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3.0 out of 5 starsCheap as Chips ... But Be Careful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 December 2023
Sd memory cards have become ever cheaper over recent years and now offer high storage capacities to boot. I was looking for a cheap card to throw a few files onto. I didn't need the 128Gb capacity on this £6.99 card, but it was silly to worry about spending less, even if I didn't need the extra storage space.
Hmmm ... or was it?
Of course,I cannot say for certain, but there has been a lot of fake SD memory cards floating around being sold on Amazon. probably not Amazon's fault, perhaps not even any third party seller's either, as there is no real way to tell other than using them. The card came pre-formatted with the X-FAT file system that is suitable for both PC and Mac systems. However, I needed to re-format this card with the FAT32 file system for an MP3 player that doesn't recognize X-FAT formatted cards. No problem I thought.
Hmmm ...
That was until the format process threw a wobbly and aborted with thousands of bad sectors reported. Now, this may be a hiccup as a result of using FAT32 on a card of this capacity (As I recall, FAT32 formatted storage devices are nominally limited to just 32Gb) However, with the right software, one can bypass this limit. Still, I have formatted a 64Gb memory card from another vendor using the same process without error.
I ran a repair on the card and, so far, things seem to be working fine. I might run a surface scan on the card to check it thoroughly. What the fake cards do, and how they are able to offer such high capacities at very low prices, is to only provide a fraction of the advertised storage by fooling the computer into thinking it has the touted capacity. Thus, a 128Gb card may only, for example, be capable of storing 32Gb before errors occur. Many people using high capacity cards may never encounter this error when not utilizing all the advertised space, so there may be some out there that may run into similar problems as I did if their cards happen to be fake.
If my card is genuine, then perhaps I got a bad one. Quite frankly, at the price I paid for it, I can't be bothered to spend the time needed to obtain a replacement from Amazon.
If you are going to save precious memories on any type of storage, especially SD cards, then I strongly suggest you perform a thorough scan on it before doing so (Not the Windows scan tool, a third party utility). It will take a few minutes, but you'll regret not doing so if you lose those holiday snaps or the wedding photos you took etc.
If you'd prefer to reduce your chances of finding yourself with a possible fake, then perhaps seek a more expensive card. Even then, there are no guarantees, so my original recommendation stands, check your storage properly prior to entrusting your data to it.