Writing image with imageUSB fails when Post Image Verification is on

[mhaverin]

OS: Win7 64-bit
imageUSB version: V1.3 Build: 1001

When trying to write an image to a USB memory stick, the writing ends in an error ("Imaging Failed!"). The log ends in:

276.93s - Verifying image on Drive Generic STORAGE DEVICE (Disk 1).
294.28s - Error: Failed to read from Generic STORAGE DEVICE (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

If you disable Post Image Verification or start imageUSB in debug mode, there are no errors. I have tested this with a couple of different USB memory sticks, most of them different kinds of Kingstons.

[David (PassMark)]

Are you sure they are really Kingstons. There are a lot of fake drives on the market.
How big does the drive claim to be on the packaging?
How big is the image file you are trying to write to the drive?

[mhaverin]

I'm not really sure how I can verify that the USB sticks are really Kingstons. They have been bought from different resellers at different times by our company.

The sizes of the drives that I have tested so far vary from 256 MB to 8 GB.

The file with which we noticed the problem is 4 GB (3 880 452 608 bytes). That's a bit large for testing purposes, so I dug up a 256 MB stick and created a new test image from that. The size of the test image is 257 425 920 bytes.

[Richard (PassMark)]

Are all of your drives exhibiting the same failed to read error and can you confirm that they all report offsets near the end of the drive?

We had one other report of this issue (on a SanDisk drive) a while back but was never able to get to the bottom of it. Our in house testing couldn't reproduce the issue on the various UFDs we used.

Perhaps it only occurs with particular drive or combination of drive and image? Would you be willing to send in the a drive for us to do some debugging and testing?

In the meantime, we'll take a look at the code again to see if we spot anything.

[mhaverin]

I did some further testing, but it's a bit scattered, sorry about that.

First I read the test image with 1.3.1001 from
Kingston DataTraveler II (the topmost stick in the photo)
502784 sectors
257425408 bytes

The checksums of the image:
MD5: 08BD4992C13BF5BB137829EFA0649E4A
SHA1: 07575295E4CB09C28B08C00F7A3B959897915AE6

Then I wrote the image to the following sticks (these are pictured from right to left in the photo):
Kingston DataTraveler G3
30297216 sectors
15512174592 bytes
65.07s - Error: Failed to read from Kingston DataTraveler G3 (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

Kingston DataTraveler G3
7835648 sectors
4011851776 bytes
66.52s - Error: Failed to read from Kingston DataTraveler G3 (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

Kingston DT 101 G2
15638528 sectors
8006926336 bytes
64.69s - Error: Failed to read from Kingston DT 101 G2 (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

Apacer "USB FLASH DRIVE"
15646720 sectors
8011120640 bytes
56.21s - Error: Failed to read from USB FLASH DRIVE (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

König 2GB "USB DISK 2.0"
3911680 sectors
2002780160 bytes
74.72s - Error: Failed to read from USB DISK 2.0 (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

CBM FlashDisk
8255488 sectors
4226809856 bytes
98.50s - Error: Failed to read from CBM FlashDisk (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

Generic STORAGE DEVICE
7866368 sectors
4027580416 bytes
116.16s - Error: Failed to read from Generic STORAGE DEVICE (Disk 1) at offset 256901120 (0x0f500000).

Then I read the image again from the same Kingston DataTraveler II with 1.2.1006 and wrote it with 1.2.1006 to some of the sticks without errors (I didn't have time to go through all of them). The checksums were identical to the image read with 1.3.1001.

The image read with 1.3.1001 can be written successfully with 1.2.1006.
The image read with 1.2.1006 and written with 1.3.1001 fails.

Reading an image with 1.3.1001 from König 2GB and writing it with 1.3.1001 to CBM FlashDisk and Kingston DataTraveler G3 was successful.

[Richard (PassMark)]

Thanks for all the extra information. I snatched up several other drives I could find laying around and finally found one that reproduced the issue.

There was an issue in the code where it was possible to read more data than was available at the end of the drive. This would cause a false verification error. We should have a new release by early next week to address this.

[mhaverin]

Great news, thank you!

[Richard (PassMark)]

V1.3 Build 1002 has been uploaded to the website with the following fixes:

• Fixed a bug causing imageUSB to incorrectly fail a verification by reading more bytes than available on the destination image/drive.
• Fixed a bug on Windows XP where the GUI log would display an unknown character at the end of each line.

Let us know if you run into any other issues.

[mhaverin]

We tested the new version and our problem seems to have been fixed. Thank you!