Our company has a product that is being sold via channels. It uses SD cards for storage. Let me assure you, we have zero idea if our OEM uses good SD cards or the cheapest SD cards on a market that they can buy. We also test thousands of SD Cards to ensure that they work with our product should a user want to replace an SD Card. We acquire said SD Cards from "manufacturers" and all kinds of stores.

There is no rhyme or reason what works and what does not, what is fake and what is not. Apparently, we just had a 256GB no name, found on Alibaba SD card for $44 USD pass all the tests with a flying colors ( and go through about 100 full write/full read cycles ) while newest drop shipped from a "fulfillment" center 128Gb Samsung SD Card ( received via email directly to our Samsung contact ) end up being a 32Gb relabeled card.

[Edit: typos]

If you don't mind me asking... what's the link for that Alibaba 256gb no-name SD card?

How you do you purchase cards to guarantee you are not getting a fake? I believe fakes are pretty much everywhere now, in branded stores as well. Maybe buying those from stores that serve people who care helps (e.g., B&H photo -- as you indicate, a pro photographer losing his photos would be furious). They try to act on problems and work with suppliers quickly, but even this is not a guarantee.

A better approach IMO is to test the card first using easily available tools and use backups. This is more work, but can save you a major aggravation. My 2c.

> e.g., B&H photo

I basically buy all my camera gear from B&H. The prices are competitive, their shipping is prompt and reliable, and I don't have to think about counterfeits - I have a fair amount of trust that they will not devastate their entire professional-oriented brand by allowing fakes into their supply chain. Getting something fake from B&H would probably be more shocking to me that getting it from an Apple store! Amazon is a different story - you can hardly tell if it's the "real" sandisk (or whoever) you're buying from. Hundreds of listings from hundreds of unknown sellers for the same thing, all slightly different, maybe backed by amazon, maybe not? No thanks.

I'd rather have a reasonable amount of trust in the distribution chain and not have to run checks when the thing arrives.

Further to that, I buy as much IT stuff in general as I can get at B&H for those very same reasons. I even got a couple of 52-port PoE switches from them a few years back. Generally the prices are better than/comparable to Amazon and faster shipping (to the D.C. area, to be fair).

B&H has been the only online store (and maybe NewEgg) that I trust for SD/flash memory. Strangely, I bought a SanDisk SD card from Best Buy (in retail store) that went bad after a year of very light usage (write speed becoming slower over time), and although I'm sure it's genuine, it leaves a little bit of a doubt, even when I buy something from trusted retail store.

Thank you for your kind words and for taking the time to post this here. -- Henry Posner / B&H Photo-Video

I reply to you, but mean both of you who replied to my comment.

Thanks! I was really not aware that this is a problem and will likely test my cards in trhe future.

This is atrocious.

I don't trust any vendor anymore. I have managed to get fake SD-cards from a local retailer, Amazon, a webshop, and big supermarket chain.

It seems like the distribution channels are poisoned.

I bought a SanDisk SD card from BestBuy (at physical store), trusting that it was genuine, so I never ran any test. Only after a year or so, I think it might possibly be a fake, as the speed was incredibly slow - write speed was slower than my 7 year old SD card.

The data I was going to put on it weren't that valuable, mostly music and phone photos - I wasn't that distraught when I snapped the old SD card. A quick test that it wasn't completely fake would have satisfied me.