Gaming Unreadable Micro SD cards

[DSman59]

Hello everyone. I remember buying an M3DS Real flashcart with a 2 GB Micro SD card many years ago when it was considered one of the best and cost a whole lot of money. The SD card died in a couple of weeks. I blamed the cheap SD card reader that came with the flashcart. Today, I have repeated the same mistake - I used the cheap card reader that was supplied with my R4i-SDHC to copy files from my computer to a SanDisk 4 GB SD and now the memory card cannot be read. Luckily, SD memory is very cheap now, but I have lost many save files.
Do you think the card reader is at fault here or maybe just my memory card may have failed after more than a year of use? Has this happened to anyone else here?
Looking forward to your replies

 

[Sicklyboy]

What kind of card reader do you have? Post pics?

I would think it's the card reader killing the cards, as I've never had a card eever die on me like that before. Granted, I also use cheap card readers and I still have yet to have that problem.

Does your computer not recognize the card -at all- (is it showing up as Removable Disk in My Computer, and double clicking it shows "Please insert disk"?) Open control panel, go to Administrative Tools, open up Disk Management, and see if there are any devices in there with no drive letters or no partitions. If there are, assign it a drive letter and format it with the Panasonic SD Formatter.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/aluminum-shell-micro-sd-tf-card-reader-max-16gb-30087

I've been using one of these for a while with no problems. I love this reader.

 

[Magsor]

I would not blame the reader. SD cards die its a fact. Just like hard drives dies.
I would say I accept it and go on my life and I pray it does not happen again (probably will).

 

[EyeZ]

I've never heard of card readers damaging the microSD cards, only that some of the cheaper card readers do not last long.

 

[DSman59]

It has the same design as this one: http://www.videogame...der-p-6984.html It identifies itself as ID 14cd:121e Super Top (with the lsusb command in terminal, I use Linux). The SD card cannot be read anymore with any device. It is as if nothing is inserted.
EDIT: Maybe the SD card was defective because my Zoom H1 audio recorder had problems with it (couldn't write wav files) but other devices accepted it without problems.

 

[Originality]

As someone who has moderated a site dedicated to flashcarts in the past, I've heard many stories. The most common one was how those cheap card readers die fast, and can kill the mSD too. Yes, those cheap readers can damage the mSD, and not just by scraping and wearing down the contacts, but I've also seen cases of bad circuitry frying the mSD card.

It is also very common for cheap/fake mSD cards from eBay and Amazon marketplace to die due to cheap parts and overloading the flash chip (squeezing 4GB on a 2GB chip).

The best advice I can give, use a SD mSD adaptor, not one of those cheap readers. Then use any SD card reader. That makes all the difference.