Hi HighTech,
I am sorry that you are having problems with testing drives over USB. However, I performed some testing on my test system, and have confirmed that at a minimum you should be able to perform testing on USB connected Hard Drives.
Within Service Center for Windows, the tests for the USB connected drives are included as a part of the normal Hard Drive tests. Within Bootable Diagnostics however, the drive is listed under the USB Storage Device testing. In both cases, please keep in mind that the amount of time required for testing will greatly increase compared to a SATA or IDE connected drive, due to the fact that the test must be run over the slower USB connection.
I was able to confirm however, that the drive wipe script in Bootable Diagnostics cannot be run on a USB connected device. I have mentioned this to the developers and we will have to wait and see if this is an option that can be added to future versions of the product. Thank you for sharing your experience and feedback for our product, and we greatly appreciate your help in making our product better.
Personally I would suggest connecting the drives via SATA or IDE if possible for testing(this would also resolve the inability to perform a drive wipe), but I understand this is not always possible.
Please let me know if you have any other questions or issues.
Thanks,
Kris