128 Gig SDHC Cards

[lordbobjones]

Hey all,

Recently I purchased two 128 Gig SDHC Cards at a fantastic price. About $10 each with shipping.

Anyway I can use them on my PC in the SD card slot no problem but when I put them into my Pandora, I get a no card inserted message. I can see the card but if I try to format the card or open it I get the no card inserted message.

Am I missing something?

Also what is the best format to use? I planned on leaving them in my Pandora until I get a Pyra so linux formats are fine. Just curious what peeps recommend.

Thanks for the help.

LBJ

 

[slaeshjag]

Probably a fake. Get it tested. H2testw or something.

 

[elw3]

Am I missing something?

Most likely that no one will sell you WORKING 128gb cards for that price.

could be the old trick of looping a smaller memory some times, eg its a 2gb drive and the firmware starts writing from the beginning multiple times.

Anyway, type "dmesg" on your pandora to see some more info.

 

[DaMummy]

ebay? eBay. Take your losses and move on.

 

[Wally]

Report seller to paypal, get your money back and destroy the fakes.

Go buy some real ones. TigerDirect is cheap enough (That is, if you're in their shipping zone)

 

[kirkanoss]

picked up a 128gb from newegg for good price few months a go and have had it formatted ntfs and works good really think you got fake tho think i paid around 60 but was good sale. anytime i buy sd cards i always loot around to see what they are selling for and discard any price far under the average

 

[Binky]

At least in the UK, SD cards have just passed the 2GB/£ mark - making a 128GB card cost in the region of £60. Perhaps a bit less by now.
I would be extremely suspicious of anyone selling 128GB cards for $10=£7

ED's shop sells some good-quality SD(HC,XC) cards, and allows you to help support your favourite open-source hardware project!
Look here: https://www.dragonbox.de/en/286-sdxc-128gb-class-10-card-emtec-accessories-3126170112828.html

 

[Fixit]

I had this happen to me as well a couple years back. The girlfriend thought she found a good deal on a memory stick pro duo 16GB which was huge at the time. So we bought it and after dumping about 2GB of music to it the thing would start making the console freak out. File names would be there but nothing would open or everything would suddenly corrupt. I agree with Wally and DaMummy here, someone got you for a fake...

 

[Swordfish II]

Could just need to be formatted. I don't have NTFS support enabled on my Pandora and high capacity SD cards are usually NTFS (not found). Format to ext3 or FAT/FAT32 and see if the Pandora recognizes it.

 

[thatgui]

I recommend FAT32 as it probably is the easiest solution, but I am on the same road es everyone else, you were probably scammed

 

[lordbobjones]

Nope the cards are good. I can use them in my windows laptop and a laptop I have running Ubuntu reads them fine. I will try the various formats and see what happens. Thanks!

 

[Grench]

Please write 120GB of data to it then do a binary compare back to source as report back?

 

[Binky]

^ Have you tried writing (and then reading) 128GB of data to/from them?

As mentioned above, some SD cards pretend to be able to store more data than they really have room for.

Edit: Gah! Ninja'd!

 

[Asaggynoodle]

I've been there and done that OP. There are VERY few things I will not buy on eBay, but SD cards are #1. I will only purchase an SD card if they are A.) Used, and tested working. or B.) From a US based seller with High Feedback, and feedback regarding these exact SD cards as fully genuine.

There are a few ways to tell if they are fake.
Write to all of the available space (In your case ~120GB mind formatting space) then read back that data and test its hash would validate fully with the original file's hash.
OR you could simply look closely at the card itself. Look for the Serial number, Place of Manufacture, and other super fine details that are found on a genuine one. For example, Samsung usually only manufactures in South Korea, or Tiawan. If it's made in china, then that's obviously fake. Not to mention the packaging should be fully sealed and not just some clip. Remember, they need to avoid theft, so it should be a bastard to open it as usual.

Good luck!

 

[lordbobjones]

Following up: First let me say how outstanding you all are. I love this community and the support from such knowledgeable people! Thank you!

First after following the hints from everyone, it looks like these cards are indeed a fake. The labeling is well done, the packaging was professional, but I am not able to write the 120 gigs of data. So I add myself to the list of the many who have been taken by SD card scams.

On the good side: I purchased these from Amazon and so I have already contacted them and filed a complaint against the seller and requested a refund!

Thanks again friends for being amazing!

 

[elw3]

Nope the cards are good. I can use them in my windows laptop and a laptop I have running Ubuntu reads them fine. I will try the various formats and see what happens. Thanks!

This is a good example on how easy they can trick buyers, the average person will never notice until it is too late and possible important data is lost.
A friend of mine actually had this very problem: He bought an USB drive in a real shop, not from the interwebs, an actual large chain of shops. So yes you can even be a victim when buying offline.
Germans might remember the story here, DM photo brand that was.
He copied over some data and it turned out that after 500MB the drive automatically deleted what was written before.
I told him the drive is a fake one and he had quite some struggle to get refunds in that shop.

 

[Grench]

Following up: First let me say how outstanding you all are. I love this community and the support from such knowledgeable people! Thank you!

First after following the hints from everyone, it looks like these cards are indeed a fake. The labeling is well done, the packaging was professional, but I am not able to write the 120 gigs of data. So I add myself to the list of the many who have been taken by SD card scams.

On the good side: I purchased these from Amazon and so I have already contacted them and filed a complaint against the seller and requested a refund!

Thanks again friends for being amazing!

I have been disappointed in how Amazon has been failing to police their own marketplace. They are being inundated with fake memory cards and fly by night sellers that are eroding the brand image. Many of the items available on Amazon's website are not actually stocked and sold by Amazon, but are instead listings from 3rd party vendors. Unfortunately, there are many of those 'vendors' who are actually the scam artists that made us all stop buying electronics on Ebay. Frankly, Amazon needs to employ their own Turks to locate the scams and then shut the scammers down - and preferably prosecute them in their own countries for fraud.