In another article we pointed out that when a new peripheral or any device is connected via USB, drivers are installed that remain on the PC even after disconnecting the peripheral. This is not a defect because it allows you to not have to reinstall the drivers each time you attach your USB stick or camera to your PC.
Conversely, the problem persists when the devices of friends or colleagues are often attached to the computer, which are put once only.
On that page it is therefore explained how to remove the old drivers and uninstall devices that are no longer used.
This article instead reports a simple software, small and portable, which allows you to see everything that has been attached to a USB port, allows you to remove what is no longer used and, above all, serves to verify and test the transmission speed of the data from a removable medium such as a USB stick, a stick or an external hard disk.
From the Nirsoft development company (of which Microsoft owns), a tool called USBDeView is distributed, portable, which does not require installation and which can be downloaded for free.
Once launched USBDeview shows all USB devices loaded on the computer, both active and connected in the past .
By ordering the detail columns for the "connected" item (fourth column) you will see the USB media connected to the PC while all the others have been used previously and are not connected.
For each "device" you can see the name, the description, if it is connected, if it can be removed, when it was last used, and the IDs of the manufacturer and the "Vendor".
By right clicking on one of the peripherals, you can choose whether to disable it (Disable) or not to remove it safely and you can also press the "Uninstall" button to uninstall it completely .
In another post, a program was reported that facilitates the safe removal and disconnection of USB devices or peripherals; this instead does that and more.
The beauty of this Nirsoft tool is the ability to do a speed test on data transfer, both reading and writing on a USB Flash Drive
Basically, USB flash drives differ in price mainly due to their speed in passing and receiving data and files to and from the computer.
Clearly, the faster it is, the less time you wait when you want to copy files to the stick and vice versa.
A USB port is a communication and transfer channel as is a network cable; it is always assumed that this speed is very high and on small file transfers the differences are imperceptible.
However, if you start transferring movies or big files from over a Gigabyte, waiting too long can become annoying.
When you go to buy a USB stick in fact, you never pay attention to the brand and its technical characteristics and often end up considering them all the same.
Well, now, before buying a new USB media, it is better to take a look at the data transfer speed performance .
To measure your pen or external hard disk and see how fast it is, you have to find it in the list on USBDeview, press the right mouse button and choose "Speed Test".
Once you have seen the speed of your media, with the values of writing and reading, you can share the results that are published on the usbspeed.nirsoft.net page.
Looking at the results of others, one can make a comparison between the various brands and models of USB media to see which one is the best and the fastest .
The results can be sorted by clicking on the columns by device name, by capacity or size of the support and by measured speed.
Among the others there is also my poor pen, well below average (look for pomhey among the names of the Submitter).
An easy, useful and really recommended tool to become more informed when talking with friends, colleagues or with the clerks of electronics stores.
Another program, more precise and more complete, to check the USB data transfer speed is HD Tune which I talked about in the post on the best programs to check the health of the hard disk, the performances and the performances.
READ ALSO: Measure the performance and speed of the USB flash drive
