I have a pretty old 1GB USB stick. I don't suspect it of being a fake. I've run Validrive on it twice and both times it's reported about half a dozen different locations marked in red for 'no storage'. The marked locations differ between the two runs. One is potentially the same. Is this normal behaviour?
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It definitely should not be doing that. ValiDrive would be showing "No Storage" when it wrote some random data but did not get the same data back when it read it back. So I would definitely not trust this drive with anything important. The reason you're seeing differing locations is that ValiDrive's testing sequence is truly randomized and will never be the same twice. So whatever flaky thing is going on, it might also be about the pattern of the sequence (which is also not good!)
The locations aren't random, the sequence that ValiDrive tests them in is.
Correct. That part is still very strange. Actually, I think I may have encountered something similar on one of my drives. I'll do some digging.
Found it! It's my Sansumg SD card. However, I found something even stranger when I did some further testing. I'm going to reopen my ticket.
I just watched Task Manager while reproducing the issue, and there was only ever 1 instance of ValiDrive running. I also verified there were 0 instances after closing it. Thanks for the suggestion though. I doubt I ever would have thought to check for that
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