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The saga of the 64gb memory card

neelandan

Owner of dot net
The 64gb micro SD memory card in my lenovo tab suddenly died. It wouldn't store new items any more, but the old ones were readable. I unplugged it, loaded into a card reader and copied all original stuff into my computer.

Then I started looking around for a replacement. The cheapest. Because I'm cheap that way. I quickly established that the lowest was around 1200 (about $18).

On eBay, someone was offering them for 400 - a third of the going rate. The listing had disappeared the next day. But someone was offering "used" for 399 - I figured that it might have some life left, to be mated with a three year old tablet.

When it arrived, it was in new packaging which looked suspiciously counterfeit. I loaded it into the tab, fired it up and the capacity was reported as 62 gb - normal. I took a few photos and they all stored and read back okay. Then I switched it off, waited a few minutes, and turned it back on. All photos were gone. I could see the directory listing, and the file sizes were shown, but the contents had departed for the great bit bucket in the sky.

I sent a polite gentle message to the seller informing him that his merchandise was faulty. Via eBay messaging. After four days, I raised a claim and asked me my money back. And got it.

So, there are some memory cards with large capacity floating around. They are programmed to show the capacity on the label, and maybe retain some data while the power is on. I suspect the Chinese.

So beware when buying micro SD cards.
 

BirdOPrey5

Staff member
Administrator
VIP
This is a well known issue with cheap/counterfeit SD cards and USB drives. They make the drive report it has more room than it really does, when you use beyond the memory that is actually there the whole drive gets corrupted.
 

neelandan

Owner of dot net
This is different. NOTHING is readable after a power cycle.

This is a bit of plastic with encapsulated circuits. It takes some major manufacturing processes to produce cards which behave this way. I suspect someone is making them with the memory controller and some cmos memory chips which are obselete and therefore being thrown away.

I was suspicious and prepared to test the entire space because I had gotten it in a deal too good to be true. If the same exact thing was sold for the going rate (or slightly under) and I had bought it, I would be much less inclined to be suspicious.
 
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