After your last vacation, you found that the SD card you used in your camera was defective. It’s just not possible to read some of the photos any more. You certainly don’t want this to happen ever again. solution You can conduct a thorough test of diverse fl ash memory devices using ‘Check Flash’, a free utility that can be downloaded from ‘www.softpedia.com/ get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/CheckFlash.shtml’. The tool can be used immediately without installation once you unpack the ZIP archive. Note: Before starting the check, take a backup of the photos that are on the card, since the writing/reading tests overwrite all data. For this purpose, fi rst select ‘As logical drive’ from the ‘Access type’ options. You will be able to perform actions such as ‘Save image’, which tests for read errors and savesthe entire test process as an image file. ‘Load image’ on the other hand checks for write errors. Conducting the Test: To commence testing, connect the fl ash device to the system and run the tool. Select the drive concerned in the ‘Drive’ combination fi eld. Retain the ‘Use temporary file’ as the ‘Access type’ settings. Only the ‘Write and read test’ action is available for this type. Also leave the ‘Small pattern set’ option as it is. Thus confi gured, a complete test cycle consists of two test runs with diff erent data. This is suffi cient for a fl ash device. If you want to do a thorough check, select ‘Full pattern set’. The tool then conducts 18 test runs for every single bit to check its functioning— but this takes quite some time. To start the same, click ‘Start’ and wait for the analysis to complete. Moreover, the test will let you have a good look at the actual writing and reading speeds for practical use. You will know immediately whether the manufacturer's specifi cations are realistic or not.