KPO recently purchased a new phone and was looking for a SD card on Lazada. I was searching for the best value buy and finally found multiple 128 GB SD card selling for $12 - $20+. Can you believe it?? There is this sayings "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is", this is the same for everything including investment (20% guaranteed return? lol).
I did more research online and came across various sources stating that the firmware can be easily modified to show 128 GB when you insert the SD card onto your computer/phone but the actual capacity is would not be 128 GB. It will have a much smaller capacity (e.g. 8 GB) and once it reaches that capacity, whatever data you continue to write to the SD card will simply vanish! Imagine buying this SD card for your vacation, take lots of photos and return home to find only less than half of the photos are stored in the card. With this knowledge, I decided to buy it since Lazada has a full refund policy. No harm giving it a try (deep down KPO was still hoping he will get it cheap >.<)
After a few days, I finally received the SD card.
I opened it up and inserted it to my computer. It was showing 128 GB!
So I went on to download the program (h2testw) to test the SD card. It tests by writing fake data to the SD card first (I spent about 20 mins to write 20 GB as it was late at night) then it has the verify functionality to verify if the data that was written is there.
Unfortunately...
As you can see, the real capacity is only 16 GB and any data that was written after that were all gone. There are many ways to test your storage device. If you are interested, you can refer to this site - 8 Freeware To Detect Fake USB Flash Drives, SD Cards And SSD Disk.
I did more research online and came across various sources stating that the firmware can be easily modified to show 128 GB when you insert the SD card onto your computer/phone but the actual capacity is would not be 128 GB. It will have a much smaller capacity (e.g. 8 GB) and once it reaches that capacity, whatever data you continue to write to the SD card will simply vanish! Imagine buying this SD card for your vacation, take lots of photos and return home to find only less than half of the photos are stored in the card. With this knowledge, I decided to buy it since Lazada has a full refund policy. No harm giving it a try (deep down KPO was still hoping he will get it cheap >.<)
After a few days, I finally received the SD card.
I opened it up and inserted it to my computer. It was showing 128 GB!
So I went on to download the program (h2testw) to test the SD card. It tests by writing fake data to the SD card first (I spent about 20 mins to write 20 GB as it was late at night) then it has the verify functionality to verify if the data that was written is there.
Unfortunately...
As you can see, the real capacity is only 16 GB and any data that was written after that were all gone. There are many ways to test your storage device. If you are interested, you can refer to this site - 8 Freeware To Detect Fake USB Flash Drives, SD Cards And SSD Disk.
I would have expected Lazada to have verify it before listing the product for sale but I guess not. KPO has requested for full refund and is back looking for other SD card. Moral of the story - "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" and bad Lazada!
Thanks for sharing..I didn't know u could put test data inside and also didn't know it could be faked like that..
ReplyDeleteLazada has a good return and refund policy and I tried before ..Sure u will be refunded
Hi SGDividends,
DeleteThanks for dropping by. Everything can be faked now (even food), we just got to be more careful :)
Thanks for sharing! Insightful article indeed.
ReplyDeleteWelcome! Glad that you found it useful.
DeleteThanks for sharing. Thinking to buy it also.
ReplyDeleteHi Mr.Thinker,
DeleteHappy to share. Hope you have read the second part on the refund as well. If not, do take a look as you will definitely find it useful - http://kpoadventure.blogspot.com/2017/06/good-lazada-giving-away-free-16-gb-sd.html