Widespread SD Card Scam: Fake Capacities & Moonlighting Factories

This is another video in our series of looks at scam electronics, but it's more widespread. Fake SD cards have found their way to legitimate retailers by being well-disguised.
Ad: Buy EVGA's NU Audio Card on Amazon (geni.us/zUcFp78)
Check out our coverage of the fake GPU here: • Fake GPU Scam & How Th...
Scam SD cards are common. These fake capacities with firmware, explained in this video, and will appear as "32GB" (or even up to "1TB"), but might only support 4GB in reality. It's often obvious that it's a scam, like with mismatched prices or untrusted sellers, but these fake SD cards have begun infiltrating the likes of large online etailers and physical retailers.
Thanks to our viewer who sent these in! If you have other interesting electronics, old parts, or products that are unique, you can send them in to the PO Box below. Please note that there is no guarantee we will use it, but we will minimally try to open them on stream.
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Editorial, Testing: Steve Burke
Testing: Patrick Lathan
Video: Josh Svoboda, Andrew Coleman
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[@GamersNexus]

TWO STREAMS THIS WEEKEND: On Saturday, 5/11, we will be live overclocking the Ryzen 2700X Gold Edition with liquid nitrogen. On Sunday, 5/12, we will be live overclocking the new 2080 Ti KINGPIN card. Joe Stepongzi will join for both! Check out our coverage of the fake GPU here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGS2ZGt-jteqjtE

[@nathanholmes2886]

Gamers Nexus ok

[@RS-bl7mj]

@@LuggageStardate He literally mentioned this in the video. What were you responding to exactly?

[@SerpentXTech]

I encountered these scams and reported them accordingly, but thanks for the content. I might send you in something after I am done testing. Not another sd card, but I will hit you up when I am ready.

[@mattsmechanicalssi5833]

Test them on a VM to avoid malware issues. Just saying.

[@shaneeslick]

G'day Steve, I live in Australia & am Very excited about another OC Stream with Joe Stepongzi, but I was sad until I realized that it will be this weekend not in 6 months (11/5 - 5/11) & that the KingPin RTX OC will be the next day not a month later 😜

[@zacharytaylor8523]

What is really amazing about this is the fact that 32GB isn't a large capacity anymore, a real 32GB card can go for under $7 So for someone to actively go out and produce a fake card and not even be bothered to have the full 32GB capacity really speaks to how low some of these scammers will go

[@C4CH3S]

I dont even know how they find 8 gig cards lol

[@Skubasteph]

i dont think there making them they might be sd cards that didnt pass quality standards and someone got them and resold them as fakes

[@jasongooden917]

NAQ Official you should see how easy it is to get tech in China. Strange Parts built a legit iPhone from scratch and even added a headphone jack with real Apple parts.

[@Klblaz]

I think those are just old 8GB/16GB SDs that sit in a warehouse somewhere and are resold as fakes.

[@co3476]

The scamners obtain these cards at unbelievably cheap prices. I'm talking about 10$ for more than 100 cards.

[@agenericaccount3935]

Illegitimate capacities and/or write class. Remember, if the price is too good, the product is probably bunk.

[@dickeyseamus]

Not on Amazon. Better off going to the corner drug store for these.

[@hofnaerrchen]

Problem with fake Samsung parts: They are sold at prices that are resonable.

[@louis.bodota]

Janked out memory controllers + low capacity nand = fake storage device

[@AB-vt1cp]

Amazon India has a huge bunch of fake stuff on the site from electronics to car polishes to god knows how many things sold at prices way above what you can find in the local market..I personally got duped when I bought a car sealant and swore never to buy from the specific seller again after reporting it, money lost..

[@HEXZ0R-]

lets sell crap for higher price then xD

[@scottrobinson4611]

I work in data recovery from flash storage. We get a bunch of fake media in all the time. Makes my life more difficult because we have pretty good knowledge of the legit ones so they're easier to recover. Then we get a 'sandisk' monolith USB with a layout we've never seen before and now we need to spend ages reverse engineering the chip so we can read it. sucks real hard.

[@chucknorify17]

"32GB is the maximum volume size for FAT32" Correction: 32GB is the largest FAT32 volume size _Windows_ will allow you to create. 3rd party tools and other OSs have no problems making FAT32 volumes up to the maximum spec volume size of 2TB

[@mjc0961]

Correct. Writing this reply in the hopes that it helps this comment get some much deserved attention.

[@aoelp]

I think even Windows lets you create FAT32 volumes greater than 32 GB. In an admin/system command line that is: diskpart sel dis X (clean) create partition primary format fs=fat32 (quick) Obviously replace X with an actual drive number (optionally pull this with "lis dis"), omit brackets and/or their innards. Or as you said using almost anything other than Windows Explorer should do as well.

[@chucknorify17]

@@aoelp Not under Windows 10. Windows 7 and earlier, yes. But not 10. Not clear on 8 and 8.1.

[@aoelp]

@@chucknorify17 I could have sworn that this was kept, but I could be wrong.

[@DrakkarCalethiel]

chucknorify17 Not working on win8 aswell.

[@Minitomate]

A few years ago I pre-ordered a 1TB USB stick. It was just for fun. The real capacity of that USB stick it turned out to be only 200MB. Yeah, only *200MB.*

[@superpork1superboy771]

@Darkfarfetch why would he lie about that?

[@SunnyZ]

Yeah, I bought a 32GB mp3 player. Tested it, turned out to be 8GB. Reformatted, partitioned gave it 8GB drive, works perfectly now. Complained to ebay, got money back and got to keep it. They are still for sale...

[@VietboyGamerUSA]

wow

[@aravindr4986]

eBay's policy is really good.You don't have to return the product if it's fake and you will get refund

[@mateusmt6194]

@@aravindr4986 But Ebay moral is not.

[@realcartoongirl]

Bay E

[@araigumakiruno]

Yikes,you get the product basically for free

[@paul2609]

Don't buy the EVGA soundcard... You can get something better for the price of that soundcard. Take a look at the JDS Atom which you can pair it with a DAC of your choosing.

[@WildkatPhoto]

I mean 32GB SD cards are what $8? How much margin can there be?

[@WildkatPhoto]

@Chaim Goldburger Right I get it, you get crap for a dollar but unless you are selling it directly, usually a bad idea because customers have been known to get super angry, you are taking your dollar crap and selling it for $4, not $9. Now turning $1 into $4 is not a bad gig but lets say you manage to dump off 100K of these things without getting caught. Oh and even ig you can sell them for $6 directly on eBay, again, after shipping, you are making minimum wage. Lets say also it you and 3 friends doing this since it unlikely you pull this off as a one man show. Ok so first you have to front $100K to buy your crap. Thats not a small amount and its not like you can go to a bank and borrow money for what is a scam. Lets say it takes you a month to do this. $100K in, $400K out in 30 days. That $300k. Split 4 ways that $75K each. OK, so I put in $25K for this job and I turned it into $75K in 30 days. Fine. But now what do you do? When the scam unravels you are done. You can't sell anything else to those buyers. You are burned for and for what? $75K. Sure you can move on to other marks but you can only do this so many times before someone breaks your skull or you get arrested (also, not mutually exclusive).

[@amnottabs]

you won't believe how crappy can these cheap SD cards quality be. I have a Sandisk 32GB Class 4 (lol) with super sharp edges and blurry text, if you put a legit Sandisk Micro SD at the side you would see how bad the materials and the printed text are; so there's no limit on how low can those counterfeit manufacturers go

[@lucuslopez6866]

A lot of profit. The cost to make is under $1. If they are making 32, 64, 128gb they would be selling it $10-$30.

[@UrbanaticLemonade]

Its not margin but Volume. Speaking of India more than 50% of the cards sold on Amazon/Ebay sites are fake.

[@megalith7796]

@@WildkatPhoto $75K is plenty for them, and there's no shortage of such works.

[@-eMpTy-]

I still don't know why manufacturers don't use anti counterfeit measurements on storage media. There was a big problem with fake Vapes and vape accessories back in the day so about all manufacturers included a scratch-off window with a security code on their packaging which then could be verified by the consumer on their website. It not only shows that the product is indeed original but also which exact product it is and how often the code has been typed in into their website before. I could imagine that this would also be a great counter measurement for counterfeit media devices.

[@ecpgieicg]

@Samurai Shampoo He is talking about code verification. It's cheap to do. In China, even tea has it. If you are distributing product globally, it seems a good idea. It's probably just NA shoppers are not accustomed to such things and businesses don't like doing what customers are not used to.

[@MikrySoft]

​@Samurai Shampoo The traits you mentioned are not identifiers, they are areas the clone factory couldn't be bothered to get right. Nothing you mentioned is hard to replicate or unique to Samsung, maybe except the Evo Select thing, but that requires people to know this and to automatically think "counterfeiter" instead of "reseller". There are two ways to properly secure your product against counterfeiters. 1. Use something (method and/or material) counterfeiter can't (at least while staying profitable) replicate, for example the special paper and inks used for printing money. 2. Use unique identifier, like the OP suggested. Assuming the number is sufficiently random and not easily calculated from other info that's available non-destructively to the card and it's packaging, counterfeiters can't just make new ones - they would come up as invalid or non-existent when checked against manufacturers database. The only way to defeat that method is to buy a load of genuine cards, get their numbers, make a batch of cards for each of the legit numbers and make sure none of your clients gets two cards from the same batch. Additionally, the bigger the batch, the bigger the chance two people bother to check if their cards are genuine.

[@SalivatingSteve]

A local smoke shop I found was selling counterfeit Suorin pods, the contacts were always messed up and wouldn't make a connection in my device. I no longer buy anything from that smoke shop anymore and took my business elsewhere.

[@strangestecho5088]

@Samurai Shampoo I was sold a fake 200GB. Shipped from and sold by amazon, I double checked. They apparently used to mix third party inventory in with their own at the warehouse for easier storage, so people were getting actual counterfeits at random.

[@uchihasasuke7436]

Yeah specifically for smok stuff.

[@michelvanbriemen3459]

inb4 scam SATA-SSDs that are just SD cards through an adapter with an encasing as a disguise

[@lucuslopez6866]

They got those alrdy

[@4.0.4]

Those already exists, and they hot-glue bolts and nuts inside to give it some weight, too. There are pictures online.

[@alexskywalker888]

Did you get a tour of Team Group's factory? xD

[@joeyverliesharen]

inb4 scam^2 sata-ssd's that are SCAM SD cards through adapter

[@marcobonera838]

@@joeyverliesharen or SSDs disguised as SD cards (?)

[@DukenukemX]

I'm actually more interested in a review of the EVGA sound card.

[@BITCOIlN]

I didn't know they make sound cards anymore LOL who buys this shit? every motherboard has integrated sound card since like 15 years at least.

[@GoldBold563]

@@BITCOIlN kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIHOe5qfi8eSeZY

[@paul2609]

JDS Atom with a dedicated DAC is better.

[@paul2609]

@@GoldBold563 That is an outdated video, it's 2019. AMPs and DACs comes a long way, you can buy the JDS Atom for $99 which is better than any soundcards over $250.

[@GoldBold563]

@@paul2609 Understood thank you. I just found a quick DAC VS Soundcard video to show him that people used these things as they are superior to on board audio rather than supplemental.

[@mikilsantiago4213]

Commenting on the sponsor , EVGA take notes from audio interface manufacturers if you want to bring audio cards back. Put some XLR connections on there. I can get a external audio interface like the Focusrite Scarlett for equal or less price and have balanced audio at high quality! That aside, great video GN! Love the blowing the lid off the scammers.

[@profosist]

You talking about different markets.

[@muaries12]

Finally a part without RGB!

[@paul2609]

You can buy something better for the price of that soundcard...

[@-DeScruff]

I have a feeling we are going to be seeing more fake 32GB cards in the future, as companies stop making them, despite still being used. A lot of devices out there in the business world still only use SDHC and do not support SDXC.

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

DeScruff Yep, already having a hard time finding genuine 2GB cards for older devices without SDHC support. There really should be someone in the SD card defining group taking on the long term responsibility to continue selling (and when needed making) cards at the limit of each previous spec generation, which currently means 2GB with pin adapters for mini and full, and 32GB with adapters for full.

[@imvirpil]

I use these videos to fall asleep. Otherwise my brain starts going crazy with cringey things I did years ago.

[@SuperG3FR]

We all did a stupid thing at some point in our life so don't be too hard about it

[@Atilolzz]

:^)

[@WildkatPhoto]

Oh hey, can you do a review of that EVGA sound card? As someone who remembers back when buying a sound card was a thing, Im interested to see them return.

[@chronicalcultivation]

They seem pretty pointless for anyone who doesn't produce music or video

[@PainterVierax]

I still have my PCI Asus Xonar in a box but now integrated audio chips are way better than 10 years ago so they often suffice. If you're really serious about sound, buy a good USB DAC and a proper amp. But beware, there is a lot of false beliefs and scams in the audio-enthousiast world.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

It'd be relevant to me if they had a way to process or tunnel legacy game audio things like the old DirectSound and EAX software calls. It's been one reason i stuck with Creative for this long. Their Audigy and X-fi cards are the only things that report full support for such things, in the games that expect them. That's not to say much testing for such feature compatibility was done back then, either. Most sound card reviews or onboard audio only talk about spinning up a dvd, maybe firing up dpclat checker and just a token listening off stereo speakers or headphones; almost none of them factor in a surround sound arrangement, or test more nuanced things expecting richer audio hardware support. It's rather depressing, when i have nitwits telling me "lol, onboard sounds fine" when i can pick out the missing notes in a game soundtrack because the $2 realtek chip used in every onboard ever, won't even try to play them correctly.

[@oldtimergaming9514]

@@chronicalcultivation No, they are not pointless. They are better quality audio and sound, just better overall. In no way are they just for music or video production. They have cards for that along with dacs/amps but sometimes a sound card is just a sound card. There is a huge difference between on board audio and a 30 or 32 bit sound card on good headphones.

[@chronicalcultivation]

@@oldtimergaming9514 if you're an audiophile with high end studio cans I guess it'd make sense. But for most gamers with their mainstream gaming headsets, is it still any sort of noticeable upgrade?

[@martijnholland1714]

A logo very similar to CE marking has been alleged to stand for China Export because some Chinese manufacturers apply it to their products.[19] However, the European Commission says that this is a misconception. The matter was raised at the European Parliament in 2008.[20] The Commission responded that it was unaware of the existence of any "Chinese Export" mark and that, in its view, the incorrect application of the CE marking on products was unrelated to incorrect depictions of the symbol, although both practices took place. It had initiated the procedure to register CE marking as a Community collective trademark, and was in discussion with Chinese authorities to ensure compliance with European legislation.[21] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking

[@dom1310df]

The existing of a "legitimate" China Export mark is different to manufacturers using the letters CE to mean "China Export"

[@megapro125]

Even the real CE certificate is complete BS anyway. In theory every product with that certificate needs to undergo independent tests however there's obviously no way for any government organisation to check every foreign product so they let companies put the CE logo on if they assure them that the product meets the CE requirements. The actual control wether the product really meets the CE standards can happen years AFTER market launch if ever because the authorities can't keep up with the millions of different products flooding the market.

[@SianaGearz]

@@megapro125 Authorities are not in the business of gatekeeping products from the market, or judging whether any individual product is safe or not, which is fundamentally a good thing, and represents a sensible tradeoff. It is up to the sellers of products in the EU to ensure that the products are compliant and that a CE test certificate that complies with the laws exists and can be presented. And yes, a manufacturer can perform their own testing and self-issue a CE certificate, but the odds of doing this correctly are pretty slim except for huge manufacturers. The importer may request a copy from the manufacturer and can then hire an expert (i.e. TÜV) to check that the test protocol is compliant. The importer may conduct their own product tests via such an certification company and get their own certificates, or the product may have been tested in China by one of the subsidiaries of European certification companies on behalf of the manufacturer, in which case just getting in touch with the European head office of the certification company will verify the certificate. Since all of this can get pretty complicated, and the stakes can be extremely high with the seller risking their whole business if one product turns out to be unsafe and without a legitimate, correct safety certificate to go with it, you'll find that a lot of major European retail chains only have a handful of trusted distributors they get supplied by, often just one, Ingram Micro. If you're a 100-store retail chain, entrusting your whole business to a piece of paper some company drafted up themselves without skill or expertise, would be very foolish.

[@justinnoel6273]

Question! Who decides the standard spacing of mounting screws on radiators such as those used in AIOs? I was told by my case manufacturer that they use the "standard" spacing of 15mm between the 2nd and 3rd holes(where the fans meet). I was also told by the manufacturer of the AIO that I bought that they also use the "standard" of 20mm on this AIO. Obviously someone is not correct. Both companies unfortunately are notorious for having exceptionally bad customer support.

[@km5405]

it might be more of a ''industry standard'' which is not quite the same as a official agreed-upon standard.

[@profosist]

Both can be standard.

[@uranium5694]

Always buy SD cards and USB flash drives from reputable stores and you will not have any problems whatsoever.

[@UrbanaticLemonade]

Cheers, I use this exact same strategy

[@josephwoosley8059]

The problem is people buy real cards from these reputable stores and then return the fakes with a comment such as "arrived too late" or "No longer needed" and have them repackaged or re-wrapped so their lower wage guy whose doing returns won't look at it twice and gets put back into inventory. It's then mistakenly sold to the next customer as new/legit. So honestly you can run into these anywhere but the larger the store the more likely it is as the knowledge base decreases with store or online presence size.

[@mjisurdad]

Even bestbuy had a problem with fake cards

[@tracerghost00]

Hey tech jesus, there is something I did experience as an employee of retailer I do not want to announce but there were times where I did receive either similar or just plain identical products while working with electronics. I remember many times I had to point out to the retailer that they might be fakes. They didn't take it serious in fact they just said "just give it to the employee in charge of putting it on the website. When I heard this I went down to that employee and gave them the product to which they decided on the spot to just sell it as another type of the product and give it the same price. The retailer I worked with was more concerned of getting it out the door than seeing it as a scam and let the customer worry about if he got scammed. I know that larger retailers like amazon or ali express will pretty much turn the responsibility of these scams to not being their fault but they have every right to make sure the customer is either aware if they found out or at least refund or take action to make sure the customer does not feel the penalty of shopping online.

[@microwavedsoda]

really glad I found you and your channel. In my 50's and building my first pc in the next month.

[@oompaloompa9000]

I had this happen to me when I bought a 128GB PNY usb stick from BestBuy. It was actually only 32GB. BestBuy took it back and refunded me, but I don't think they investigated anything.

[@snoitseuqpi1119]

Yeah, I bought a 64GB USB type C pny flash drive, it runs at USB 2 speeds though, with all the inconvenience of a type C interface, lol. It was advertised at 10GB/s I believe, but it's def not even close,FAT32/NTFS, custom sector size etc, nothing helped. It's a USB 2.0 flash drive with type C connector, sucks balls.

[@maighstir3003]

@@snoitseuqpi1119 That is perfectly valid and within spec. USB type C is merely a connector and does not require USB 3.0(/3.1 gen 1/3.2 gen 1) or higher speeds. Of course, saying that it does 10 GB/sec is very much false advertising in that case.

[@JoJoboiWav]

that's literally what happened to me rn

[@SkyeX26]

hair raising audio. 10/10 quality content. this is why i pay into patreon

[@TechyBen]

I've got some 128 GB ones... but AFAIK they worked when I checked them (full write/read)... but I'm SO worried about all the fakes out. :( (IIRC about half of the blank/unbranded 32gb cards I tested were fake, and none of the "1terabyte, only $5" ones were real. ;)

[@roicarlesfontan6630]

only one dislike....the scammer

[@dafoex]

Or a nerd expecting an analysis of the PCB, since they show a naked card in the thumbnail?

[@thelastcube.]

@@dafoex I was actually expecting one, though it's not something to hit dislike on imo

[@braydennturner]

Okay, Steve I need a 4k version of your desktop wallpaper at 4:37... 100% for personal use, please Steve? Please. I'll even pay for it haha.

[@randomnoobpt]

The problem is not just the buyer baiting the scammer, but also "reliable/trustable" websites spreading some deals of fake products. Can tell that happened here in Portugal from 5 news websites sharing a cheap Kodak USB drive claiming to be high quality and cheap, although that product doesn't even exist on the manufacturer's website!

[@MalleusSemperVictor]

I came for the video on its title but I stayed for the EVGA sound card promo.

[@klobiforpresident2254]

I stayed for the content but came for the promo.

[@deepakmohapatra7416]

Same case once happened with me as my dad was an electrical officer in merchant navy and they went to china for some trading and he got a 1TB WD external HDD from a sales man who comes to the ship port to sell. So atleast 20pieces of those HDD were purchased by the crew then after some hours or so when every body went for copying each others file nobody exceeds 250gb of copying capacity. Then when my dad called me and asked me what could be the issue i had no idea. So when their trip got over and i had that HDD in my custody i did some testing of bulk 250gb transfer and single by single 250gb transfer. The disk did not exceed that mark also it was usb 3.0. Then i opened up the HDD casing to find out what could be the issue and the actual HDD is of 250GB only while some trickery leads to tell OS that its 1TB. also that 250GB hdd is from 2004. So all those 20 units that those crew had were all fake.i havent tested that 250 GB hdd with other SATA-USB 3.0 interface because befor thinking of doing so i disassembled the HDD to get a look of the spinning drives so its completely became a trash/fake paperweight.

[@jagc2206]

SD card formatter works way better for formatting than built-in windows, even for USB

[@aravindr4986]

Better? Explain

[@shawnpitman876]

@@xnonsuchx But can it run Crysis?

[@aravindr4986]

@@xnonsuchx 👍

[@Dia1Up]

Nice to see sound cards! (Not the SD ones that I'm talking about to be clear)

[@56djkey]

I am very experienced with these as I fell to this scam when I spoke with Chinese sellers about these in depth. The best way to not fall for this is CHECK THE PCB COLOR. The edges of the REAL is WHITE while the FAKE is BLACK. You can check that without even opening the package. Also can see the edge on the photos when buying online.

[@1angrykoala]

This is al great info for determining if you have already been scammed, but by then its too late!

[@Autotrope]

What I have always wanted to know is if you can rewrite the firmware to reflect the accurate capacity, so that it can be made useful again albeit not at the claimed capacity.

[@xDownSetx]

I was actually stressing over exactly this with an sdcard I bought a few days ago. Luckily when I wrote the retropie image to the card at 60+ MB/s my fears were put to rest. Thanks for the tips on identifying the fakes, my Samsung packaging matches your description of a real one.

[@paulghignon4092]

I refuse to buy SD cards anymore because of this, I got burned twice from once from ebay and once from Amazon. The ebay one was before I knew about fakes, the Amazon one was sold to me by Amazon, so yeah. I've also seen fakes floating around at a local Walmart once before, so these things are everywhere, and what's more annoying is that some are so good it's impossible to know until you test it.

[@petesmimob]

Found the same problem with a Sandisk 256gb which only had 30mb , this was also from Amazon, this was subsequently returned. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

[@mirzagalib8984]

Damn, I just ordered one. Most prolly fake too :/ . Will do some test though to confirm that.

[@RighteousBruce]

holy shit that EVGA soundcard with RCA out.

[@Markinpuff]

What is also possible is that you get a 32gb device that works fine, that also invokes malware.

[@ugzz]

I love the way the colors bleed at 6:10. Artists of the interwebz, get one of these and make some sweet digital corruption art!

[@BigDavy1968]

I tend to stick to the EVO Select models which are made for and sold directly by Amazon. Have several cards with capacities up to 256GB and have never had any issues.

[@HerbaMachina]

This may seem like a really petty suggestion but at 6:46 the effects on the background graphic regarding the falling blue bars marking the time left on the graphic being displayed and the the wave of the brightness of the hexagon pattern witch is there for aesthetics is incredibly distracting for an ADHD brain. Particularly because the rate at witch the hexagons cycle through brightness (Or I believe it's actually transparency being manipulated) doesn't match or happen to be at a multiple of the rate at which the blue bars are lowering down the screen. Basically because of the difference in motion they draw the eye heavily away from the actual content in the center being shown because they're constantly a different pattern and it attracts the attention of the ADHD mind like a moth to a light bulb. Anyways love your guy's content, as always you're one of the most in depth and informative Tech Channels out there and I just wanted to leave some feedback on behalf of the ADHD minds that love tech.

[@katerwhall1865]

GN doing journalism for the people. that's why I'm here.

[@Gengh13]

This is the reason I test every single sd card I buy with F3Tools. BTW: in Linux, I don't know if it works in windows.

[@tomnicolet]

I got stung by a similar scam, the worst case is when you use these cards in something like a phone or camera. I found that the wear levelling mentioned kicked in when I filled the card with photos, it just started overwriting the data at the start of the card corrupting the earliest images :(

[@davidbass6780]

Buy these in bulk from a site that's good with warranties. Then claim refunds under the warranties noting the inaccuracies or evidence of fakes. You'll then get free SD cards, the supplier loses out and the company that sold them don't lose profits and also removes the listing. Could be good for school teachers who always have students that don't bring in storage media for one reason or another? You just gotta find the real capacities then scribble it over the fake capacity once done. The actual chips used aren't typically bad. Just modified to report fake capacities.

[@SianaGearz]

Due to wear levelling and modified firmware, they WILL likely error out soon by trying to write to a region of flash that doesn't physically exist. The flash is looped onto itself and aliased several times over, so the trick only works as long as the card was originally empty and you keep adding data to it until its capacity.

[@davidbass6780]

@@SianaGearz of course you'll need to reflash it with the correct file size. But regardless this isn't a bad idea. Not that I recommend everyone replaces their SD cards for fakes and claim refunds on them. But it can be useful for those that teach students that requires them but they don't bring their own in or keep forgetting to. And if anything it'll waste the scammers money and resources. But if you're a teacher or working in some kind of profession that requires the use of SD cards for storage then you should be capable of figuring out how to. Since you just wouldn't be working with files that you gotta transfer about unless you're competent with computers and programs.

[@SianaGearz]

@@davidbass6780 i'm all for wasting scammers' money and teaching resellers (even unsuspecting ones) caught peddling fakes a lesson to get their sourcing process in check, but good luck finding the correct factory flash tools for all the possible processors used in these cards and firmware images for specific cards... and not getting your stuff full of viruses in the process. Though... it might be easier than i thought. I googled around Russian sites since i can read some Russian and i know they are more inclined to salvage shitty cheap things than us Europeans or Americans. There's a Chinese program called MyDiskFix and the low-level format allows to specify a custom size. A Russian site offers an English translated (binary hacked) version of the program. The program performs some controller and IC detection and apparently understands just enough about them to dictate the size. It stands to reason that this is exactly the kind of software that Chinese fakers use to modify the cards in the first place, because chances are, none of the people doing the leg work are the brightest of engineers, because those are needed elsewhere. The program appears to be a few years old, it's not entirely clear whether it'll work on newer SD-Cards or has been updated or replaced with a similar program, which if this is the case, you might have to find an ally in China to help you figure things out. I've always wondered whether i should learn Chinese but have always been hesitant to start doing so, my list of languages i only speak insufficiently well is already pretty long, and it just seems so daunting.

[@lenn55]

Buy this kind of stuff from a retailer like Costco that has a no questions asked return policy,.

[@Strike_Raid]

Yeah, I got one from Amazon about 6 months ago, Samsung 64 GB. It never occurred to me that the capacity may not be there since it still isn't even half full but the write speed is about 4x slower (maybe more) than it should be.

[@TommyCrosby]

The first SD Card I bought on Amazon was a fake, I was new to Amazon and didn't knew you could get a fake. But Amazon refunded me right away without any fuss and that was in mid 2015. It's kind of sad to see this being rampant to this day.

[@pamelahusky1179]

I got a fake 256gb one from a thrift store that orders them and after being informed that they were fake, they continue ordering and selling them.

[@PenPeng]

I've seen the solution to this type of scam on some RC/quadcopter parts (mainly EMAX motors). There is a scratch-off code on the packaging. Kinda like the code on steam wallet cards or some gift cards. Every single code is unique. And when they manufacture a product and package it, they generate and print the code and enter into their database. When you receive the product, you scratch off the code and then enter the code on the website of the manufacturer. That website then tells you if your code is genuine, and if it has been checked before. If it has been checked before, or there's no code or the code isn't in the database of genuine products, your product is a fake. I think that should be done with way more products.

[@thelastcube.]

And 32Gig cards these days are like ~$4 That's just _way low key_ even for a scammer

[@markrtoffeeman]

retailers have a duty to audit their manufacturers. Retailers only get scammed if they don't audit their supply chain. ISO90001 etc etc etc

[@taiiat0]

that's assuming that the Retailer has a verification process in the first place. they don't really, anymore. and the big ones are the worst offenders.

[@Carrigon]

It happened to me, too, with a few usb drives a few years back. They were supposed to be 32gb, turned out one was 6gb and the other was about 8gb. They would corrupt anything past that. It's really annoying. Doesn't look like this scam will ever go away. They'll just keep doing it as the tech grows.

[@lfla0179]

Over here in Brazil the POLICE was looking for 16GB flash drives, in a public competition (reverse) auction. The policeman said: "we are going to test these devices with a 15GB video cut in 2GB pieces. If any of these fail to read after written, you are UNDER ARREST." Half of the contestants GAVE UP the reverse auction ON THE SPOT. Scammers, the lot of them.

[@Prash_86]

The GN wallpaper at 4:50 on the desktop screen would look great on a t-shirt.

[@PercyPanleo]

It would be funny if one of these scam cards actually had a higher data capacity than advertised (Like having 64 GB on a "32 GB" card)

[@liesandy291]

Oh a soundcard ad..... It's so rare nowadays.

[@PaulTheFox1988]

Slight correction, FAT32 is capable of supporting 2.2TB partitions and 4GB files, it's an arbitrary decision by Microsoft to stop larger drives than 32GB from being formatting to FAT32. I believe it's because of the risk of data loss and corruption as you go over 32GB, and the performance of FAT32 falls off a cliff as the file allocation table exceeds a certain size, along with a host of other issues. You can see that FAT32 supports larger drives by using gparted to format a drive to FAT32, which doesn't have the same restrictions as Windows.

[@a.stevens3550]

Thank you for a video with REAL & useful info.

[@Anton1699]

Quick correction: The maximum volume size for FAT32 is not 32GB. Yes, Windows won't allow you to format larger volumes in FAT32 (I believe it's doing so to promote NTFS) and the SDXC spec requires exFAT, but you can use third party software or even diskpart.exe to create larger FAT32 volumes and they'll work just fine.

[@will3641]

I have a friend keep buying this kind of usb drive on eBay, and he keep on complaining to me that's why he kept getting knock-offs.......I really don't know what to say to him.

[@PascalBrax]

Hey Steve, I really liked this video. You sound way more excited and interesting, I wonder if the Linus Roast did have something to do with that... :D Keep going, you rock!

[@ivanv754]

The upgradable op-amps caught my attention

[@SianaGearz]

I think that's stupid. Read Nwavguy maybe.

[@ShaneMcGrath.]

Been happening for years. I got a refund off ebay/paypal a few years ago showing them the fake 256gb micro sd card I bought. The packaging didn't have the correct Samsung printing, The sd cards edge was black instead of white, Black plastic is cheaper for counterfeiting.

[@dafoex]

The biggest scam is the price of the "real" ones. It costs very little extra to manufacture a higher capacity SD card, yet the retail price seems to go up exponentially. I'm sure I've seen 32 GiB SD cards go for £32 before now. Maybe that's why Maplin closed down, they just couldn't compete with eBay prices...

[@ludovik242]

I have lost a month worth of travel pictures in Europe to a scam card like that. I've learn my lesson. Never buy memory from non reputable stores and always test the cards.

[@brothatwasepic]

Ahhhhhh so that's what SPDIF stands for. I thought it was super panda drops in Friday

[@davidtrottier1398]

Sony Philips Digital Interchange Format. I'm Old and have been building PCs since the 80s.

[@BAdventures]

If it's too good to be true then it probably is. Good video warning people and showing the differences 😎👍

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

B Adventures Vlogs Except scammers love to seem genuine by cheating people out of the full price instead.

[@emboop2346]

Thank you for covering this issue please dig deeper and see if it's just Samsung cards or is everywhere

[@PainterVierax]

it's everywhere mate, just Samsung is the most popular brand in this market.

[@Commandos12]

r7 2700x gold edition box next to a pile of scam sd card ... -_o....

[@freikinpoptarts]

Ive had a 128gb samsung micro sd ive been running into some frustrations with and this explains it all!

[@strangestecho5088]

Amazon sent me a 200GB Sandisk that I later realized was a fake, after the return period had already expired of course. It looked legit enough to not raise suspicion considering I bought it directly from Amazon. It's actually a 52GB with all further files written becoming corrupted. Paid 75CAD in 2018 for it.

[@CarcharothQuijadasdelased]

To buy high performance (+expensive) sd cards the best option is buy at a place where you can return the card if it is fake. My experience so far in ali exppp is rather good, one of my cheapo cards is unbranded and it is really 32gb and class10 (2,90€), the other is a "sandisk" stile (red/gray) with other brand and "Class 10w" it give me some problems to test it in faketest and h2testw but at the end I wrote +22Gb in video files and everything worked, the speed was barely class 10, but it was just 2,60€ so I have no complains.

[@denvera1g1]

I bought two 512GB micro SD cards(v30) for my insta 360 camera, boy was i surprized when the first one died on the first day of use, $90 down the drain and two dives and dive tanks wasted, but the second one worked fine and have sinse tested that one to be a full 512GB, Why did the first one fail on the first day(with less than 150GB written)? likely because the camera battery died and damaged the card in some way, no longer visible to any device, also during my testing, the one that still works to this day (6 months of sparatic heavy use) was more like a v70 card, with sequential write speeds staying above 70MB/s and averaging a respectable 95MB/s

[@Quetzalcoatl0]

3:20, image is super noisy, it's even distracting (That open area on the black is constantly flicker in my field of view, making me look at it). At 8:04 the contrast levels are less then the 3:20 one, resulting in a much much clean image (probably due to YT heavy compression that doesn't like near black colors resulting in heavy artifacting like a really high ISO). Doesn't the editor use 1 preset for all the "Steve talks on the table" shots ? Cmon Steve, you have over half a million subs now. This should be unacceptable now.

[@milesbarrineau1584]

Hey Steve I live in Charlotte and have a SanDisk "128"gb micro thumb drive that is actually at 32 gb that I got from bestbuy. Any interest?

[@B33FY2011]

What companies should do is have a verification process on their sites. So like say Samsung or SanDisk put codes on the back of the SD cards and then you enter said codes on the site. It then verifies whether or not it's legit or fake. That would be so much easier than having to spot niche little differences in it's look, feel and having to download programs to determine authenticity.

[@duser]

I got scammed with Kingston cards. It was formatted as 16gb, but it barely stored above 2gb before completely giving up. Like it no longer mounts on my phone. And the only way you could differentiate between it and a legit card was the reflective nature of the marking ink or something. Very smart but infuriating.

[@dudamoos]

What tools did you use to test the fake cards? I think if someone wants to protect themself from this kind of thing, having good tools to test with would be a good start.

[@bob3daman]

Always check user reviews that show reported tests when buying any data storage device

[@MsUltrafox]

Same goes for USB drives. (SSD's maybe too) I have seen plenty of sites where they sell 1 and 2 TERABYTE USB drives. Sadly there is only ONE company (as of yet) that makes them. Kingston HyperX Predator and they are bloody expensive.

[@PitfallHarry72]

It's unfortunate that this happens so often. A good rule is, if it's ultra cheap, as in too good to be true, it's probably fake. I see a lot of warnings about these in the Raspberry Pi Facebook group I belong to.

[@Alan_Skywalker]

Just test every usb drive and flash card you bought with Rufus. This small utility can do write/read compare tests to expose any faulty drives or cards. It even has separate data pattern optimized for SLC/MLC/TLC flash memory, which was done by Pete and me collaborating with eachother. BTW it can also write ISO files to the drive to create a system installation media.

[@Nonexistanthuman]

I sorta want that sound card I’m rocking an fatal1ty creative card at the moment

[@unitedhybrid187]

Meanwhile, I ordered one 128GB one from Amazon and they accidentally sent me the box it came in with 10 of them. They were legitimate but 10 of them for $25? Can't beat that!

[@crowdemon_archives]

oof

[@jbotthegamer9243]

When you get a 16gb usb at a random shop and its only a 200kb usb

[@MrHack4never]

The barcodes are different because they are for different systems, that's why there's the (/apc) and (/am) difference, AM-azon

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

MrHack4never Yep, the sticker that covers up packaging text is usually a store price tag indicating the store inventory number, not the manufacturer number. This was another mistake in this half-assed video.

[@2112user]

Best advice I can give.... Grab a raspberry pi and load linux on a known good card. Use that to format all media before plugging it into your main rig. Second, once in your pc, use crystal disk to check the cards cap. and speeds.

[@UrbanaticLemonade]

Growing markets like India has this pesky/shady sellers out on Amazon/Ebay so much that almost 50% cards are Fake from Online retails. I have been victim of Fake Memory cards so many times now, I have stopped purchasing low cost items on Ebay/Amazon and switched over to Local Authorized Franchise shop for purchase of Pen drives, memory cards .

[@uss_04]

I use h2testw to check if the full capacity is writable before accepting it, and CDM to check for speeds.

[@bowiemoonen2565]

They did aswel .

[@TheRealFobican]

Surprisingly this wasn´t a LTT video but rather from GN, not that I expected the scaming on sd cards to be covered on a little different channel.

[@1ManWrenching]

I wish Customs tried as hard to stop these coming into the country as they do with new batteries for Apple laptops.

[@JohnHoggard_aka_DaddyHoggy]

I bought a 128GB Samsung Evo from Amazon. Except, despite much testing - it never worked as advertised - terrible read/write speeds and once more than 16GB was written to it, it all went horribly wrong.

[@ReatuKrentor]

If you want to test these and they might contain malware, would a VM be secure and prevent the host system from being infected?

[@celcius_87]

Thanks GN for shining a light on this

[@hzmeister9596]

Wow these scammers are dumb. Most people will notice 3/4 of the capacity missing but many likely won't notice the slow speeds in their camera/phone. Considering all of the physical packaging and labeling costs waaay more than the silicon itself, it makes no sense to to risk all those returns and/or amazon shutting down the store..

[@tensevo]

You know you have a good product when scammers try to replicate it.

[@willsutton54]

evga nu audio.....very interested in when you will be doing a review on these and how they compare to onboard and the different variants of onboard audio. Very hard to do as its all about personal preferences but still would be good to see

[@paul2609]

Look at the JDS Atom instead.

[@1XSTEALTHTWINTURBOX1]

Yeah i got one. I tested the Speed and noticed read and write speed wasn't right. Then did a fill test and it would repeat itself and stop around at 32GB or something. I ordered 256gb model.