Okay to remove flash drive I booted from while test runs?

[JAustin]

Suppose I want to test two systems at once. Do I need to make two flash drives (or two disks) or can I safely move the boot drive from one system to another while the test runs? I know the drive has to be there to write the log, but otherwise?

[keith]

As you indicated, MemTest86 would not be able to write any logs or reports if the USB drive is removed. But you should be able to safely remove the USB drive as it is not involved in any of the memory testing.

Some users, however, reported the system hanging when the USB drive is removed. The system hangs when MemTest86 calls the UEFI BIOS firmware to write logs to the non-existent USB drive that had just been removed. This is a bug with the UEFI BIOS that should instead fail gracefully in this scenario. So you can try it, but we can't guarantee it will work.

[staples1347]

Is it possible to pass a command to MemTest86 to disable logging? I ended up with a corrupted filesystem when I removed my usb stick while MemTest86 was at initial hardware detection and writing to the log file.

[keith]

There is no configuration file parameter to disable MemTest86 logging.

Is there a particular reason to remove the USB drive while MemTest86 is running?

[staples1347]

Sometimes I need to memtest more than 1 computer and only have 1 usb stick

[David (PassMark)]

USB sticks are cheap, only a few dollars for the capacity required.