Random access rants – SD card readers can cost you your data nowadays?!

UPDATE 2025-11-17: TP-Link UA440C recognizes the SD write lock slider. It is more expensive, though. I have yet to see the behaviour for faulty writes, but this already gives me more confidence.

I am a little bit annoyed. Not one, but two microSD card readers I had bought failed me. One of them was a Framework module, which was defective on arrival (which I did not replace at the time due to shipping difficulties), the second an AlzaPower USB-C SD/microSD card adapter.

The interesting thing about the second one? It will not tell you if the write to a SD card has failed/is busy. Rather, it will just tell the OS that it has done so.

It is this one. Or rather used to be. It has ultimately suffered from the effects of ecological recycling.

Oh, and the second annoying thing: it can not detect the SD write lock switch. That is the small plastic slider, which should signal to the OS that writing is forbidden. Even more annoying is that this is now apparently normal.

Rant over.