Counterfeit storage devices aren't limited to shady online marketplaces like Temu. Reputable sites such as Amazon also face infiltration from shady sellers promoting high-capacity SSDs at suspiciously low prices.
These fraudulent items typically originate from third-party sellers rather than Amazon's direct inventory. They are marketed through attractive 'Warehouse' listings, often presented as returned merchandise.
The sophistication of these fake drives differs widely, ranging from low-quality imitations to advanced replicas that appear legitimate upon initial visual inspection.
Some fakes involve authentic flash memory chips relabeled with incorrect specs, while others feature entirely fabricated circuit boards equipped with deceptive controllers.
Such fraud is common in USB-connected external storage. The altered controller misleads the OS into detecting inflated capacities, mimics writing processes, yet retains only a small portion of the intended data.
Linux utilities offer a dependable way to identify bogus or faulty flash storage. The F3 suite, designed to combat flash fraud, thoroughly examines various flash devices and uncovers minor issues from typical wear and tear.
Unaffected by tampered controllers, F3 measures a device's true storage size and performance metrics through practical testing of reads and writes.
The toolkit also verifies data reliability by filling the drive with test data, then reading it back to flag aging or faulty flash cells.
Comprising command-line utilities available in most Linux distribution repositories, F3 installs easily via terminal on systems like Debian and Ubuntu—for instance, using a simple package manager command.
Among the F3 utilities, f3probe stands out as the ideal choice for testing SD cards, USB sticks, external flash-based drives, and even internal NVMe SSDs. It accurately assesses real capacity without falling for controller deceptions.
Using f3probe involves checking the controller's reported size against actual data accessibility in upper memory regions to confirm readability.
The preliminary scan is non-destructive, preserving existing drive contents.
Similar to fellow F3 components, f3probe demands elevated privileges via sudo or root access, along with the target device's identifier. The syntax enables a safe, non-mounted drive evaluation.
For a healthy drive, the utility outputs a confirmation post-test, matching the controller's stated capacity against verified write and read results.
For drives with dispensable data, adding the '–destructive' flag accelerates the process with lower memory demands, though it erases all contents.
Inside a disassembled phony external SSD enclosure lies a modified controller and merely a tiny SD card.
In contrast to f3probe's controller-memory comparison, other F3 utilities like f3write fill a mounted filesystem with checksummed files until full, followed by f3read to validate them.
Operating at the filesystem layer, these tools suit any disk type but need an active, writable partition. If mounted at a path like '/media/user/5EBD-5C80/', f3read confirms the integrity of placed files. Typically, it targets only unused space, avoiding data destruction.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) units require constant network accessibility. For expansive setups, traditional mechanical HDDs remain the economical choice but must endure nonstop use.
Standard SATA drives for consumer desktops aren't built for such demands. Manufacturers thus provide NAS-labeled versions at a premium, though this designation doesn't ensure flawless performance, as users have discovered.
RAID configurations and ZFS filesystems demand non-SMR drives for reliability. SMR overlaps platter tracks to boost density but slows operations, needing multiple head passes for accurate writes and reads.
This SMR method clashes with RAID's data block verification, causing delays and failures. Linux kernel notes on these issues appear at raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Timeout_Mismatch.
Hence, only CMR technology with non-overlapping tracks fits RAID and NAS environments effectively.
Drive makers like Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba sparked controversy by selling unlabeled SMR disks as NAS-compatible in recent times.
SMART diagnostics won't disclose SMR versus CMR usage. A community-curated list of verified CMR models for NAS is maintained at m6u.de/cmr, drawing from user reports.
This piece first appeared in our affiliate outlet PC-WELT, adapted and translated from its German version.
David Wolski contributes primarily to LinuxWelt and once served on the hands-on team at sister publication PC-WELT.