disktest - Hard Disk (HDD), Solid State Disk (SSD), USB Stick, Memory Card (e.g. SD-Card) tester

https://bues.ch/h/disktest

Disktest is a tool to check Hard Disks, Solid State Disks, USB sticks, SD cards or similar 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 expected 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.
• … probably lots of other tasks.

The random number stream is generated by the following algorithm:

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

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

Dependencies

• Rust (edition 2018) 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
cargo run --release -- -h
disktest --help
disktest -h

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.

Command	Algorithm	Hardware	Data rate written
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA20 -w /dev/null	ChaCha20	Intel i5-3320M; 2+2 cores 2.6 GHz	2.0 GiB/s
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA12 -w /dev/null	ChaCha12	Intel i5-3320M; 2+2 cores 2.6 GHz	3.1 GiB/s
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA8 -w /dev/null	ChaCha8	Intel i5-3320M; 2+2 cores 2.6 GHz	4.2 GiB/s
disktest -j6 -ACHACHA20 -w /dev/null	ChaCha20	AMD Phenom II X6 1090T; 6 cores 3.2 GHz	3.0 GiB/s
disktest -j6 -ACHACHA12 -w /dev/null	ChaCha12	AMD Phenom II X6 1090T; 6 cores 3.2 GHz	3.9 GiB/s
disktest -j6 -ACHACHA8 -w /dev/null	ChaCha8	AMD Phenom II X6 1090T; 6 cores 3.2 GHz	4.5 GiB/s
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA20 -w /dev/null	ChaCha20	Raspberry Pi 4; 4 cores 1.5 GHz	300 MiB/s
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA12 -w /dev/null	ChaCha12	Raspberry Pi 4; 4 cores 1.5 GHz	400 MiB/s
disktest -j4 -ACHACHA8 -w /dev/null	ChaCha8	Raspberry Pi 4; 4 cores 1.5 GHz	500 MiB/s

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

Note: The default rust compiler shipped with Raspberry Pi OS is too old to compile Disktest. A newer Rust compiler must be used on Raspberry Pi.

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Michael Buesch <m@bues.ch>

Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, or (at your option) any later version.