Wish.com is an e-commerce site offering fantastic deals on a mind-blowing range of items. You can grab anything from night-vision goggles and underwear to Bluetooth adapters and dog seatbelts for your car.

The site, founded by onetime Google and Yahoo programmers, has caught the eye of cracking bargain seekers.

Something else caught my centre: microSD cards. MicroSD cards with massive volumes sold exceptionally inexpensive. As it turns out, the vast bulk of these cards are fake. They piece of work in your device but show a fake book. Sellers are scamming buyers.

Here's how you avoid fake microSD cards.

What Does a Fake MicroSD Carte du jour Await Similar?

The following prototype is an advertizement on Wish.com for a Huawei 1TB Class ten MicroSD card. (Class 10 means it is really fast.) Now, at that place are a few problems with the image. Tin you effigy them out?

huawei fake microsd card listing wish

Huawei doesn't brand microSD cards.

That's it; that is the result with the image. Chinese tech giant, Huawei, doesn't make microSD cards for full general sale. They do make proprietary Nano-Retentivity Cards that work with their devices, simply they're a dissimilar animal birthday (and don't come in this size, every bit far as I know).

Want another example? The side by side example is a Verbatim 512GB Class ten MicroSD card. Why is this 1 difficult?

wish verbatim fake microsd card

Verbatim does not brand 512GB microSD cards (at least, they don't at the time of writing).

The Verbatim 512GB microSD card is trickier because Verbatim does make memory cards. Y'all tin can find their products on the net, lending the fake advertizement some credibility.

Here's your concluding example.

wish samsung fake microsd card

On offering is an "Original MicroSD Card." The retention menu doesn't even carry a specific brand. However, the microSD card has been very carefully designed to mimic the design of some other technology giant. Run into how the Wish.com Original MicroSD Bill of fare list steals the blueprint of the official Samsung EVO Plus retentiveness carte du jour?

fake samsung microsd card wish

You should annotation that Wish.com is far from the only site selling microSD cards with false retentiveness. eBay is brimful with counterfeit microSD cards. Even Amazon has sold (and occasionally withal does sell) fake microSD cards through its third-party seller scheme.

If you want to shop on Wish.com, check out these tips on how to do and then safely.

How Practise They Simulated the MicroSD Card Volume?

Spotting a fake microSD isn't e'er easy. Manufacturers are adept at copying designs. Information technology isn't merely the design copy you lot have to worry about.

The advertised volume is likewise a complete fabrication.

The scammers modify the microSD card controller to falsify the carte du jour book. When you plug the microSD carte du jour into your system, information technology appears as a 512GB microSD. Simply one time you kickoff writing data to the drive, you'll discover:

  • There is not enough space for your data
  • Your existing information starts being overwritten
  • The carte du jour crashes or corrupts, locking you out

Simply put, these cards are dangerous for your data.

How to Check a Imitation MicroSD Carte du jour

All in all, it sounds pretty bad. Still, if you have already bought a microSD carte from Wish.com, y'all can run through a few checks to figure out the true capacity of the drive in your hands. Hither are iii tools to help you out.

1. FakeFlashTest

fakeflashtest usb capacity checker

FakeFlashTest is a utility that checks the truthful capacity of a wink drive. The same squad develops FakeFlashTest as USB multiboot tool, RMPrepUSB. There are many simulated microSD testing tools, merely FakeFlashTest is easily 1 of the fastest effectually. It offers a couple of different tests, as well.

You can use the Quick Size Test to apace ascertain if a drive is false or non. The Quick Size Exam writes and reads 512 bytes at random segments across the drive. If the write/read procedure fails, it displays in the log. If you lot prefer an in-depth assay, the Test Empty Infinite selection writes and reads to all available space on the bulldoze, then compares the divergence.

As mentioned, FakeFlashTest is newer than virtually other similar tools and therefore is optimized for the job.

Download: FakeFlashTest for Windows (Free)

ii. H2testw

h2testw usb capacity checker

H2testw is the go-to tool for nearly people when checking the status of a microSD. However, it was developed years ago, and with the increase in drive capacity, the primary test can take quite a while to complete. That doesn't mean it is a bad tool, far from it. H2testw remains one of the best options available for testing a fake microSD card.

Similar FakeFlashTest, H2testw checks the gratis space on the drive by writing files to all available space on the device, and so reading them back.

Download: H2testw for Windows (Gratis)

3. USB Flash Drive Card Tester

flash drive card tester usb capacity checker

The USB Flash Drive Card Tester is your final go-to tool for checking USB wink drive capacity. It isn't the fastest flash bulldoze checker, taking xx minutes or so to cheque a 16GB drive.

To check your drive against its stated chapters, select Write, read, and compare from the dropdown menu under Select test blazon. If it throws out any errors, you likely have a counterfeit microSD on your hands.

Download: USB Wink Drive Menu Tester for Windows (Gratis)

iv. Fight Wink Fraud

Now, Windows users are well catered to when it comes to checking fake microSD cards. But what near macOS and Linux users?

Fight Flash Fraud (F3) is a command line tool that works with both Linux and macOS, allowing you lot to bank check and verify the chapters of a USB flash drive similarly to how the other apps work. The only issue is that the regular programme is, as mentioned, a command line tool, which not everyone is comfortable with.

However, all is not lost. If that sounds similar you, check out F3X, a gratis macOS GUI for F3 that makes information technology easier to use. A similar Linux GUI for F3, F3-qt, is also available.

Are Faux MicroSD Cards Worthless?

If you lot bought a 512GB microSD bill of fare on Wish.com and paid $10, you might want to enquire for your coin back. Chances are they'll offer a refund, and you can keep the fake microSD bill of fare. Later all, they're beingness sold in the knowledge they're fake.

The fake microSD carte isn't worthless, though. In one case you effigy out the real size of the memory using one of the tools above, you can set up to work making that memory usable. Later all, you have paid for it, and maybe even received the money back.

Fix Fake MicroSD Card Using DiskPart

DiskPart is an integrated Windows disk partition utility. You lot tin run it using the Command Prompt, and information technology is an piece of cake way to make the fake microSD usable.

  1. Kickoff, open up This PC. Make a note of the microSD card drive letter of the alphabet.
  2. Input control into your Start carte du jour search bar, select the Best friction match, then right-click and select Run as administrator.
  3. Now, type diskpart, then list volume.
  4. Input select volume [your drive letter]. You're now going to shrink the bulldoze to the real memory size. Please note the post-obit command works in megabytes. For case, if you desire to decrease the drive size past 1GB, yous would blazon "one thousand."
  5. Input compress desired [number of megabytes], and press Enter. For instance, if you bought a 512GB drive but its capacity is actually 8GB, you could type "shrink desired 504000." The command volition decrease the capacity past 504,000MB (504GB), leaving 8GB of working memory.

Reduce the drive to but beneath the volume of working memory. So, if you take an 8GB drive, apply the compress desired command to reduce information technology to seven.9GB. Even though the drive volume is at present inside its working range, the microSD menu controller remains the same. Thus, if you hit the 8GB limit, your data could well begin overwriting the drive.

In one case you have settled on a size, caput back to This PC. Right-click the microSD bill of fare and select Format. Wait for information technology to complete. Voila, you take a working microSD menu. Non quite the 512GB y'all idea, but better than zip.

Avoid Deals That Are Besides Good to Be True

If a bargain seems likewise good to be true, there's a solid chance it is.

As you have seen, in that location are hundreds of thousands of imitation microSD cards on the market. It is piece of cake to find them, too. It isn't that people are clicking on dodgy adverts or using a shady online retailer. Fake microSD cards end up in the listings of global retailers, likewise.

Image Credit: nanaplus/Depositphotos

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