Do you know "f3" (not the funktion key ;-) )? It's a flash-hw test utility

[michaa7]

I came across f3 (it's in the Debian repo with this name) while fumbling around with my USB sticks. I wondered how fast they write and now I know how lame they are.
f3 (you my find different explainations about the name: fixfakeflash, Fight Flash Fraud, or Fight Fake Flash) comes with two binaries: f3write, and f3read, where the first fills a file system up with 1GB files and the second validates them.

While writing it shows continously the write speed (and it tells you a lot about your usb-stick if you observe the first half GB is been written at nearly 12 mb/s, whereas the rest does not exceed 3.7 mb/s) and calculates an average at the end.
f3Read validates the data showing sectorwise the result like number of  SECTORS      ok/corrupted/changed/overwritten.

You may use it as normal user, it is a simple tool for one or a few tasks: It tells you how big your usb-stick really is and whether or not it is possible to write *reliably* data on it. Besides you get an idea of how fast you may write to or read from a given stick. And you may test how much other activities may affect writing (on my lame system writing to this *lame* stick wasn't affected at all from viewing a video, opening new sites in my browser slitghtly slowed down the writing for a short moment).

I wonder whether we or you should include this utility ( it's a few KB) to the package list for the new releases. It may come handy if one needs to test a usb-stick before writing a siduction ISO  or installing to it.