History

I started this project when I bought a 32GB microSDHC card for my Android phone back in 2010, and found out that this card always fails when one fills it up. Googling about this issue, I arrived at the blogs Fight Flash Fraud and SOSFakeFlash, which recommend the software H2testw (see here or here) to test flash memories.

I downloaded H2testw and found two issues with it: (1) it is for Windows only, and (2) it is not open source. However, its author, Harald Bögeholz, was kind enough to include a text file that explains what it does, and provided the pseudo random number generator used in H2testw.

F3 is my GPLv3 implementation of the algorithm of H2testw, and other tools that I have been implementing to speed up the identification of fake drives as well as making them usable: f3probe, f3fix, and f3brew. My implementation of H2testw, which I’ve broken into two applications named f3write and f3read, runs on Linux, Macs, Windows/Cygwin, and FreeBSD. f3probe is the fastest way to identify fake drives and their real sizes. f3fix enables users to use the real capacity of fake drives without losing data. f3brew helps developers to infer how fake drives work. f3probe, f3fix, and f3brew currently runs only on Linux.

Change log

Starting at version 2.0, F3 supports the platform Mac. Mac users may want to check out Thijs Kuipers’ page for help.

Starting at version 3.0, F3 supports the platform Windows/Cygwin, and adopts H2testw’s file format. People interested in exchanging files between F3 and H2testw should read the section about it to understand the caveats.

Starting at version 4.0, F3 supports the platform FreeBSD. Mac users: Version 4.0 does not compile on Macs. The issue has been fixed on version 5.0.

Starting at version 5.0, F3 includes f3probe and f3fix as experimental, and for Linux only.

Starting at version 6.0, F3 includes f3brew as experimental, and for Linux only. Linux users may want to check out Vasiliy Kaygorodov’s page or Ahmed Essam’s page for help.

Starting at version 7.0, f3probe, f3fix, and f3brew are stable. They are for Linux only.