Making sure your backup data is reliable!

Making sure your backup data on removable media is reliable and error free is very important if you want to recover all the information at a later date. Below is a list of the best programs available to check all removable media and even hard drives, optical drives and files to make sure there are no crc errors or damaged sectors on the recorded media.

Media Backup Checking Software:

• VSO-Inspector is a free software to report various information about your hardware configuration. Using this freeware, you can check the listed cd and dvd readers and writers connected to your computer, check the firmware used. The details about the media used and the speed supported by a given writer with this media. Also you can scan a burnt media for read errors and be confident about the readibility of your fresh backup.(Freeware)
• Nero Cd Speed is an excellent easy-to-use benchmarking tool for testing the operational capabilities of a recorder. As multi-functional tool, Nero DiscSpeed also works for testing the speed of your CD/DVD disc drive as well as testing and benchmarking blanks and burned discs. It can be configured to run according to your desired results. Results can be viewed either as a graph or as a test log.(Freeware)
• DVDINFOPro is a DVD information program written in Visual Studio V2010 C++ for Windows XPSP2, Vista, Windows 7 and later. (Not Free)
• Opti Drive Control is a program for testing optical drives and media.(Freeware)
• Dvd identifier -  retrieves and interprets the pre-recorded information that is present on dvd (dvd+r, dvd+rw, dvd-r, dvd-rw, dvd-ram), hd dvd (hd dvd-r, hd dvd-rw, hd dvd-ram) and blu-ray (bd-r, bd-re). This information contains a variety of parameters such as disc manufacturing information and supported write speeds. Even though some of this information is usually printed on the packaging, the brand name may differ from the actual manufacturer or sometimes there might not even be any packaging information at all.(Freeware)
• CDCheck provides the following features: readability verification, binary compare, CRC file creation (and verification) and file recovery.(Freeware)
• MediaChecker helps you check all your media (fixed or removable like diskettes, zip, magneto-optical disks, or CD-R,…) or only a folder on these media and ensure that all your precious data that you store on them are safe and can be accessed successfully.

Usb flashdrive tools:

• Check Flash is a freeware application that tests and formats flash drives and displays important information about any flash drive. the interface is simple and easy to understand. The application is capable of running both read and write tests in order to determine the speed performance of the device and its physical health.
• H2testw is a simple to use programs which allows you to test USB sticks for various kinds of errors, which occurs with USB Drives. It can also be used for any other storage media like memory cards, internal and external hard drives and even network volumes.
• USB Safely Remove is a powerful and handy manager of peripheral devices. First of all it replaces native Safely Remove Hardware tool and significantly improves safe removal function: it gives an opportunity to hide any device out of sight, to rename devices, to disconnect them with a keyboard shortcut and it displays which program prevent devices from being stopped. Next, it allows to manage letters of USB drives: to change drive letters easily, mount drives as NTFS folders and allows to automatically hide card reader drives which does not contain a media inserted. The program will be useful and saves much time for those people who often uses more than one USB device, or has a card reader.

Free Burning Software:

• ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!