FAKE vs. Authentic SanDisk Ultra Compact Flash Cards

• You can use any PCMCIA CF Card Adapter to reveal its true manufacturer's code property inside the CF card. The common USB Card Reader will NOT be able to reveal this information.
• A Lexar 32-bit CardBus Reader was used to identify the manufacturer part number of the two 4GB CF cards under the test, using standard Windows XP or Vista's "Device Manager" or using the "Safely Remove Hardware" process on Windows taskbar.
• Genuine SanDisk CF, will display as "SanDisk SDCFH-.... SCSI Disk Device" for SanDisk Ultra CF range, "SanDisk SDCFX-.... SCSI Disk Device" for SanDisk Extreme CF range. Substitute "...." with the actual capacity of your card in MB. So a genuine SanDisk 4GB Ultra CF will display as "SanDisk SDCFH-4096 SCSI Disk Device".
  
• Fake SanDisk CF will display as other incorrect part number. One such fake CF displays as "TRANSCEND SCSI Disk Device" instead, clearly a rebadged CF from Transcend CF card.
• Why REBADGING? The answer is HIGH PROFIT. The market price of corresponding 33X or 45X speed Transcend, A-Data or NoName OEM CF cards with different internal electronics components are clearly way less than half the price of the similar speed SanDisk. Double or triple the original selling price is achievable by simply rebadging them to become the 66X speed SanDisk Ultra II CF, when most buyers have no idea the CF card they have received is simply a rebadged fake SanDisk Ultra II card. So you must always check your cards!

AUTHENTIC	COUNTERFEIT

Clue #2 Front view

1. Genuine has 4 round metal corners inside the black plastic housing. Fake has 2 sharper top corners and 2 rounder bottom corners. Some fakes have the front label as upside down.
2. Genuine has thick black plastic housing at bottom edge and are in consistent with side edges as well. Fake is way too thin at bottom edge and thicker at side edges, resulting in overall larger internal metal surface area. Another fake variant has non-straight metal edge on the left and right hand side of the card as shown.
3. Genuine has shinny aluminum surface with brushed horizontal pattern. Fake has matt/dull stainless-steel surface with no pattern.
4. For 4.0GB card, genuine has a wider font face on the '4' digit. Fake is bolder.
5. Genuine uses print ready/control vector art technique to print the label. Fake uses inferior hi-res bitmap to copy the genuine label, so zoom in a bit to see the printing flaw.

Clue #3 Back view

Genuine has 4 round metal corners inside the black plastic housing. Fake has 2 sharp top corners and 2 round bottom corners. Some fakes have the back label as upside down.
1. Genuine has thick black plastic housing at bottom edge and are in consistent with side edges as well. Fake is way too thin at bottom edge and thicker at side edges, resulting in overall larger internal metal surface area. Another fake variant has non-straight metal edge on the left and right hand side of the card.
2. Genuine has shinny aluminum surface with brushed horizontal pattern. Fake has matt/dull stainless-steel surface with no pattern.
3. On the white label, genuine 4GB card has additional instructions to operate the card as 2GB Fat16 modes or 4GB Fat32 mode and a hardware switch which is not found on 2GB card. Fake uses the same 2GB white label for all 2GB/4GB/8GB cards with no hardware switch on 4GB card.
4. On the white label, older fake has extra 'TM' word appearing on top right hand corner of the 'CF' logo, product code incorrectly labelled as 'SDCFB', different font face on the '03 SanDisk' and  'CF' logo.

AUTHENTIC	COUNTERFEIT

Clue #4 Bottom/Side Edge view

1. Genuine has one line of white color production batch/serial number 'BE06xxxxx MADE IN CHINA' on the bottom edge or 2 lines of 'BE06xxxxx' & 'CHINA' on the side edge. Older fake usually has none or has other different pattern of characters like: 'ASS0606DG',  'ASS0607DH', '650712198 8DC04G1MP2-2LC00 ASS'Y IN TAIWAN' and '2GH ... 0602'. Some are in yellow-green (non-white) color. If you see other variant patterns, they are also fakes.
2. Newer fakes are now being reported to have the 'legitimate' batch number like the genuine so this may no longer be a useful criteria

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Genuine has 4 very rounded corners on its SanDisk clamshell. Fake has 4 sharper corners as depicted by the view below. If you compare the clamshells side-by-side, you will better notice which is a genuine SanDisk clamshell.