Identifying a fake product from the original is never an easy task -- you must have eyes for details and be equipped with the requisite knowledge about the product. And when you think of buying an external storage device for your gadgets, you need to know how to spot a fake MicroSD card, from the original, or you risk losing all vital data stored in the fake card when it crashes.

And of course, fake memory cards easily crash.

So how do you avoid being a victim of scam, who purchases a fake SanDisk card, or a fake Samsung card, or a fake MicroSD card of any other manufacturers? It is easy; all you need is to know some naming conventions of MicroSDs, to know the speed classes of MicroSDs, and to know some tools (SD card testing tools); and you will be able to spot a fake MicroSD card.

How to Spot a fake MicroSD using SD Card Naming Conventions (Types of SD Cards)

Like all products, there are some naming conventions established by the international regulatory body of the product or by the manufacturer; if you can understand and decode the naming conventions, you wouldn't have problems spotting a fake.

In the case of MicroSD cards, there are 4 naming conventions (types of MicroSD cards), based on memory capacity; but only three are currently widely available in the market, and the three are as follow:

1. SDSC or SD standing for Secured Digital Standard Capacity. This is the category of memory cards with the storage capacity between 1MB to 2GB, at most 4GB. Whether it is a Samsung or a SanDisk or any other card, letter S and D designed into a logo, like the image below, must be on any memory card claiming that range of storage capacity.



The manufacturer can use any colour it want for the logo, but the design must be like this image

2. SDHC standing for Secured Digital High-Capacity. All memory cards with the storage capacity between 4GB to 32GB fall here. The logo below must be on the card.



3. SDXC standing for Secured Digital eXtended Capacity. MicroSD cards greater than 32GB to 2TB fall here.



In other words, to sport a fake MicroSD card, check the card type logo against the capacity written on it. For example, if you are buying a SanDisk 64GB card and on checking the SD logo on it, you see the logo of SDHC, it means the card is mislabelled - - the correct SD logo should be that of SDXC, for the card is greater than 32GB.

Mislabelling is one the easiest ways to spot a fake product; authentic manufacturers hardly mislabel their products.

How to Spot a fake MicroSD using Classes of SD Cards

MicroSD cards come in speed classes, and aside the fact that speed classes help to spot fake cards, they also help to determine the right card for a particular gadget.

Generally there are 6 classes in MicroSDs, but 4 are common; and like the types of cards, they also have logos (or better still marks), which must be displayed on the card.

The first of the class is called Class 2, which writes data at the rate of 2MP per second; the second is called Class 4, which writes data at the rate of 4MP per second; the third is called Class 6, which writes data at the rate of 6MP per second; and the fourth is called Class 10, which writes data at the rate of 10MP per second. Curiously there is no Class 8. The other two classes are very expensive and not that common.



When you are buying a memory card, ensure that the mark of the speed class of the MicroSD card is on it. That will help you spot a fake card, as a MicroSD card without a speed class mark is telling you that the manufacturer doesn't care about the speed of the card; and why should you care to buy?



A well-branded and well-labelled Samsung class 10 MicroSD card

How to Spot a fake MicroSD using SD Card Testing Tools

The two ways of spotting a fake memory card above are through the physical look on the body of the card and its packaging materials. However the fake card maker can still take their time and perfect the labelling of the card. For this reason an SD card testing tool will be useful to check the originality of the card.

Normally when you plug in a MicroSD card into a phone or a computer, the capacity will show and you may not know the card is fake, until you use the capacity to a certain level and discover that the card is writing your data with errors and the data not being able to be read back.

This is because the fake card has been programmed to display false information. The fake card manufacturers do this by manipulating the microcontroller in the card and programming it to display a false memory capacity, different from the actual storage capacity of the chip inside the card.

As an example, a card with the label 64GB may actually be 8GB, by putting a storage chip of 8GB in the card and configuring the microcontroller to display 64 GB. And since a phone or a computer will only ask the microcontroller - - not the chip - - about the size of the card, the displayed capacity will be what the microcontroller tells the device.

But when the device starts writing on the chip, it will encounter an error when the data pass the 8GB chip capacity.

So to check if a card is original, an SD card testing tool is used. If you use an Android phone, go to Play Store and download SD Insight.

SD Insight is an SD card tester for Android phones, which helps to check the originality of a MicroSD card. After launching and running a scan on a memory card, it will display the name of the card manufacturer, the model number, the actual storage capacity, and the manufacture date of the card, if the card is original.



A fake card will supply none or part of the information, and most importantly, a fake card will never tell you the name of its manufacturer. To check for a fake MicroSD card on a Windows computer, download h2testw, install, and run a scan on the card.



In the image above, only 7.7GB of the available 63.97GB is OK - - 54.7GB is bad, corrupt and will only result in a data lose, if written on; that’s what will happen when a card with actual 8GB chip is tweaked to 64GB.

As you have seen, spotting a fake MicroSD (whether SanDisk or Samsung or Toshiba or ADATA or any other) requires checking, very well, the labels on the body of the card and matching it with the established types and classes of SD card.

Misbranding, no branding, and mislabelling are pointers to being fake, and you also want to check out that all branding and labelling on the memory card are perfect written, not with blurry text or logo or mark. If the labelling and branding are perfect, but you are still in doubt, then SD card testers will be handy.

Most of the times, to spot a fake MicroSD card, you only need to hear the price and be reasonable - - cheap memory cards are cheap articles that could cost you your most important data, and there will be no way to bring it back.

Source: https://www.techrabytes.com/how-to-spot-a-fake-microsd-card-sandisk/