Beware of fakes

[Grahamsant]

I am generally the computer nerd/geek type (I work in IT as well!), but that's not to say you still don't constantly learn!
I just bought myself a new phone. Samsung Galaxy S5. It has an expandable memory slot and I have a hell of a lot of music, so I thought bugger it...I'm going to shell out a bit extra and buy a 128GB Micro SD. After doing a bit of my own research, I discovered about memory fakes. Where units which would have generally been destroyed have been gotten hold of and reprogrammed to display a different memory capacity.
Discussing this with a colleague in IT - he suggested htest2w as a free and reliable program for testing any units I subsequently bought.

So I took my time, found a reputable seller and instead of spending ?20-25, spent the appropriate ?65 for that size memory - no cheapies here thank you very much! Well, it arrived yesterday and lo and behold after a lot of messing around - it's 65 quids worth of fake! So how did I find out?? First of all I was transferring music across which was painfully slow for a Class 10 card. I stopped after about 25GB of transfer, removed the card and put it back in to find lots of "Lost data". I then ran htest2w - that took 10.5 hours to run but conclusively came back with the following...
The media is likely to be defective.
15.5 GByte OK (32510123 sectors)
109.4 GByte DATA LOST (229621589 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
109.4 GByte corrupted (229621589 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000003d9987e00
Expected: 0x00000003d9987e00
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 4.94 MByte/s
Reading speed: 10.1 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

I've already raised this with the seller and they have promised a refund upon receipt of the returned card. (Fingers crossed here!). They claim to have had similar issues in the past though which makes me think that they really aren't doing their dues and checking their stock.
Lesson to be learnt though - be careful out there - even the most genuine sales can be fake from time to time!

[butternutsquashpie]

Mo! I need a translation!
I was following decently well but then he started to write in sanskrit

Also, you can normally tell for fakes if the barcode isn't on the side of the box

But seriously, hope you get the refund, Graham. Really sucks but glad you didn't put important, one-time data on it!

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry.

[cigarmo]

Mo! I need a translation!
I was following decently well but then he started to write in sanskrit

Also, you can normally tell for fakes if the barcode isn't on the side of the box

But seriously, hope you get the refund, Graham. Really sucks but glad you didn't put important, one-time data on it!

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry.

basically after the first 16gb the card mem is no good. It is estimated that 1/3 of sandisk cards are fake or size adjusted.

[butternutsquashpie]

basically after the first 16gb the card mem is no good. It is estimated that 1/3 of sandisk cards are fake or size adjusted.

Huh. Really? I've got 3 16gb ones for digital cameras.
Should go load em up!

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry.

[cigarmo]

Yes really

[tommy]

In my experience it's the 64 and above that are most faked, you can buy chela memory which is legit but not worth the rush. Buy from a shop.

[Grahamsant]

Although I didn't mention it in my original post - Cigarmo hit the nail on the head. It was a Sandisk I bought. Apparently there are so many fakes that they've managed to get ridiculously good at faking them...trust me when I say that it is near perfectly faked! The packaging and everything, even down to the print on the card look absolutely identical to genuine Sandisk cards. And it seems that even retailers aren't infallible to this. Was looking on Amazon earlier and a guy said he bought two from Amazon themselves at the same time (one for him and one for his wife). Same seller, same source and yet one was fake and one was genuine.

Will keep you updated and let you know how I get on. Will be posting it back tomorrow morning. In the meantime, i might play it a bit safer and get a 64GB UHS-1 card. Unfortunately it won't hold all my music but there's a lesser chance of the 64GB card being faked than a 128GB. Also, if I avoid Sandisk there is a further, better chance of no fakes!

[Grahamsant]

Just to let you all know that I have had my refund back within 24 hours of the card being delivered to it's return address. I had to pay the return postage but at least I got the majority back!