Test real and fake disks for bad blocks
Any customer in a bar who ordered a pint of beer would definitely complain to the barkeeper if their glass was only a quarter full. This kind of attempted fraud always fails in the real world because of the obvious lack of fluid in the glass, along with the high level of motivation of the consumer and the physical presence of the perpetrator.
Unfortunately, online buyers of flash storage media cannot hope for comparably favorable conditions, although their judgment is unlikely to be impaired by the effects of alcohol. Time and time again, you hear of buyers of USB flash drives and flash cards being duped by shady dealers on the Internet. It is not difficult to find media at surprisingly low prices where the storage capacity is wrongly stated, for example, on eBay [1, 2]. To protect themselves, sellers often make statements such as "the stick will store about 4GB of data."
In this article, I attempt to reveal these counterfeits by running the right tests. As test specimens, I use two Samsung Pro 128GB MicroSDXC memory cards (model MB-MG128) purchased in 2016 from two vendors on eBay.de. If you believe the label, they both should achieve up to 90MB/s read and 80MB/s write performance.
[...]
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Is This the Year of Linux?
Another major organization has decided to kick Windows and Office to the curb, in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.