How to Spot a Fake SD Card

It’s not that easy to spot a fake SD card from a legit one, especially if you aren’t entirely sure of an SD card’s specifics. It will be absolutely harder to tell if you’re buying this online rather than in physical shops. You may ask what’s so dangerous about purchasing an unoriginal SD card when it’ll still work the same as a legit one? Maybe so, but do remember that counterfeits don’t work as well as the original ones. It may work now but fake SD cards become defective faster than legit ones.

Fake SD cards will not have the storage capacity promised on the packaging, and they definitely won’t have the read/write speeds as the original. Your data will end up getting corrupted within a snap. We don’t really want that, do we? Since the goal of having an SD card, after all, is to be able to store as many items as possible.

Here are a couple of tips to spot counterfeit SD cards from real ones. Fake SD cards will have some similarities with the original ones, from the packaging all the way down to the card itself. Still, they won’t always be exact copies of each other; fake ones will look off at some part or another.

First, check the storage size and price. Some SD card manufacturers don’t offer anything beyond 256GB or even 512GB. While 1TB SD cards do exist, they are very far and few in between, and they will come with a very hefty price tag. If you see a 2TB SD card for a cheap price, run away because that product is absolutely fake as 2TB cards don’t exist just yet.

One of the many examples of a counterfeit Kingston SD card.

Next, inspect the packaging. The packaging of the fake ones will often look poorly designed. There will be printing errors, the colors will be off, the size of the logo can be too large or too small, or the letters won’t be as readable as they should be. Counterfeit products don’t put much care into the packaging as they’re sure that most people won’t notice the difference unless they look into it.

Huawei does not sell SD cards, so these are all fake.

Lastly, observe the SD card itself. Does the print on the card look sharp and has quality? If it’s slightly unreadable and the edges of the letters are not crisp, you may have a counterfeit in your hands. Another point to consider is the physical look of the SD card itself. Edges of SD cards produced by Samsung are known to be colored white while fake Samsung cards will have their edges in black, as counterfeit producers will find it troublesome to do that much detail.

Some SD cards will have serial numbers on the back of the card, or sometimes it’ll be printed on the front. Most fakes won’t trouble themselves with this detail. If a serial number is missing, you probably have a fake one.

If you’ve already bought your SD card though and want to be sure, there are still ways to check if what you have is legit or not. For one, you can use programs such as H2testW 85 (Windows) or F3 27 (Mac/Linux) to run tests on your cards. These programs will be able to tell you if the SD card you have is true to its storage, its read/write speeds, the serial number, manufacturing date, model number, and conclude if the SD card you have is legit or not.

We hope these small tips were able to help you. Never get scammed again with fake SD cards. Remember only to buy SD cards through trusted retailers, and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

5 Comments

sheeluv says:

4 years ago

I bought a fake sd card. I know it’s fake because it has a cheap price, but I bought it anyway because why not? It is cheap and I thought it can save my money for buying an original one and it can also store my files as an original sd card do. After I insert it into my tablet, my tab detects that it’s fake. So after a few days, it got corrupted. I always format the card every time I on my tablet (I always shut it down every night) and it’s so frustrating to format it every day. I thought, yeah.. that’s what you get for buying a fake one. Lesson learned for me so I bought again an original one from Samsung. It is pricey but I know it will last long.
- Reply
Dreet says:

4 years ago

Install SD insight from Google Play Store
- Reply
TechBuyer says:

6 years ago

What kind of idiot gets fooled into buying a fake? Talk about being too greedy to think things through. LMAO! Just buy your micro sd cards online from Lazada in the Laz Mall section. All the stores there are guaranteed by Lazada to only sell original items. Stores like the Sandisk Flagship Store, Digi-Serve, PCWorx, SDShop, etc.
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melvin says:

6 years ago

This is the reason why I only bought SD Cards and Flash Drives at a legitimate physical stores even though the prices are approximately two times expensive compared to those available online. The prices online are too cheap to be true.
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DT says:

6 years ago

Then you are wasting your money. Lazada has 7 days warranty for these kind of things. I have ordered several cards that turned out to be fake. I always got the money back and in some cases, I even got to keep the fake flash drives! I just created a small partition and formatted. Like turning a fake 64GB drive into a “real” 16GB one. For FREE!

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