ValiDrive

Fraduluent storage is a thing, because of course it is. It involves USB drives having a lower storage capacity than advertised, hence the fraudulent connotation. Some of these drives can exhibit odd behavior: namely, files reading as empty is a telltale sign, but it's best to check with a dedicated solution.

ValiDrive is such a dedicated tool. It seeks to validate your drive and hopefully bring you some peace of mind: it will analyze your USB storage to help you decipher if what you’ve got is a dud.

Random-sequence spot checks across a drive’s declared storage might sound very complicated, and to the tool’s credit, there’s likely some very intricate wizardry going on behind the scenes. Yet the tool remains very simple to use even for a more casual audience, owing to a very straightforward manner of operation: you insert your drive, and then wait for the scan to finish.

Upon scanning completion, you’ll know where you stand with your USB storage. Hopefully the drive map is all green and devoid of red, the latter of which indicates lack of storage in a specific sector. I especially appreciated the Monochrome Map mode, which is a great accessibility feature, as it does away with the colors and displays everything in a way that can be easier to read for some users.

The program will automatically generate a report of the resulting scan. Besides displaying the drive map, it’ll also show a series of details that may be of particular interest: the declared and validated drive sizes will provide the exact storage values.

Overall, ValiDrive works in the user’s favor by offering a convenient solution to help them determine if their USB storage is fraudulent.