It tests USB flash drives at different data levels, for example 25 MB to 1 KB. During the test, the read/write data is always marked on a graph, so you will get an idea of read/write speed of the USB at various data transfer levels.

Using USBFlashSpeed is quite useful. Just follow as described below.

1. Plug in your USB flash drive on your computer and run the benchmark application (no installation needed).

2. Choose your USB flash drive letter and start the benchmark. Wait for results.

You can also compare your results with other results published on the developer’s site! USBFlashSpeed can be downloaded free at developer’s site here.

Here is how to install the hotfix.

Important: Since this requires small changes in the registry, back-up the registry first to avoid any risk.

1. First, download the hotfix (KB 2581464) and install it.

2. Click Start and type regedit in the Search box, and then press Enter.

3. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Control – usbstor – VVVVPPPP.

4. If the VVVVPPPP key is not there, create a new key under ‘usbstor’ (see screenshot above)

5. Click Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORDValue.

6. Type MaximumTransferLength, and then press Enter.

7. Click Edit menu, and then click Modify. Select Decimal and type a value between 65535 (64KB) and 2097120 (2MB).

Exit Registry Editor and restart your PC.

Get more details and download from Microsoft Support center.

Some old motherboard doesn’t support USB booting. But you can add USB boot support for such PCs with the help of a small program called Plop Boot Manager.

This program allows you to access USB devices (or any drive) without the need of bios. Here is how to.

1. Download Plop Boot Manager from here (1.3Mb) and extract it.
2. Burn the image fie (plpbt.iso) into a CD using a burning software like Nero to make it a bootable CD.
3. Insert this bootable CD into the CD/DVD drive and restart your PC.
4. Your PC should boot from this CD (if not, change the boot order to give CD/DVD Drive higher precedence from bios).
5. You can see a user screen where you can select the boot device. Select USB from this list.

Hope this brief tutorial will help you boot your PC using USB Stick. And, if you would like to create a bootable Ubuntu USB, this tutorial may help you.

In order to prevent such things you have to implement some sort of protection on your computer. The freeware utility MK Drive Access Control might be a good free utility.

It will lock all drives including USB and CD/DVD drives from unwanted access with a password.

After installation, run the utility and enter a password of you choice, then click on ‘Enter Password’ button. This will open a new window where you will see all drives listed.

Select any one that you wan to protect. And also don’t forget to check the box against ‘Block all USB Drives’ and ‘Lock all CD/DVD Drives’.

This kind of protection is very useful in some instances. The freeware program MK Drive Access Control can be downloaded  from here for Windows 7, Vista and XP.

The main culprit behind this is malware infection to your drive. Don’t worry; you can safely recover your file very easily.

Sometimes you can solve it by connecting your pen drive into another computer that has an up-to-date good antivirus installed.

Or you can use the freeware USBShow software. Just download, unzip and run the program. Click on ‘Recovery the hide files’ button and select your USB drive. This should help you.

Remember; don’t forget to scan the recovered files with a good antivirus program. (via)

This new Microsoft’s article will certainly give you a clear idea about unplugging a storage device, such as USB flash drives or external hard drives safely from your computer

The article starts like this “if you unplug a storage device or removable drive from your computer while it’s transferring or saving information, you might risk losing some information”… read complete here.