An unexpected surprise

[davidebeatrici]

Not an issue, just wanted to share an unexpected result.

SD card 1

SD card 2

Turns out both SD cards have a real capacity of almost 30 GB, despite the (fake) SanDisk sticker claiming 16 GB.

Differences between the two cards:

1. Text on the back.
2. The first has Chinese characters under the sticker.
3. The first has a slightly lower capacity and writes slightly faster.
4. The second has a slightly higher capacity and reads slightly faster.

[AltraMayor]

You've got a better deal than the vast majority of the people who buy fake cards.

[davidebeatrici]

For sure. The cards were actually part of this kit: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003575285528.html

Content

One of the two cards was sent to me as a replacement for an actual 16 GB one that died almost immediately.

Dead SD card

[ElonSatoshi]

You've got a better deal than the vast majority of the people who buy fake cards.

Okay, but... why, and how?

Is there a catch?

[AltraMayor]

@ElonSatoshi, the cards have more capacity (~30GB) than the painted information suggests (16GB). This is likely due to a mistake made by the person who made fake cards.

The catch is that these cards are probably not reliable.

[ElonSatoshi]

Can that happen if they aren't even fake?

I once bought a pack of, if I recall correctly, 3 16GB PNY USB drives from Walmart. When I plugged one in, I found out it was 32GB.

And yeah, one of them got bricked. But I'm not sure how much of it was it being unreliable, and how much of it was me plugging 2 USB drives into one hub and unplugging/plugging one while the other was being written to. I'm going to be very careful/avoid USB hubs in the future when I don't want to risk bricking one.

[AltraMayor]

Can that happen if they aren't even fake?

Yes, but it is very unlikely since manufacturers are way more organized than scammers.

[ValdikSS]

I bought a lot of 100 MicroSD cards of 1GB, the sticker says 1GB, but the capacity is real 4GB on all of them.
All come with a single ≈1GB partition with (identically) corrupted FAT32 file system.
40 MB/s read speed, 14 MB/s write speed.

Testing data retention on them with write-once-read-many pattern right now.