As fake memory cards have now proliferated throughout the marketplace, it is important to be able to spot a fake. This page includes methods to spot fakes, and examples of fake cards.

Why should you care?

* Inferior quality card - you're not getting what you paid for

* No warranty - when the card fails, you're out of luck

* Fake cards sometimes have invalid partition sizes, making
it likely to fail

* It will drive costs of genuine cards up


Spotting a fake

Unfortunately there is no software which will test the card, and ensure that it's genuine. You must manually scrutinise your card, (both visually and by testing it's performance), to get some idea of it's genuinity.

Look the Picture i got in "wiki"


1GB Sandisk SD Card


http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Disk_fake_vs_real_thumbsanddisk.jpg


This particular card was also missing a notch, making it quite easy to spot:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Disk_fake_vs_real_notchsanddisk.jpg



2GB Sandisk CF Card

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Sandisk_front2.jpg

Note the faded red print on the back, and the "TM" next to "CF" at the top right side on the fake:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Sandisk_back.jpg

Note there is no serial on the bottom of the fake (serial blurred on the real one):

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Sandisk_bottom-1.jpg

Note the fake box has no hologram:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Sandisk_box-1.jpg

Another example of Sandisk 2GB CF Card

Note the poor print and alignment of label:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_sandisk_back.jpg

Note the poor quality workmanship on edge, print quality and alignment of text:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_sandisk_edge.jpg


Fake Sony Pro Duo 2GB

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_2gb_sony.jpg

Note that the fake card has poor quality printing and does not have the same various extrusions and intrusions as the genuine card. With the number of lips and dips on the genuine card it isn't difficult to spot the fake.


Note there is no hologram sticker

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_2gb_pro_duo_ultraii_box.jpg

Note the incorrect corporation name of 'Sorry Corporation'

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_2gb_pro_duo_ultraii_box_bottom.jpg

Note the incorrect serial number

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_2gb_pro_duo_ultraii_card_back.jpg

Note that the front of the card looks very similar to a real card.

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Fake_2gb_pro_duo_ultraii_card_front.jpg

The SanDisk card manual was different to the real thing as well (note that the manual on the right hand is from a Sandisk Ultra II, wheras the manual on the left is for a 'flash memory card')

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Sandisk_paper-2.jpg



Performance issues

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Disk_speed.jpg

The second thing to look for is performance issues. Sisoft Sandra is a suite you can use for testing, with our example card, we got a less than stellar performance:

The fake 1GB SD Card card is a green line, and the red lines are similar specced cards.



Disk capacity and formatting

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd296/mark202007/Disk_format.jpg

With most faked cards, the capacity is overstated by the disk being prepared with incorrect parameters, when partitioned. It is quite difficult to detect fake cards, by just the size of the partition, but sometimes the card will fail, if we do a format from the command line. The sandisk card from above failed thusly:


If you try this, and your card fails it will be unusable. To reformat it with the original parameters, you could try and put it in your camera, as it will not do as thorough checking as the format command does, (of course this won't make a fake card good).


info: http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Fake_Memory_Cards



if my post na po dito paki closed na lang wala ako makita sa search eh :thanks:

:eek:lintik:slow:
pati ba naman memory card?
:furious::furious::furious:

A lot of fake mem cards are being sold at ebay so be careful... nice reference btw

ay galing naman ng ng research ni2 hah helpful tlga thanks

bakit po merun po kc akung memory card dati n pag empty sya as in empty tlaga.. e hindi sumasakto sa size nung card for example 128 ang card pero 124 lng.. merun ding pong usb flash drive n gnun. does this mean n fake din ang binili ko? nice post by the way.. :thanks:

no! tingnan nyo po yung harddisk nyo, sakto po bang 40gb (kung 40gb yung hdd)? so ibig sabihin fake din yung hdd nyo?\

ang alam ko po kasi dyan there is an allowance. nakalimutan ko tawag dun.

Yung SD ko e mura ko lang na nabili. Medyo hinala rin ako kung fake ba yun or what kasi ng mumurahin lang. Pero lifetime daw yung warranty. Ibig sabihin kaya ng may warranty e orig sya? O baka kasi madalas masira yung SD na yun kaya ready to repair lagi. :lol:

tnx po....................

nice thread :adik:

WTF.....pati yan pinepeke? thanks sa info

salamat sa info :buddy:

very informaive...salamat

nice... :clap: namulat tau dun ah..

lahat naman na pepeke na ngyon

What you are seeing is not really a problem at all, but actually a discrepancy in the way drive sizes are reported. Hard disk manufacturers use decimal megabytes (1,000,000 bytes) in their advertising, and BIOS auto-detect routines use the same measure. Other software, especially most disk setup and partitioning utilities like FDISK, use binary megabytes (1,048,576) in their reporting. A Decimal GB is reported as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a binary GB is reported as 1,073,741,824 bytes. The difference of about 7% is what you are seeing.


According to the disk manufacturer, your 40 decimal GB hard drive has 40,000,000,000 bytes. Your software uses the binary system to measure with so 1 GB in the binary system is 2^30 bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. If you take the 40,000,000,000 that the manufacturer says the drive has and divide it by how your software measures GB (1,073,741,824 bytes), you end up with 37.2529 GB using the binary system.

So you are not missing anything and you were not ripped off.

Go to http://www.pcguide.com/intro/fun/bindec.htm to learn all about the difference.

branded lang po yung fake yung mga low end na na bibili sa Mp3 Express and CDr King ay iba kasi yung sa akin 500+ lang bili ko ng miniSD ko wala naman akong problema tapos yung nabili ko ring mura eh 2 years na gamit ko eh wala ring problem naputulo pa nga eh pero nilagyan ko lang ng scotch tape and dinugtong ko ok parin heheh walang problema and besides MC wala naman sa brand yun eh kung fake sya talangang pangit talaga wala namang pinagkakaiba ang MC ng mag kaibang brand like nung sa Sony at SanDisk dont you know nabasa ko sa isang magasin co-developer pa nga silang dalawa sa MC na ginagamit sa PSP pero sa market mas mahal ang Sony kay sa SanDisk pareho lang naman ang speed nila lahat kung pareho ang size 1gig vs 1gig wala naman itong movable parts pareho ng HD na mababase doon ang speed

no! tingnan nyo po yung harddisk nyo, sakto po bang 40gb (kung 40gb yung hdd)? so ibig sabihin fake din yung hdd nyo?\

ang alam ko po kasi dyan there is an allowance. nakalimutan ko tawag dun.

by default sir may allocated space talaga sa hardisk.. usually ilang MB lang naman.. for example 80GB, may mga 79500 MB lang na usuable... pero it doesnt mean na fake yung hardisk.. usually na dedepende rin ang mga allocated space sa PARTITION format...

HTH....
anyways, madami ng peke ngayon na storage media device. may mga tool na puede nyo talagang madetect yung USUABLE disk space.. usually ginagamit ito sa mga mp3/mp4 players.. kasi may ibang 4GB mp3/mp4 player then after mo gamitin yung tool na yun, 1GB lang pala (900000++MB) lang pala...

no offense meant pero siguro alam naman natin kung san galing ang mga fake substandard items na ito..
;)

-thumbsup-