cloned sd card is not booting

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> writes:
> On 08/06/2014 03:55 PM, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
>> Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> writes:
>>> On 08/06/2014 09:58 AM, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
>>>> Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> writes:
>>>>> I suspect that although they are marketed as 16GB, they vary due to
>>>>> manufacturing quality by a block or so.
>>>> The other thing to consider if it is a bargain bin drive is that the
>>>> drive might be a counterfeit with mismarked capacity.
>>>> http://www.ebay.com/gds/All-About-Fake-Flash-Drives-2013-/10000000177553258/g.html
>>> These are not sold under any name.  They are 'blank' packaged.
>>>
>>> So I figured that whatever that whatever is 'wrong' with them in
>>> perhaps malware, would get blown away by Linux.  I once DID buy a usb
>>> drive from an online store that had a hidden partition with some
>>> strange looking stuff....
>> The above URL uses counterfeit to mean drives are sold as large capacity
>> drives that really don't have large flash chips inside.  The upstream
>> sellers buy small drives and reprogram the controllers to advertise a
>> larger size that the drive really can't deliver.
>
> Well these are marketed as 16Gb.  parted is showing one to be 15.6Gb.
> And I have put over 8Gb on a couple of them.  I think if MicroCenter
> was seriously mismarketing them, their customers would be complaining
> in droves.  Being off by .4Gb would not be noticed and as in my cases
> tossed off as low quality that needed to mark parts of it as not to be
> used and thus the smaller size.
>
> # parted /dev/sdb print
> Model: Generic- Multi-Card (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sdb: 15.6GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: msdos
> Disk Flags:
>
> Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
>  1      1000kB  513MB   512MB   primary  ext3
>  2      513MB   1025MB  512MB   primary  linux-swap(v1)
>  3      1025MB  15.6GB  14.5GB  primary  ext4

You do realize that whatever parted is showing is whatever the USB's
controller is telling it?   If you have having problems writing the full
drive's worth of information (as your previous message indicated) my
first sanity check would be to write the full *raw* drive with unique
data and see if the expected data was still there on read.