[General Accessories] zarathustrax:
You should test the access speed and random read and write speeds if you can... I was curious about that card, cause lexar used to be a quality brand. Use CrystalDiskMark and HD Tach to get a good all around rating of the different speeds. CrystalDiskMark will give you the seqential read and write, and the random read and write with different size data, while HD Tach will give you the access time in microseconds, which is a score I've never seen any other benchmark tests do. A combo of those 2 test apps will give a good idea of the performance of your card in the areas that really matter when using with a phone. PM me if you need copies of the apps.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of deal did you get on that card?

If you or anyone else ever has questions regarding sd cards, feel free to ask me. I'd be glad to help out. I've been researching them now for several months and have learned quite a bit. I've found that there is so much misinformation out there, and the card manufacturers just make it worse.

And there's more realistic counterfeit cards out there than ever... even reputable sources can get them easily. The way the factories and manufacturing process works allows many opportunities for defective or low end cards to make it to market, which technically are genuine and have the gb size they're suppose to, but they underperform compared to what they're suppose to. I bet 25% of card owners out there have chips in their cards that were suppose to be discarded or have cards that don't perform as well as they're suppose to, but don't even realize that they're card is not completely legitimate. Even the manufacturers can't tell the difference from some counterfeits and the real ones without extensive testing and opening up the card to inspect the chips.

There's a bigger market for counterfeit than I think anyone realizes. That;s why if the deal seems too good, it probably is. Even through amazon you can get counterfeits or bottom of the barrel. I bet over 99% of ebay sellers sell counterfeit/low grade cards, even if they have 100% good feedback, cause they're good enough to pass as genuine, but you won't get the best performance from them that you could with a real. That's why I never buy from ebay and never buy bulk packaging cards in most cases, unless there is documentation and proof and full part numbers.

Also, to OP and anyone else this interests... I meant to respond earlier..you had told me in other thread that the ebay seller sent you a part number for that cheap sandisk. A sandisk card with part number SDSDQ-032G is not a full part number... all sandisk 32gb start with that number, and with bulk packaged ones they will say thats the part number... but its missing the important 4 extra digits at the end which all produced cards should have, like A11M or B36A, etc. If I can't find out the full part number, I wouldn't buy it in bulk packaging like that, because thats one of the times that low grade or counterfeit cards can be sold to retailers as legitimate, when they may not be. Even on Amazon, these bulk packaging sandisk cards oare sold with the part number sdsdq-032g, but without rest of the part number which is actually the meaningful part. Well, a few people who bought those from amazon found that they had gotten counterfeit. 1 of them even ended up being on 4GB but was reprogrammed to say 32gb in any computer.

So now a days, when purchasing an expensive SD card, take your time and be careful where you but from. Spend the extra to make sure you get quality, legitimate cards... it's worth it as a legitimate card will perform better and last longer. A low-grade one that didn't pass quality control which end up being sold by people anyways or cards that are smaller but reprogrammed to look bigger and real may work fine for a while, but will probably break quicker or performance will not be what it's suppose to be and may get much worse over time and when it's filled with more data, and it'll probably cost you more in the long run. Also, especially if you have important data on you card, you don't want to risk damaging, corrupting, or completely losing it.

Remember, if it's a much cheaper price than any other store like newegg or provantage sell them for, you have to wonder how they can sell so much cheaper, considering places like newegg or provantage buy directly from sandisk and probably get better prices than less well-known sellers would. The smaller shops and ebay sellers that sell really cheap buy bulk packaging cards which usually will be the cards that couldn't pass quality control to be sold in sandisk retail packs, or could be a mixture of many different sources, some possible being completely fake, or make by factory workers with chips that were suppose to be destroyed, or cards stolen from factory by workers, etc.

Most counterfeits are actually made in the production factories by workers making extra cash on the side, so they may be exactly like a real one except the chips happened to be lower quality and didn't pass quality control. Sometimes some manufacturers themselves will even sell the bottom of the barrel cards in bulk for real cheap instead of destroying them. There really isn't much profit made with these cards, so to compete with other companies like sandisk, who own their own factories, and keep prices low, they will cut corners and sell cards that are lower quality than they should be. There's a blog out there that found Kingston doing this.

Well, even info for now.... I have so much info and things I've learned the last few months about the memory card market and production practices, I could go on for pages, but I do think most of you really care to know all this.

I'm just trying to help my fellow xda brothers to make sure they get what is best for them and not get cheated. It's easy for a seller to make himself look legit and satisfy average consumers, but I know most here at XDA want the best for their money and their devices.

Sorry to go so off-topic... I should actually start a new thread to organize and put all this info so more people will see it and benefit. I can also put test results showing the important ratings of the different cards, like random read and write, and access speeds. Class ratings are so misleading and people who know no better will pay too much attention to class ratings when looking for cards for their phones. Class was good for digital cameras, cause it only rates SEQUENTIAL write speed, when with phones, random speeds is much more important, and for some uses, access speed is most important.

Class rating is so deceptive, and should be gotten rid of, and should at least have strict guidelines and have other ratings added. A class 2 Sandisk has faster sequential write speeds than most class 6 Kingston, PQI, A-Data, and many other brands.

I think I'm going to start working on a thread to give the straight truth about memory cards and give real ratings of the different brands, showing not only sequential speeds, but also random speeds and access times. It'll be my contribution to this great community, and will help many people when trying to find a good card for their needs... and and hopefully make people realize that higher class does not mean better card in most cases. With smartphones, generally higher class cards perform worse than lower class cards.... but what you're using it for and whet brand card it is makes a big difference there.

Anyone out there with different sd cards willing to help out by benchmarking if I decide to make this thread? It's be a few weeks before I'll have the time to really set a detailed thread like this, but I think it would help a lot of people and help make xda members more informed and dispel a lot of myths about sd cards.