A reminder about a scam that is still ongoing… Improperly labeled flash memory with intentionally faked partition tables. The scammers label and package a low capacity and slow speed memory card with the exact same labels and packaging as a genuine high speed, high capacity memory card. The card works fine (albeit slowly) until it hits the real capacity limit, which can be a fraction of the labeled capacity. These cards are all over ebay and are a real risk to travelers in less regulated countries, but they can also be found at major retailers. Selecting a known brand is no guarantee, since they can make near-perfect copies of the packaging used on genuine products.
I just got a fake 2gb card from newegg.com. The card was labeled A Data “Super”, 80x, 2gb and the packaging appeared legit. The partition table showed 2gb capacity, but both before and after formatting it always showed 1gb in use, 1gb free. Attempting to copy 1.5 gb to the card as a test resulted in a transfer rate significantly slower than the 80x rating (somewhere upwards of 10 minutes for a single unfragmented 500mb file using a fast USB 2.0 adaptor), and it ran out of space after approx 1gb was copied.
I don’t have a windows utility that will take a look deep into the partition table and my linux box is not currently functional, so I can’t do any more forensics. Still, it’s clear that this card is not a 2gb card even though it came from a big retailer and had all the right packaging to appear legit.
The moral of the story is no matter what brand of flash memory you get, and no matter who you buy it from, you need to thoroughly check it’s capacity before use because you simply can’t tell if it’s genuine until you actually try to fill it up. There must be millions of these things floating around, and many consumers will never know why their camera “malfunctions” by saying there is room for more pictures but the card reports that there is no more room when it’s only half full.
