Since recent societies become more hooked into electricity, a higher level of power supply continuity is required from power systems. The expansion of those systems makes them liable to electrical faults and several failures are raised due to totally different causes, like the lightning strike, power system element failure caused by mechanical aging as well as human mistakes. These conditions impact the stability of the power as well as lead to costly maintenance and loss of output. This article examines the latest technologies and strategies to determine the location of faults in medium voltage distribution systems. The aim is to classify and assess different strategies in order to determine the best recommended models in practice or for further improvement. Several ways to locate failures in distribution networks have therefore been established. Because faults are unpredictable, quick fault location as well as isolating are necessary to reduce the impact of faults in distribution networks as well as removing the emergency condition from the entire system. This study also includes a comprehensive evaluation of several defect location methods depending on the algorithm employed, the input, the test system, the characteristics retrieved, and the degree of complexity. In order to gain further insight into the strengths and limitations of each method and also comparative analysis is carried out. Then the main problems of the fault location methods in distribution network are briefly expounded.