The Scourge Of Fake Sd Cards.

[Rivercop UK]

Well been after a 32gb Micro SD card for my new on-bike camera ... So off onto Ebay I go ...

1st card arrives, it was a cheapy and its DOE ... Fake. Got refunded.

2nd Card arrives from a different seller - It won't record properly so had it checked ... Its a fake. Refunded.

3rd card from a 'reputable' dealer ... Says its 32gb but its a reprogramed 16gb fake. Refunded.

4th card arrives from a 99.7% pos feedback seller at near enough top price. Guess what ... 16gb posing as a 32gb card. Another effing fake.

I'm gonna give up buying electricals on eBay ... Seems everyones out to scam you. Really, really annoyed now.

Rant over.

 

[mabupa]

Well been after a 32gb Micro SD card for my new on-bike camera ... So off onto Ebay I go ...

1st card arrives, it was a cheapy and its DOE ... Fake. Got refunded.

2nd Card arrives from a different seller - It won't record properly so had it checked ... Its a fake. Refunded.

3rd card from a 'reputable' dealer ... Says its 32gb but its a reprogramed 16gb fake. Refunded.

4th card arrives from a 99.7% pos feedback seller at near enough top price. Guess what ... 16gb posing as a 32gb card. Another effing fake.

I'm gonna give up buying electricals on eBay ... Seems everyones out to scam you. Really, really annoyed now.

Rant over.

I feel your pain. Recently "scored" a deal on a Bluetooth backpack for my old GoPro hero2. It arrived and said it needed updating before it could connect to my camera. I updated the cam with no issues, plug the backpack and then the remote to my laptop to see if they would update. No luck! Program won't even recognize them. spent a week emailing GoPro and got older install versions of previous softwares for my computer and still nothing. Some google searching and looks like the reason it was a "deal" is because GoPro dropped these somewhere along all the software updates so now, their programs can't even recognize these older backpack unless, you have their old studio form(?) software. I'm about to give up.

 

[VIPER]

did you format the card? Depending on the file structure as to what size the card actually is.

 

[Rivercop UK]

I test them all with a program (H2testw (Windows)) that writes to every bit of the card then reads it all back - It tells you the real speed rating and the real hardware capacity along with any bad sectors - Picks up any fake card every time.

A lot of fake cards these days are actually genuine SD cards that are software coded to show double the GB (16gb reprogrammed to show 32gb), then sold at double the price ... As soon as the card hits the real GB limit it throws a wobbly and either stops working or it just overwrites the stuff on it. Windows / Android etc stupidly just takes the cards details as being true, so will always report / format etc to what the firmware says it should be, not actually what the cards got on it. This is a big one with SD cards in DSLR's .... Says its working and you take 100's of shots to find half of them missing when you get back and the PC says the cards fine and dandy.

The fakers hope that people won't reach the real GB limit until a long time into ownership ... Then the majority will think its just the card gone bad and not realise it was a fake.