When I looked around for a program to test Compact Flash memory cards I found a good free one. The program is from a company I wrote about before, DataRescue makers of PhotoRescue. You can get a copy at the bottom of the PhotoRescue Expert download page. This is a very dangerous program, not only can it permanently delete CF card data, it sure looks like you could wipe your hard drive if you set it wrong. Please be very careful with CardWiper and heed their warning on the page.
Card Wiper is a dangerous program: remember, the data you wipe is gone forever. Use it at your own risk! If you have ANY question about CardWiper, you probably should not be using it!
Now that you’ve been warned, I can say I highly recommend this program for its test function. I had to set the “Media access mode” to “Physical drive” in the options dialog before I could select my card reader. Once that was done it was easy to run a good write/read test of my suspect CF card.