Stop buying flash memory on Amazon.

Reports of counterfeit and non-working memory never seem to end

SD cards may be dying in Android phones, but they have seen more and more applications in other devices. Dash cams, sports cameras, and even gaming consoles like Nintendo’s Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck make SD cards the hottest accessory for your portable gadgets.

But Amazon has an SD card problem on their hands. That is a problem as Amazon is the most popular online store for SD cards, and yet have the most pervasive problem for vouching a product’s authenticity and reliability.

Why? Why isn’t “Sold and shipped by Amazon.com” enough?

Amazon isn’t just a marketplace of several SD card sellers. Amazon also gets stock directly from the manufacturer and sells them through their website. But there is a risk to even buying directly from Amazon’s stock.

When Amazon gets a product with a specific bar code, they bunch all the products under one bin. This becomes problematic when genuine products become mixed with the counterfeit products and differentiation becomes a guessing game that is impossible to audit efficiently.

This poses two problems.

One, you may buy an SD card from someone who is selling it for less than Amazon and get a genuine SD card.

Two, you buy the Amazon-direct SD card from Amazon but you get a fake SD card.

Tips for buying SD cards

SD cards are very easy to counterfeit. The text on the front is not closely examined and the packaging is practically the same from a few meters away. Online descriptions could literally be the same as the genuine product. It is truly a betting game on Amazon.

Sometimes the SD card works properly but they fail several months down the line. That is even more devastating as these SD cards are most likely holding data with no real off-site backup; security footage, recently taken photos, digital games, etc.

To ensure you don’t get a fake SD card, follow these simple tips.

• Get your SD cards from Best Buy or a reputable big-box store. Best Buy would only buy directly from a reputable reseller or from the manufacturer themselves. Since they don’t mix their stock and separate Best Buy-sold items from Marketplace items, there is near zero chance of getting a fake card from Best Buy or Walmart or another store that supplies from one trusted source.
• If the price is too good to be true, it probably is. Prices on Amazon fluctuate all the time. Sellers are automatically chosen by the algorithm by the cheapest product available to you. Compare prices to your local technology store and the trends of that price. For example, there is no 1TB SD card that is less than 150 dollars right now, let alone 200. Check the capacity of your desired card and the manufacturer’s suggested price. If it’s significantly cheaper and the big box stores don’t have it on sale either, it’s probably too good to be true.
• Use F3 or Fight Flash Fraud. This is a GitHub project that tests your SD card to ensure it has the correct capacity. It does this by writing dummy data onto the SD card until the SD card’s internal controller says “I can’t fit any more bytes!” It can also tell you the sequential write of the card. Once it writes the data, it reads the written data to validate that it was stored correctly on the card.
• (F3 works because you physically cannot have more data on an SD card by the laws of physics. As a forewarning, it does not test its long-term reliability. However, most fake SD cards misrepresent their actual capacity. As SD cards get larger and thus more expensive, it is a “more likely” indicator of authenticity that if your 400GB Sandisk SD card has 400 gigabytes of usable space, it is most likely genuine.)
• Check the packaging and writing on the SD card. The best giveaway is on the packaging itself. Make comparisons to other pictures posted online. Ensure the text is crisp. Check every word that nothing is misspelled. On the SD card, ensure the writing is small but legible.
• If possible, check its serial number on the manufacturer’s website. Some SD cards are printed with a number that can be cross-referenced on the site. Keep note that these numbers may be used more than once and isn’t a reliable indicator of authenticity.

SD cards are not worth getting a substantial deal over. They house so much precious data, not to mention that NAND memory in the ones in SD cards are the most likely to fail. Buying from reputable sites is more important than the brand itself and ensures your money is not going to waste.