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Ref 2: if you buy from Amazon, you never know if you get a genuine card. Even if you shop from an official seller, as inventory is commingled so you might as we

Ref 2: if you buy from Amazon, you never know if you get a genuine card. Even if you shop from an official seller, as inventory is commingled so you might as well get a fake one from another seller with the same SKU. Big problem in action cam related circles, where lots of people have broken recordings due to fake cards.

everybodyknows 2y ago
Are you saying that the counterfeiting of name brand packaging is so skillful that even careful inspection by us the consumers cannot reasonably hope to detect it?
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Unless you have the real and the fake side by side it can be really hard.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Even then it's hard because the legit vendors change their packaging frequently.
- cwillu 2y ago
  https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/on-microsd-problems/ https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/on-microsd-problems/ “One vendor in particular interested me; it was literally a mom, pop and one young child sitting in a small stall of the mobile phone market, and they were busily slapping dozens of non-Kingston marked cards into Kingston retail packaging. They had no desire to sell to me, but I was persistent; this card interested me in particular because it also had the broken “D” logo but no Kingston marking.”
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  Yes it’s a very big problem until you run speed tests and the like which most people have no clue how to do.
jqpabc123 2y ago
if you buy from Amazon, you never know if you get a genuine card. Yes, but there is a significant difference --- I can always return it to Amazon postage free if the capacity is fake and it won't format properly. Presumably, Amazon extracts the appropriate weight in flesh from the seller. The way retail typically works in the USA, the vendor assumes all the risk --- any problems get unrolled backwards. You can sell a fake product on Amazon --- but it will likely cost you --- not Amazon (who controls the money) nor the end consumer if he is astute. Basically, Amazon acts like an escrow service.
- Palomides 2y ago
  you're still feeding the machine, and assuming you can catch cases where something is merely lower quality rather than completely fake
  - jqpabc123 2y ago
    If there are too many returns, the machine doesn't get fed; it gets punished. Amazon and other retailers have played this game for a very long time and they aren't in it to lose money. In my experience, the thing most commonly faked with memory cards is the capacity --- for example, an 8Gb card altered to appear 64Gb, until it is formatted. If you want extra assurance, buy Amazon branded cards. In this case, Amazon assumes almost all the risk so there is little incentive for fakery.
    - Forgeties79 2y ago
      > If there are too many returns, the machine doesn't get fed; it gets punished. On Amazon? I highly doubt it. The threshold for “too many returns” is probably rarely hit. MicroSD’s are super cheap - people don’t return things that are cheap because they don’t consider it worth their time. Then these companies go and pay people for good reviews and just keep flipping inconsistent/garbage products. If punishment were a real thing that companies had to deal with then this wouldn’t continue to be a problem. It’s been this way for many, many years. Amazon has no equal competitor, there’s nowhere else for folks to go and people rarely look at the specific vendor they’re buying from. As far as they’re concerned it’s all Amazon.
mikae1 2y ago
First rule: never buy flash storage from Amazon.
lazide 2y ago
Personally I found an easy way to tell - write a script which fills the drive fully with random data (computing a check sum as it writes), then read it all back and verify you get the right checksum. Oh and compute read/write times while doing so. If the read back data doesn’t validate, or you can’t write the amount expected, or the read/write rates don’t match expected? faaaaaaake Pretty accurate too. I personally never had an actual fake Sandisk SD card from Amazon. I bought probably 50 of them in the space of 6 months at one point. Other brands were not great. USB flash drives though? Literally all trash. I tried at least 5 different ones before I just gave up. No idea what the market looks like now however.

everybodyknows 2y ago

Are you saying that the counterfeiting of name brand packaging is so skillful that even careful inspection by us the consumers cannot reasonably hope to detect it?

AlexandrB 2y ago
Unless you have the real and the fake side by side it can be really hard.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Even then it's hard because the legit vendors change their packaging frequently.
cwillu 2y ago
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/on-microsd-problems/ https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/on-microsd-problems/ “One vendor in particular interested me; it was literally a mom, pop and one young child sitting in a small stall of the mobile phone market, and they were busily slapping dozens of non-Kingston marked cards into Kingston retail packaging. They had no desire to sell to me, but I was persistent; this card interested me in particular because it also had the broken “D” logo but no Kingston marking.”
Forgeties79 2y ago
Yes it’s a very big problem until you run speed tests and the like which most people have no clue how to do.

jqpabc123 2y ago

if you buy from Amazon, you never know if you get a genuine card. Yes, but there is a significant difference --- I can always return it to Amazon postage free if the capacity is fake and it won't format properly. Presumably, Amazon extracts the appropriate weight in flesh from the seller. The way retail typically works in the USA, the vendor assumes all the risk --- any problems get unrolled backwards. You can sell a fake product on Amazon --- but it will likely cost you --- not Amazon (who controls the money) nor the end consumer if he is astute. Basically, Amazon acts like an escrow service.

Palomides 2y ago
you're still feeding the machine, and assuming you can catch cases where something is merely lower quality rather than completely fake
- jqpabc123 2y ago
  If there are too many returns, the machine doesn't get fed; it gets punished. Amazon and other retailers have played this game for a very long time and they aren't in it to lose money. In my experience, the thing most commonly faked with memory cards is the capacity --- for example, an 8Gb card altered to appear 64Gb, until it is formatted. If you want extra assurance, buy Amazon branded cards. In this case, Amazon assumes almost all the risk so there is little incentive for fakery.
  - Forgeties79 2y ago
    > If there are too many returns, the machine doesn't get fed; it gets punished. On Amazon? I highly doubt it. The threshold for “too many returns” is probably rarely hit. MicroSD’s are super cheap - people don’t return things that are cheap because they don’t consider it worth their time. Then these companies go and pay people for good reviews and just keep flipping inconsistent/garbage products. If punishment were a real thing that companies had to deal with then this wouldn’t continue to be a problem. It’s been this way for many, many years. Amazon has no equal competitor, there’s nowhere else for folks to go and people rarely look at the specific vendor they’re buying from. As far as they’re concerned it’s all Amazon.

mikae1 2y ago

First rule: never buy flash storage from Amazon.

lazide 2y ago

Personally I found an easy way to tell - write a script which fills the drive fully with random data (computing a check sum as it writes), then read it all back and verify you get the right checksum. Oh and compute read/write times while doing so. If the read back data doesn’t validate, or you can’t write the amount expected, or the read/write rates don’t match expected? faaaaaaake Pretty accurate too. I personally never had an actual fake Sandisk SD card from Amazon. I bought probably 50 of them in the space of 6 months at one point. Other brands were not great. USB flash drives though? Literally all trash. I tried at least 5 different ones before I just gave up. No idea what the market looks like now however.