[LAU] OT: Bash help to check new USB keys.

[Chuck Martin]

On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 04:54:52PM +0000, Kaza Kore wrote:
> I did ask this on the Ubuntu forum roughly a week ago but have had
> zero helpful replies off the "community" there so I hope you don't
> mind the off-topic (as far as audio goes) subject here.
> 
> I have recently bought some large USB keys to use as backup storage to
> replace my old moving disk external hard drive. Due to the worry of
> the reports of fakes reporting to be large drives, even when plugged
> into the system, I wanted to test these before using them for real.
> Seems best way to do this is fill the drive up and check data for
> integrity.

Someone else has already done the work for you.  Check out F3 at
<http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/>.  The f3write and f3read programs will
do a thorough check that will take hours to complete.  If you build the
experimental parts, you will also have an f3probe program that will do
a much faster test based on the author's knowledge of how fake flash
drives work.  It will not only tell you the true size of the drive,
but will also tell you a command to run (using the included f3fix
program) to "fix" the drive, which doesn't actually fix it, but instead
creates a single partition that ends at the last good sector.  Since it
tells you what that last good sector is, you can also repartition the
drive however you want, as long as all partitions end before that sector.

Chuck

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