks so when
testing a hard drive the estimate is never precise.
Error messages
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* sectors that have been altered only slightly (less than 8 differing
bits per sector)
In the case of overwritten sectors H2testw tries to find out how much
real memory exists in the overwritten area and outputs that amount as
"aliased memory" (no guarantee here).
Finally it outputs the offset of the first error with regard to the
total amount of test data along with the expected and found value at
that offset.
Hint: You can copy&paste the error message, for instance to send it in
an email.
Typical errors
--------------
* Only few bits of data are changed. That might happen if the
connection between the PC and the storage media is faulty.
Inside a data file each 512-byte sector begins with a 64-bit word (8
byte) containing the offset with regard to the whole data set. It is
stored in little-endian format, least significant byte first.
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00,
00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00,
00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00