Dubious Memory Card? Check it with H2testw

[Jack_xD]

Not sure if this is the right subtopic, if not then please move this thread to Off Topic.

If you have problems with your new Memory Card like files are corrupt, the camera says its broken or you just got trouble with it, you may should check if the card is alright. It happens a lot that cheap memory cards or products with memory storrage get a tuning in capacity. They use cheap 2GB memory cards, print 8, 16 or 32GB on it, and manipulate it so it pretends to have a bigger capacity. What happens is, that 2Gb (As example) work perfectly, but everything that goes over this size will get corrupt or somehow just not work properly.

H2testw is a program made by the German computer and tec magazine Heise.de. It writes test data on the memory card and checks afterwards how much of the test data is still alright. If the memory card would be a fake card, it shows you how much of it is fake memory and how much is real. Also it will show you how fast it writes and reads the data of the memory card. The program also works with flash drives, MP3 players and everything that got memory.
Also very useful is, if you already got some data on the memory card, it writes the test files around your data, so it wont get deleted.

Its a very good program that doesent requires a installation, for a quick check if your new memory card is good or not. And if not, you got a proof and can demand your money back from the seller.

Here an example of a "8GB" iPod fake a friend gave me a while ago:

Because most of the people here speak english i found a english page for you guys to download it from.
Download from Softpedia.com

Otherwise you can download it from the developers page. Just click on download
Download from Heise.de

And no they dont pay me for this here
Sorry if i made some grammatically mistakes. German and stuff

 

[Screen name taken]

Nice find; I have been lucky enough not to need a programme like this. This post should be made a sticky.

 

[Jack_xD]

Thank you. That would be great :3

 

[Hillbilly]

Been using it for over a year

 

[Jack_xD]

And today exactly that happened. I bought myself a 32GB Micro SD Card with a well known Brand printed on it as logo. It looked kinda rough so i put it in my Card reader and checked it.
Oh what do we have here?

8GB are real, the rest was fake memory. Now im going to get a money refund with eBay buyers protection

 

[reverend]

I ran a few of my cards through this and found that the Kingmax 32GB Class 6 cards I have are quicker than the Sandisk 8GB UHC1 card I have.

I'd never heard of Kingmax before but longevity aside this proves they're a good card!

 

[reverend]

Just a quick follow up - I was getting 16MB/sec reading and 11MB/sec writing before and bought a Kingston USB3 reader yesterday. This now gives the same write speed, but read speed has increased to 40MB/sec - unfortunately I don't have the Kingmax cards any more so can't see how they compare to the three Sandisk Ultra cards I now have (they were cheap from CostCo and they offer a great warranty and will replace if the card fails before the warranty is up).

 

[Jack_xD]

So, that just happened to me. I needed a 64GB Micro SD card for my camera. So i went to eBay and bought a Sandisk card from a legit looking seller, for a legit price. Today the card arrived and everything looked fine... til i saw the backside. I got suspicious there because the text looked a little odd. Then i knew something was fishy. After checking it with the Program H2testw i knew, he sold me a fake card. And a really good looking one ! The real memory was just 7.3GB - I mean, if you dont have the knowhow, just unwrap it and put it into a device like a phone, would you know it? A few pictues here:

http://imgur.com/a/va9ak

 

[Xybone]

So, that just happened to me. I needed a 64GB Micro SD card for my camera. So i went to eBay and bought a Sandisk card from a legit looking seller, for a legit price. Today the card arrived and everything looked fine... til i saw the backside. I got suspicious there because the text looked a little odd. Then i knew something was fishy. After checking it with the Program H2testw i knew, he sold me a fake card. And a really good looking one ! The real memory was just 7.3GB - I mean, if you dont have the knowhow, just unwrap it and put it into a device like a phone, would you know it? A few pictues here:

http://imgur.com/a/va9ak

But if you're going to buy a memory card at a legit price, why not just go to amazon?

 

[Jack_xD]

Because i prefer buying things at eBay. And i'll get my money back with eBay's buyer protection, so..