Oldguy,
Thanks for the additional info to this old thread. I got kinda busy this summer and held off buying one. I decided to buy 2 of the cards through Amazon, and aquire the EaseUS Partition software (thanks for the heads up on that software. it looks pretty robust for free). My cards were also 55ish each. I have had mixed results. The first card had the ext formatting, so I first ran it through the software reformatting it to fat32, with 32K clusters. It formatted, and I copied 20 gigs over to it. I put it in the phone, and nothing. I took it out and have tried every adapter I have in both XP, Windows& and on the phone, and the card is not recognized. It looks to be toast. I placed the second card directly in my phone, and it came up as bad/corrupt with the promt to reformat. I did so, and the phone formatted it to Fat32, and is working right now.
In reading a lot of the reviews on Amazon, it appears these cards are pretty much a crap shoot. Mine both came in the factory Sandisk packaging with the Green Android guy/gal on the package. Both identical, and both cards look the same, although one has more of pink and grey branding, rather than red and grey. I also read in one of the reviews that there may be an issue with ICS when it comes out to everyone. Has something to do with the Licensing of of the file structure from Microsoft and Android above 4.0. I am still running GB, so my hope is that as the card is now formatted Fat32 I should be good.
My suggestion for anyone thinking of doing the Sandisk through Amazon would be to read as many reviews as you can find. My Amazonfu is pretty weak, as when I bought my card they came from one company, but the link in my email confirmation links me back to a different supplier now. I am not sure how this all works with them, but I think if I purchase another card, I would be inclined to perhaps pay retail at one of the big box stores where you know of the return policy. I have not been through Amazon return, but from what I read I will probably not bother. Many of the reviews also talk of the cards failing after a certain amount of time. I would suggest to anyone doing this to have a backup plan in place where important or irreplaceable files are routinely backed up to alternate locations. Folks should be doing this anyway with removable media, but it looks like with these 64's it might be more critical.
So for a hundred bucks, I did get one working card, so I am fine with that. I think I will take my toasted card by my little computer shop in town and see if they can do CPR on it.
Craig
