Tools: Creating a USB Utility Drive (AV/Memory Testing, HDD Testing, and More)

The day will come when you get into a tough spot with your computer. Maybe something very specific is acting up, maybe it won’t boot altogether, or maybe it just has a nasty virus that won’t go away. In the end, what can you do when your computer won’t boot into Windows anymore? Well, today’s guide is aimed to assist in this kind of a sticky situation,

What You Will Need

In this tutorial, you will need a few things before we get started. I’ll list the required items (and links to purchase them from Amazon, but feel free to use your store of choice).

  • A USB Flash Drive (I’d suggest 4GB or larger, and you will need something in the range of 32GB or larger if you plan on making a bootable Windows drive) [Amazon]
  • A Working Windows PC (Windows 7 or newer)
  • YUMI - Your Universal Multiboot Installer [Download Link]

Getting Started

To get going, you will need to grab YUMI (linked above). The EXE version works great, and unless you know what you’re doing I’d avoid the BETA version.

What even is YUMI? YUMI is a portable Windows application that will help create a bootable USB drive with a collection of utilities you specify. Still confused, I don’t blame you. Basically, YUMI will automatically take a collection of tools you pick and throw them onto a USB flash drive for you. It does it in a way that allows you to plug the flash drive into your computer, and immediately access these tools even if Windows is not booting up. I like to think of it as the backup plan when everything else is not working.

Why might you need this? Well, lets say your computer is acting up. How do you run a diagnostic test if Windows isn’t working anymore. This will let you do this. You can add a memory testing program to see if your system’s memory is functioning. You can add a hard drive testing program to see if your hard drive is failing. You can even add a bootable anti-virus program to scan for infections and remove them outside of Windows. This is where the brilliance lies; you don’t need a working copy of Windows to run these tools, and that’s why having a USB drive like this is so valuable.

Creating Our USB Toolkit Drive

Let’s just jump right in. Please bear in mind, all the data currently on your flash drive will be erased. Please backup anything that you care about before you start this process. I’ll assume you have a flash drive plugged in and have YUMI launched already.

  1. In the YUMI interface, you will need to pick your flash drive under Step 1 (If you are unsure which device is your flash drive, only plug in one flash drive and unplug every other removable storage device from your computer)
  2. Next, you will need to select a distribution / software package. You will want to scroll down to the Antivirus Tools and System Tools sections
  3. Select the tool you want to load onto your device (for this example, I will be loading Memtest86+ onto the flash drive)
  4. Next, you will need to download the ISO/ZIP for the program by checking the Download Link box
  5. Navigate to where the package downloaded (by default, this will be your Downloads folder)
  6. Then you will be ready to add the software package to the USB device (refer to the image below)

  1. You may be prompted to overwrite the disk, in which case, you should say Yes
  2. Click Next, and you will be prompted at the end to add other software to the USB drive
  3. You can always re-run YUMI at another time to add additional software, so don’t feel rushed to add everything right now

YUMI makes it pretty straight forward to add software to your USB drive, but I’m sure you’re wondering what you should load up your drive with. I’ll be going into detail below on what some of the packages are and why they are useful.

What Tools Do I Add to My Flash Drive?

YUMI offers a wide variety of software that it can throw onto a flash drive. This may leave you wondering what should you load onto your flash drive. I’m going to do my best to explain what each tool offered by YUMI does so you can pick and choose what makes the most sense for you.

  • AntiVirus Tools

  • Almost every large anti-virus provider offers a bootable virus scanning image and YUMI supports them all. Pick your favorite company, and add it to your drive.

  • I personally like Bitdefender and ESET’s virus scan toolset

  • System Tools

  • DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) - This is a hard drive wiping utility that uses a multi-pass system to attempt to completely wipe out the existence of your data from the hard drive. 

  • EASEUS Disk Copy - Allows you to make a complete clone of a hard drive in the case of you upgrading to a new disk or just to keep a bit-for-bit image of your hard drive

  • GParted - Disk partition tool that will allow you to modify partitions (resize, remove, etc)

  • Memtest86+ - Memory testing tool to see if your computer’s memory is faulty

  • OphCrack - Windows password recovery tool (useful if you forgot your Windows password)

  • Parted Magic - Disk partition management tool

  • Partition Wizard - Disk partition management tool

  • Ultimate Boot CD - Universal diagnostic toolkit that contains a HANDFUL of tools (Suggest checking out their website http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/)

  • Others

  • There’s a handful of Linux distributions listed in YUMI, but that was outside of the scope for this tutorial. YUMI can add a live version of any listed Linux distribution to your flash drive as well.

Thanks for reading this far. As always, if you hit a snag, feel free to post a comment.

hard drive  testing  USB disk  removal  virus  memory  diagnostics  anti-virus  USB  yumi  windows backup  drive  multiboot  usb toolkit 

See also