Enterprising Software

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    /Steve.
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    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

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DevManDave

New member
Oct 13, 2023
2
0
Hi,
I have been asked by a friend for recommendations on testing USB flash drives. He has been tasked at work with coming up with software to test a new product they are making. My first and only recommendation was the GRC suite. Spinrite for their design verification and ValiDrive for manufacturing tests.

The issue is, ValiDrive does not lend itself to automated testing (avoiding mouse movers and clickers), as far as I know.

Has it ever been suggested that there be a paid for enterprise version of GRC utilities, that allow for running from the command line and getting the results in a more "automatable" format. I suggest paid for as such functionality would probably be used by people doing "work" and therefore paying for it would be fair.

Thanks
 
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They are making them from scratch - putting down a flash chip and a controller etc.

Design validation - Testing at temperature extremes, physical shocks, radiated immunity. Spinrite would be great for highlighting errors after these tests. Limited number therefore not concerned with automating these

Manufacturing tests - Has the right chip been put down? Is it fully connected? ValiDrive is written by an expert and produces useful statistics that could highlight outliers.
 
If you are a dev you might be able to create your own utilities. I am not sure if Steve obfuscate his executables in anyway, but there are programs that you could use to see which APIs are being called and how. Combined with the documentation to those APIs you might be able to figure out how a program such as the usb utility works. I never tried that with any GRC utilities, so I don’t know how that would go. I do think some software suppliers ask that you not try and reverse engineer their programs and some software suppliers make software that do exactly that.
 
You will probably find that Steve's utilities are in Assembler, and, rather than using API's, he is doing direct hardware calls.