P1p1mrx·Aug 22, 2025
ValiDrive is Windows-only and closed source. Does it have any advantages over https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3 ?
In How Not to Buy a SSDAltraMayor
f3
C2019–2025
AltraMayor / f3
f3
F3 - Fight Flash Fraud
14Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.5KGitHub stars
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F3 - Fight Flash Fraud
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
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HN mentions by year14 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-03-02 07:25:44 UTC to 2025-08-22 15:19:50 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesFor that amount of money, the author could have just bought one and run f3 [0] on it instead of FUD-ing about "suspicious"-ness
[0] https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/
In RadioShack Not Only Still Exists, It Sells Suspiciously Cheap SD CardsI've used f3 (fight flash fraud) on every SD card I've bought for myself or someone else. Never had a failure, but I've pretty much only bought cards direct from mixza on aliexpress.
I'd certainly recommend testing any flash device you get, especially cheap ones. It might take eight hours to write and verify, but it's well worth it. (if you can abide disputes/returns)
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
In 2TB microSD card is on the way early next yearTo workaround the various tricks a drive can play, one may wish to use a capacity tester in addition to hardware stats.
Fight Flash Fraud (f3)
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
One could setup a destructive wear-test, but results may not be generalized between lots with identical model number. This is because some manufactures sell performant products for early reviews/shills, and eventually start cost-optimizing the identical product sku with degraded performance.
As annoying as the bait-and-switch trend became, for off-brand consumer hardware YMMV.
Good luck =)
In SSD as Long Term Storage TestingI've been using F3 to test new SD cards: https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
I think it does practically the same thing as your method.
In Backblaze 2022 SSD Drive StatsIt looks like Module is always a power of 2.
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/blob/master/f3probe.c#L497
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/blob/master/f3probe.c#L338
Module does not seem to be a physical characteristic of the storage device, but rather its capacity rounded up to the nearest power of 2, for legitimate devices.
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/blob/master/libprobe.c#L777...
In Shrinkflation, SanDisk Style> I don't know who to trust anymore: cheaper variants are likely to be those counterfeits with hacked metadata that advertise having 4-10x the capacity they have[0], and more expensive ones are a crapshoot wrt. performance.
You can validate flash media with f3[1] on Linux/Mac or H2testw on Windows. These tools will fill up the drive with data, then verify that it all reads back properly. This ensures the drive meets the rated capacity and doubles as a sequential read/write test.
1: https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
In Who invented the thumb drive?I believe f3 (Fight Flash Fraud) already does random numbers with a preset seed: https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/blob/master/f3read.c#L144
In 30TB Portable SSD Hits Walmart for $39 but Stay Away from ItFight Flash Fraud
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
In Give your Mac imaginary unlimited storage thanks to Disk Utility’s bugI always use this tool https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3
It fills the entire device with data and then tries to read it all back. It can tell you how many bytes were successfully read, how many were corrupted and how many were written over by other writes.
Even on cards I know are real I still run the test because I have had a card that had a few bytes that got corrupted which caused loads of issues with my rpi.
In The case of the missing WAV audio files on the FAT32 SD CardOn that topic, a tool named f3 exists to test the capacity of that flash drive/card you just bought from Amazon.
https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/
In John Carmack and Amazon's $30 1TB thumb driveshttps://github.com/AltraMayor/f3#installation - for non mac users
In Amazon’s Project Zero will let brands remove fake product listings