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Are Generic PS2 Memory Cards Any Good?


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Are generic PlayStation 2 memory cards any good? They are pretty inexpensive, but the one I saw, which is 128MB, I'd use not only to back up all the saves from my previous memory cards, but also for new games I get. So far, I've used the PlayStation-branded ones which are solid and extremely reliable, but I don't want to get a new card and then lose all of my progress on dozens of games. Any thoughts?

Edited by Games Retrospect
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I've asked this elsewhere some time ago and the answers were mostly negative. This was in regard to PSX memory cards but I'd imagine it's a similar scenario with PS2. And I was particularly warned about the big un's, the ones which use bank switching or some such, I suppose the 128MB would fall into this category.

 

I'm usually skeptical when people recommend branded products only, but did not want to risk my saves and went and bought a few used Sony original ones on ebay.

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I was using a generic 64MB card for years with no problems, and then one day I could not load an important save from Baldur's Gate 2. Then, much later, I was able to do so again. It's possible that user error was the problem, but I'm almost positive it was a hardware problem.

 

I use only Magic Gate cards now. Most of them are Sony branded, but there are some other cards that are allowed to use the "Magic Gate" brand. I consider those as good as Sony cards for reliability.

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I've never had problems with offbrand cards, but I always stick to stock size (8mb for ps2 I believe) I think a lot of issues come from bank switching and whatnot. For people that use stock size cards and have issues, i susppect abuse in some form is a more likely culprit.

 

Memory is memory, it kind of either works, or if doesn't. Yes cheaper memory can fail faster, it all has limited write cycles, but most of what your paying for in name brand is, well, name.

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As long as it isn't the kind of memory with multiple pages then you shouldn't have any trouble. Anything with a little display or buttons that are needed to access additional memory are not to be trusted.

 

That said I just stick to official cards now. I have enough of them from my yard sale days that it is a non issue. The lose of save data is enough to make me abandon a game so I just don't risk it.

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BITD, I wouldn't have trusted most memory cards available, but today, I'd say that the cards that have survived to now are probably as good as original ones.

PS1 non-original cards here are so common it's hard to avoid them anyway. I don't recall seeing non-official PS2 cards but my advice is the same.

If you're worried about them able to retain data, get your original data, copy it on the memory card, and move, delete, copy back and forth from other cards and if everything goes well, then you should be fine.

Maybe, keep original PS2 cards for games you want to save data the most, or games that seems to be more fiddly with non-original memory cards.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I got the orange and black one (madcatz?) with my second PS2 back in 2002 and it's still holding strong. Oddly enough the yellow official PS2 memory cards are prone to issues, like games disappearing and unrecoverable corrupt blocks.

 

Really now?

 

Perhaps I need to get a Yellow ps2 card...

 

*weirdo who WANTS a corrupt ps2 card for an experiment*

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Every single generic PS2 memory card I bought back in the day is a (not very good) paperweight right now. They all failed.

 

New ones? I imagine they're probably something like a micro-SD card with an internal adapter. I'd love to see one ripped open. If that's the case, they could still be super unreliable, but there may be a way to save the data on one if it ever does go bad. (Or just swap cards.)

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