SD Cards: Know your Fakes!

Web designers and business owners can come to rely on their cameras. So make sure you don’t get caught out in the SD card scam. Grant McMaster explains…
Secure Digital Cards are used by almost every portable device in production. They are small form factor storage devices which are able to contain up to 256GB of data at the top end of the scale.
Most older devices will only read and write up to 32GB or 64GB in more recent devices, which is still a fairly large amount of storage for a medium which is smaller than a postage stamp and only slightly thicker.
SD Cards are available in different speeds as well as different sizes. The speed rating indicates how quickly data can be written to and retrieved from the card. This is important if you are working with real time, high definition video or just with very large files.
The standard speed classes of 2, 4, 6 and 10 are useful for standard format through to high definition video, with the ultra high speed classes of 1 and 3 aimed at real time broadcast video and 4K2k recordings. 4K recordings use a resolution of 4000 pixels, if you don’t specifically need one of these then you should spare yourself the extra expense.
Currently the price of SD cards is at an all time low, with 64GB cards claiming to be Class 10 available for under $10.
Suspicious? You should be.
SD cards are basically non-volatile memory with a governing chip. The chip is programmed to tell the device using it how big the card is and how fast it can handle data.
It can also be reprogrammed by the unscrupulous dealer, painted with the updated information and sold fraudulently.
For example, an 8GB Class 10 Micro SD Card could be reprogrammed to appear to the interrogating device as a 64GB Class 10 card, and repainted to match.
The problem is; now you have an 8GB card, which both you and your mobile phone, or camera or even your PC thinks is a 64GB card.
The result is similar to pouring a bucket of water into a pint glass; you lose most of it on the floor and, if you’re only finding out whilst on a job, or on holiday, then you have to spend extra time and cash to buy a legitimate card.
This isn’t a new or even a rare scam. Buyers upon most of the major online retail sites are reporting this problem increasingly, and sadly most of them seem to lack the technical knowledge to determine exactly what’s happened.
Like everyone else I use SD Cards, and before I put a new one anywhere near my devices I check it on my PC.
I use the FCR-HS3 USB 3.0 Media Reader  made by Kingston, mainly because it’s manufactured by a known and respected memory retailer.
It has excellent reviews which afford me the peace of mind when testing a new card that any problems are not the result of any low quality components in my reader.
Whatever reader you use, you should test it with a known working card before running tests on a new card.
I test my cards using the highly acclaimed h2testw, and the process is as simple as inserting the card and running the standalone program.
If h2testw finishes analysing with a green pane and bar you have a good card, if not then it will list the errors, where they are found, and also give you the actual likely size of the storage.
It’s that simple. Green means it’s good, red means you have a faulty, reprogrammed or damaged card.
You should of course avoid using these cards. Even if you know the size of the card, the fact that it has been damaged or altered could cause data loss and errors in the device using the card.
Hopefully the retail regulatory bodies will become aware of the breadth of this problem and take appropriate steps, but until and even after that point it is probably wise to check your new SD card purchases.