disktest - Tester for Solid State Disk (SSD), Non-Volatile Memory Storage (NVMe), Hard Disk (HDD), USB Stick, SD-Card, etc…

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Disktest is a tool to check Solid State Disks, Non-Volatile Memory Storage, Hard Disks, USB sticks, SD cards or other storage media for errors.

It does so by writing a pseudo random sequence to the device and then reading it back and verifying it to the same pseudo random sequence.

This tool can be used to:

• Check disks for hardware errors (e.g. platter errors, flash errors, etc…).
• Overwrite storage media with a cryptographically strong pseudo random stream. This can either be used to delete existing data on the disk, or to prepare the disk for encryption.
• Test for tampered media that pretend to have more storage area than they physically actually have. Sometimes such media are sold by fraudulent sellers for cheap prices.
• Measure read and write speed.
• … probably lots of other tasks.

The random number stream is generated by the following algorithm:

OUTPUT_DATA := CHACHA20(PBKDF2(SEED | THREAD_ID | ROUND_ID))

If more than one thread is used, then each thread generates such a random number stream, which are then interleaved in an alternating pattern.

Security

The default algorithm ChaCha20 is a cryptographically strong random number generator. That means if the seed is kept secret, then the random sequence cannot be predicted or reconstructed by anybody else.

See option --seed under --help for more details.

Linux example

The following disktest invocation will write a secure sequence to the disk device /dev/sdc and subsequently read back and verify the sequence from the disk device.

disktest --write --verify -j0 /dev/sdc

For NVMe:

disktest --write --verify -j0 /dev/nvme0n1

For SD / MMC:

disktest --write --verify -j0 /dev/mmcblk0

WARNING: This will irrevocably overwrite all data on the storage device! Be absolutely certain that the device path is correct before starting the command. Your data cannot be recovered.

You probably need root permissions to write to raw disk devices (/dev/sdX, /dev/nvmeXn1 or /dev/mmcblkX).

The target device does not have to be an actual hardware device node. It can be any file path on any file system. For example you can mount an USB stick file system and write to a file on that file system. However, please note that this leaves a couple minor untested spots in the USB stick’s memory, which are reserved to the file system. Also see the Windows section below.

Windows example

On Windows disktest can write to any file on any mounted storage media or raw disks.

If your storage media under test is drive E, then the following command would write a test file on drive E and verify it:

disktest --write --verify -j0 E:\testfile.img

But note that testing on filesystem level like above does not test the full device. It will omit the disk areas the filesystem uses internally. Therefore, you may want to write to the raw disk E with the Windows raw drive notation as follows:

disktest --write --verify -j0 \\.\E:

or

disktest --write --verify -j0 \\.\PhysicalDrive2

Doing so will completely wipe all data (including the filesystem) on this disk.

Always make sure that you selected the correct drive. Especially in the \\\\.\PhysicalDriveX notation it is extremely easy to overwrite the wrong drive by accident. Therefore, the \\\\.\X: (where X is the drive letter) notation is preferred.

Dependencies

• Rust 1.65.0 or later.
• Crate dependencies will automatically be downloaded by cargo.

Installing from crates.io

Download the latest version of disktest from crates.io and install it to $HOME/.cargo/bin:

cargo install disktest

Installing from source package

Build disktest and install it to $HOME/.cargo/bin:

cd path/to/source/package
cargo install --path .

Running from source package without installing

Build and run disktest in place without installing it:

cd path/to/source/package
cargo run --release --  DISKTEST_OPTIONS_HERE

See below for a description of the available disktest options.

Disktest command line options

Please run either of the following commands to show more information about the available command line options.

cargo run --release -- --help
disktest --help

Speed

The following table shows some example speed measurements of disktest in various operation mode on different hardware.

These speed tests don’t write to an actual disk, but only to the /dev/null device, which is a device that does nothing. So these speed test results do not include the speed limits of any actual disk hardware.

The read data rates are similar, because the algorithm used is exactly the same.

License

Copyright (c) 2020-2024 Michael Büsch m@bues.ch

Licensed under the Apache License version 2.0 or the MIT license, at your option.