[PLUG-ANNOUNCE] ANNOUNCEMENT: General Monthly Meeting is Un-PLUG at Rose City Book Pub
Portland Linux/Unix Group General Meeting Announcement As previously mentioned, this month Michael Dexter has an unbreakable commitment to be elsewhere at our regularly scheduled time, so our recently-regular venue at the Latvian Center is unavailable. A vague consensus emerged to meet up at the Rose City Book Pub on NE Fremont Street (address below) and see if we can grab some tables on the back patio. So, that's the plan. Details below. Who: YOU! What: Un-PLUG: unsorted, on/off topic discussion by, for, and between us ... and anyone else within earshot Where: Rose City Book Pub, 1329 Northeast Fremont Street, Portland, OR, 97212 on the back patio When: Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 7pm Why: The pursuit of technology freedom Bio: all shapes and sizes Talk: yes, hopefully! Rules and Requests: PLUG is open to everyone and does not tolerate abusive behavior on its mailing lists or at its meetings -- Russell Senior russ...@pdxlinux.org ___ PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org PLUG-announce mailing list PLUG-announce@pdxlinux.org https://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
[PLUG] ANNOUNCEMENT: General Monthly Meeting is Un-PLUG at Rose City Book Pub
Portland Linux/Unix Group General Meeting Announcement As previously mentioned, this month Michael Dexter has an unbreakable commitment to be elsewhere at our regularly scheduled time, so our recently-regular venue at the Latvian Center is unavailable. A vague consensus emerged to meet up at the Rose City Book Pub on NE Fremont Street (address below) and see if we can grab some tables on the back patio. So, that's the plan. Details below. Who: YOU! What: Un-PLUG: unsorted, on/off topic discussion by, for, and between us ... and anyone else within earshot Where: Rose City Book Pub, 1329 Northeast Fremont Street, Portland, OR, 97212 on the back patio When: Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 7pm Why: The pursuit of technology freedom Bio: all shapes and sizes Talk: yes, hopefully! Rules and Requests: PLUG is open to everyone and does not tolerate abusive behavior on its mailing lists or at its meetings -- Russell Senior russ...@pdxlinux.org
Re: [PLUG] "sold as 16GB" PNY flash drives store >30GB
--- Original Message --- On Sunday, May 28th, 2023 at 12:37 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote: > I bought a "PNY 16GB Attaché 3 USB 2.0 Flash Drive 10-Pack" > from Amazon for $27.98, to transfer files from some ancient > CentOS machines to replacement Debian machines. > > The four I've tested so far format to more than 30GB (!!!) > of ext3 file systems. Hard to believe, so I read/write- > tested two of them with random patterns for a few days. > No bits lost. > > I haven't "debugged" this strange miracle deeply; I don't > know whether they actually store 328(2^30) bits, or a > slightly smaller fraction of that. My guess is that the > chip inside is for a 32GB product, with some spare memory > pages beyond that, but a few too many pages were defective > to sell as a 32 GB product. So PNY formatted the "best" > pages to look like a 16GB Windows flash drive and file > system, and sold the drive as that. > > Formatting that I ignored and overwrote; I don't have any > Windows machines around. > > If any of you wants to deeply examine one of these drives, > I would be glad to give one to you, in return for data and > opinions about that data. To do the job right, you might > need a variable 5-volt"-ish" power supply and a temperature > oven; some pages may fail near spec limits. I might loan > a power supply, but my lab oven is too big to move. > > I can't guarantee that other PNY "10 packs" will behave > the same. But as a retired chip designer, schooled in > the idea that "a defect is a treasure" (hoard and test > and understand them, never sell them to lesser beings), > it is marvelous to encounter an "anti-defect". > > Keith L. > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com Maybe bring some of these to the upcoming Un-PLUG meeting so we have something to play with! Does the physical label on the drive actually say 16GB? That amazon page has a button to switch over to the 32GB version for $28.80. If they ended up sending you 32GB models then that just means the vendor lost track of their own scam. Why would you pay $27.98 for 160 GB when you can pay 28.80 for 320 GB? https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Attache-Flash-Drive-P-FD16GX10ATT03-MP/dp/B01MCY4L2R/ref=asc_df_B01MCY4L2R?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20=df0=79852149837934=s=e=be=m===pla-4583451676482249=1 Click the button for the difference sizes (16/32/64). The 16GB is also labeled as on sale, probably just to get unsuspecting luddites to pay the same price for lower capacity chips. The math doesn't add up. -Ben
Re: [PLUG] "sold as 16GB" PNY flash drives store >30GB
I've read the same thing about USB drives. But I will point out that the last time I bought them from Best Buy that 32GB was the smallest size I could find there and they were like $4 each or something. Note that there is a program written for Linux for testing USB drives to make sure they are correctly marked for size: https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3 There's also a windows version of this program around named h2testw If you do find a USB drive that has been modified to report an incorrect size, many of them can be repaired with various tools (usually under Windows) You can start here to learn how to do it: https://fixfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/about-vid-pid-repairing-counterfeit-flash-drives-steps-to-succeed/ In some cases the seller didn't even bother mucking with the USB flash drive chip, instead what they did was hack the partition table on the USB flash drive. These can be fixed under Windows by opening a command line and doing a diskpart/select disk/clean operation. That completely wipes out the partition table and MBR or GPT entries. Under Linux you can do sudo apt-get install gdisk, then use the Zap command to delete the GPT or MBR boot record. Unfortunately, some of the Linux tools out there are confused if you run across a disk (USB or otherwise) that was created GPT then had an MBR record written over it since it will have the residual GPT record on the end of the disk but as I recall gdisk is aware of this problem and will handle it. Diskpart clean definitely handles it properly, clean will wipe all ID blocks from a device. Including the C: drive it is running from if you accidently select the wrong disk. Lastly I feel compelled to remind everyone that every data media out there can suffer from bitrot and never EVER should you use data media for long term storage unless you have multiple devices. I used to think that magnetic media was safe, that you could backup to a hard drive and set it on a shelf and years later come back to it and retrieve data from it. However, I have found that this is not true, that over time the lube in mag media can dry out and the disk will not restart if powered up again. But USB media I am equally suspicious of. I have had many USB sticks fail on me and the most common reason is the durability of the mechanical construction. Anyone interested in this should THROUGHLY read the following: https://nepp.nasa.gov/Whisker/index.html This is a document put together by NASA detailing the phenomenon of tin whisker growth. For some reason nobody understands, tin used in electronics can grow thin whiskers over time. This is mainly in more humid or hot environments. I have for example repaired a number of automotive instrument panels and observed splaying out of tin from circuit board joints in whiskers. There are examples of this on that URL. Lead was added to solder because it was found it would prevent whisker growth and make the solder less brittle and stronger. But, when governments started pushing/outlawing/whatever the use of lead in electronic solder, and pushing lead-free solder, it meant that unless the solder was kept at precise temperatures during manufacture it would form brittle solder joints that could easily break under mechanical load. This is one of the primary reasons USB drives fail, because there is a stress point at the intersection of the metal USB A connector and the circuit board of the drive. Any bending there will fracture the solder connections easily, and much more so if the manufacturer was not controlling solder temperature. But, even if the part was made well with strong solder joints, whisker growth is much more pronounced with lead-free solders. Most people involved in the computer industry are software folks and not hardware, and even for the ones involved in hardware only a handful of those are ever involved in long term electronics. But if you talk to people who for example restore antique radios, or people who restore antique computers (which is a small but growing hobby) you will find that MANY modern electronic devices WILL NOT last reliably for more than around 30 years. Ted -Original Message- From: PLUG On Behalf Of John Jason Jordan Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2023 1:10 PM To: plug@pdxlinux.org Subject: Re: [PLUG] "sold as 16GB" PNY flash drives store >30GB On Sun, 28 May 2023 00:37:28 -0700 Keith Lofstrom dijo: >I bought a "PNY 16GB Attaché 3 USB 2.0 Flash Drive 10-Pack" >from Amazon for $27.98, to transfer files from some ancient CentOS >machines to replacement Debian machines. > >The four I've tested so far format to more than 30GB (!!!) of ext3 file >systems. Hard to believe, so I read/write- tested two of them with >random patterns for a few days. >No bits lost. In the past I've bought USB drives advertised as 1TB that appeared in GUI file browsers as 1TB, but which could not take more than 32GB of data. The end of the
Re: [PLUG] [PLUG-ANNOUNCE] No speaker, no venue (so far) for June!
"Kevin Williams" writes: > Lucky Lab would be fine. Rose City Book Pub sounds really good! > I am hearing a slight lean towards Rose City Book Pub for a trial run. Last chance to weigh in with opinions/thoughts. I'll pick something tomorrow! >> On Saturday, May 27th, 2023 at 3:24 AM, Russell Senior >> wrote: >> >> >> > Russell Senior russ...@pdxlinux.org writes: >> > >> > > Still no speaker, but Jason Bergstrom floated the idea of: d) just >> > > meeting up somewhere for "afters", but not-before-or-after-anything >> > > and rather in-place-of. >> > > >> > > That struck me as fun and desirable. Are other people interested in >> > > just jumping straight to nerd-socializing at 7pm or something? If so, >> > > does someone want to suggest a centrally-located venue? My thoughts >> > > turn to one of the Lucky Labs but let's not let my narrow thinking be >> > > limiting. >> > >> > >> > Clinton suggests: >> > >> > I like Rose City Book Pub. >> > https://www.rosecitybookpub.com/ >> > >> > It tops the Yelp list of quiet bars >> > https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Quiet+Bar_loc=Portland%2C+OR >> > The others are more cocktail/lounge places. >> > >> > They have music scheduled for Thursday evening >> > https://www.rosecitybookpub.com/events-1?view=calendar=05-2023 >> > >> > but the beer garden, in the back, could be accommodating. >> > https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/rose-city-book-pub-portland?select=ayXH7SoX1xlubXA9KZWrEQ >> > >> > https://photos.app.goo.gl/qLneSNzzCfjrodpXA >> > >> > We should, at least, keep it in mind for future post-talk beer. >> > >> > - Clinton >> > >> > Thoughts? >> >> I probably won't be there, I just wanna say, the book pub is excellent. My >> partner and I used to be regulars there. We haven't been in a long time >> since we moved farther out east. >> >> > >> > -- >> > Russell Senior >> > russ...@pdxlinux.org >> -- Russell Senior russ...@pdxlinux.org
