Computers & Electronics

What happens to all the small size SD cards?

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  • Aug 29th, 2017 9:38 pm
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Jun 18, 2017
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The weird thing is the embedded/size limited market isn't really going away. Sure, your camera from 5 years ago is eventually going to obsolesce, but I see a need for these in various security, vending, automation, manufacture, and other applications where the lifespan of the device is measured in decades not years. I wonder if we'll hit a memory card crunch at some point in the future!
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Mar 23, 2004
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There seem to be a lot of places that sell "custom USB" memory sticks--i.e. sticks you can order with your company logo, etc. on them. While custom order SD cards seem to be harder to find, it's possible to get those as well.

Kingston sells in quantity directly though I'm guessing they will be the most pricey option.

You also have other places but as I said it seems like fewer places do SD compared to USB sticks. I found this place but it's not exactly cheap at ~$6.74 USD per 1GB microSD, $7.14 for 2GB cards. These are Class 4 slowpokes as well (higher speeds are more $$$).
https://www.promokeychain.com/branded-m ... p-176.html

The price goes down a bit with qty but still it's $6.07 per 2GB SD card (meaning like $600 US for 100 2GB cards) but you do get to have your logo printed on it if that helps you in any way (you only save $0.30/card with no printing). That's still like $10 per card though which is pretty hefty.

Overseas buying is probably much cheaper but you have to be worried about quality and fakes. Of course SD is not exactly a quality/reliable medium to begin with but buying 100 cards from China and having them be like 70% bad or worse not even 2GB capacity to begin with is going to be a total waste of money. Best idea is to buy/request some samples from a few different China-based suppliers and see what you come up with.
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rcxAsh wrote: This is an old article: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022 that sheds some light into Kingston's positioning in the flash memory card industry. Being from 7 years ago, I don't know if they still operate this way, but I'm hesitant to purchase any Kingston cards for anything important anymore. Essentially, they were just a reseller of flash memory from other manufacturers like Toshiba or SanDisk. The author is concerned there that the first-party manufacturers may have seen Kingston as a "demand buffer" and perhaps even selling them lower-grade flash memory. Part speculation, but rationalized by the author's experience.
But Kingston has always been that, no? Kingston doesn't make their own NAND but neither do a lot of other "manufacturers"/brands. Kingston is actually the largest producer of DRAM modules but pretty sure none of these use Kingston made memory chips/devices. By modules we basically mean DIMMs in the consumer market--the whole thing with the memory devices and the circuit board we buy at retail. As for flash, they are up there in the top 5 sellers of that too but they don't make the NAND. I'm not sure how the article thinks this is some kind of revelation:
bunniestudios wrote:Significantly, Kingston is revealed as simply a vendor that re-marks other people’s chips in its own packaging. Every Kingston card surprisingly had a Sandisk/Toshiba memory chip inside
:rolleyes: First off again this isn't like he just found the location of Jimmy Hoffa here, this should be somewhat common knowledge that Kingston doesn't actually produce the memory themselves. Secondly he even says "surprisingly" lol. Not sure how that's surprising.

I read the article and it seems they basically got fake SD cards but they got them through a distributor that was authorised by Kingston. When they accepted the return they must have realised what had happened. While they didn't give a reason to the purchaser (the guy writing the article) I'd imagine they realised the distributor passed them off fakes and they probably reprimanded them for doing so and/or possibly later cut ties with them.

Keep in mind the above all happened "over there", not in North America. I'm pretty certain had they been buying these cards from Kingston in the US directly, this never would have been a problem. Of course that's not where one would go when manufacturing in that part of the world obviously but China fakes be fakes unfortunately and that's par for the course. The main issue in that case seems to be that the distributor was Kingston authorised and still delivered fakes. Not necessarily that Kingston markets/sells shoddy or low-quality cards.

While it seems he has the technical knowhow to dissolve SD cards and look at them internally, I'm surprised at the conclusion he draws. One that it's some kind of crazy unheard of thing for brands to be using other manufacturers' memory chips and two that this points to a quality problem with Kingston, for the western retail market at least. This line probably sums it up the article best:
bunniestudios wrote:Some of these cards experience some difficulty in normal operation. I still hesitate to call Kingston’s irregular card a fake — that’s a very strong accusation to make — but its construction is similar to another card of clearly questionable quality, which leads me to question Kingston’s judgment in picking authorized manufacturing partners.
I think that's basically what we should take from this, not that Kingston US retail cards necessarily have anything to do with the problem mentioned and should have doubts about quality.

As we all [should] know anyway SD is not a reliable format in general, particularly microSD. The degree of miniaturisation and the fact that they are being sold at almost at the cost of the raw NAND they have on them (another thing the article makes note of) should point to where the quality/reliability factor is. Fakes and b-grade parts are of course going to be terrible but even the proper-quality A-grade cards are still pretty crap overall.
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Aug 28, 2005
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Thanks for taking the time to write up your explanation. I don't know that the average consumer would know that Kingston is not a manufacturer of flash memory. I assume most just stare at the shelf at BestBuy wondering which card to get, probably whichever is cheapest per GB unless they are looking for the highest "###x" speed. Nevertheless, I do agree with your analysis that the author's issue was more with the ability to separate the fakes from the genuine. I just found it interesting the lengths he went through to discover this. I think his assumption might have been that the supplier would never have given them fakes. A couple months ago I experienced my first failure of a MicroSD card, and it was a Kingston one, and it had the same appearance as the one that he described as failing. I believe I got that card some years ago in the US, bundled with a Verizon phone. Yes, the phone was probably packaged and assembled out of the US.. so of course..

Anyway, interesting and thanks for your analysis!
ES_Revenge wrote: But Kingston has always been that, no? Kingston doesn't make their own NAND but neither do a lot of other "manufacturers"/brands. Kingston is actually the largest producer of DRAM modules but pretty sure none of these use Kingston made memory chips/devices. By modules we basically mean DIMMs in the consumer market--the whole thing with the memory devices and the circuit board we buy at retail. As for flash, they are up there in the top 5 sellers of that too but they don't make the NAND. I'm not sure how the article thinks this is some kind of revelation:

:rolleyes: First off again this isn't like he just found the location of Jimmy Hoffa here, this should be somewhat common knowledge that Kingston doesn't actually produce the memory themselves. Secondly he even says "surprisingly" lol. Not sure how that's surprising.

I read the article and it seems they basically got fake SD cards but they got them through a distributor that was authorised by Kingston. When they accepted the return they must have realised what had happened. While they didn't give a reason to the purchaser (the guy writing the article) I'd imagine they realised the distributor passed them off fakes and they probably reprimanded them for doing so and/or possibly later cut ties with them.

Keep in mind the above all happened "over there", not in North America. I'm pretty certain had they been buying these cards from Kingston in the US directly, this never would have been a problem. Of course that's not where one would go when manufacturing in that part of the world obviously but China fakes be fakes unfortunately and that's par for the course. The main issue in that case seems to be that the distributor was Kingston authorised and still delivered fakes. Not necessarily that Kingston markets/sells shoddy or low-quality cards.

While it seems he has the technical knowhow to dissolve SD cards and look at them internally, I'm surprised at the conclusion he draws. One that it's some kind of crazy unheard of thing for brands to be using other manufacturers' memory chips and two that this points to a quality problem with Kingston, for the western retail market at least. This line probably sums it up the article best:

I think that's basically what we should take from this, not that Kingston US retail cards necessarily have anything to do with the problem mentioned and should have doubts about quality.

As we all [should] know anyway SD is not a reliable format in general, particularly microSD. The degree of miniaturisation and the fact that they are being sold at almost at the cost of the raw NAND they have on them (another thing the article makes note of) should point to where the quality/reliability factor is. Fakes and b-grade parts are of course going to be terrible but even the proper-quality A-grade cards are still pretty crap overall.

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