> I don't know who to trust anymore: cheaper variants are likely to be those counterfeits with hacked metadata that advertise having 4-10x the capacity they hav

> I don't know who to trust anymore: cheaper variants are likely to be those counterfeits with hacked metadata that advertise having 4-10x the capacity they have[0], and more expensive ones are a crapshoot wrt. performance. You can validate flash media with f3[1] on Linux/Mac or H2testw on Windows. These tools will fill up the drive with data, then verify that it all reads back properly. This ensures the drive meets the rated capacity and doubles as a sequential read/write test. 1: https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3 https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3