Performing USB tests using flash drives.

[Comark Corp]

Hello,

We are considering testing USB ports by using cheap 128MB USB pen-type flash drives. I've set up a system with four of them installed, and the drives are formatted but have no data on them. I am curious as to whether BurnInTest will continually use the same part of the flash disk, or whether it will use the entire disk (thereby performing wear leveling to some extent, thus allowing us to get the maximum amount of wear from each flash device.)

We are using version 5.0 build 1001.

Thanks.

[Ian (PassMark)]

To test a USB port with a flashdrive using the disk test in BurnInTest V5.x, the entire flashdrive will be used.


Using the PassMark USB 2.0 Loopback plugs (http://www.passmark.com/products/usb2loopback.htm) with BurnInTest will provide a much better solution than using a flash drive. Some of the main advantages are:
(1) It provides an immediate indication (a LED) that the USB port is (or is not) working in High Speed mode (480Mb/s), or just in Full speed mode (12Mb/s);
(2) It provides much better USB specific error indications, for example in the case that there is a USB error that is not recovered at the hardware protocol level, BurnInTest will report the error type from the USB Host Controller.
(3) When using the PassMark USB 2.0 Loopback plugs with USB2Test software (included with the plugs), you can also benchmark the maximum port speed which is also useful in determining if there is a USB problem;
(4) It provides an indication (a LED and display in USB2Test software) that the USB device has flagged a low level USB transceiver error, which is good in determining electrically noisy environments, such as poor quality cabling.

Regards,
Ian