A PC person in China not too long ago bought a brand new 512GB exterior M.2 NVMe SSD on-line at a discount value, earlier than turning into upset with the machine’s efficiency.
Price mentioning, the information switch velocity was so poor that this person determined to take away the USB Sort-C linked exterior drive to see the SSD put in inside. Disappointingly, the SSD’s circuit board turned out to be solely half the size of the usual product. To not point out, this SSD is definitely only a ‘disguised’ product, which incorporates 2 microSD reminiscence playing cards connected to the slot!
The specs, velocity, capability or configuration of those two reminiscence playing cards are nonetheless unknown. Nonetheless, in actuality, if every reminiscence card doesn’t actually have a capability of 256 GB, the firmware controlling the drive could accurately show 512 GB when the person plugs the machine right into a PC – a typical rip-off.
After ‘dissecting’ an exterior SSD, a Chinese language expertise person was surprised when he found that the machine really consisted of solely 2 reminiscence playing cards put in with a circuit board.
A better evaluation reveals that the reminiscence controller chip on the inexperienced PCB circuit board of this ‘faux’ SSD has a really previous design. To not point out, the USB-C port is definitely solely wired to switch information by way of a USB 2.0 connection – a long-standing USB normal!
It’s identified that this faux exterior SSD can attain the very best learn velocity of 100 MB/s. In response to MyDrivers, information writing speeds solely attain tens of MB/s, except two twin MicroSD playing cards are configured in RAID0 (unlikely).
Regardless of common warnings, customers proceed to be drawn to gadgets offered at superb costs from on-line marketplaces.
Purchase an inexpensive SSD on-line, obtain a product with efficiency inferior to a USB drive
In June 2023, Roman Hartung, proprietor of the expertise Youtube channel ‘der8auer’ with 169 thousand folks, shared the story of shopping for a 4TB Samsung SSD with the code identify “980 EVO” at a particularly excessive value. “discount” on AliExpress platform.
In response to Tom’s {Hardware}, Roman Hartung purchased the above SSD after being launched by the viewers. After all, despite the fact that he clearly knew this was a ‘faux product’, this Youtuber nonetheless determined to spend cash to ‘confirm’ together with his personal eyes.
Accordingly, the primary suspicious signal comes from the worth. Samsung’s 4TB SSD is offered for about 44 USD on AliExpress, which is sort of ten instances cheaper than real drives with the identical capability in the marketplace. The product code identify itself can be very suspicious, as ‘980 EVO’ (written on the field) doesn’t even exist in Samsung’s product catalog, not to mention the 4TB model.
Though it nonetheless claims the right capability, the faux “Samsung 4TB” SSD has extraordinarily sluggish learn and write speeds, not even akin to a USB drive.
Hartung additionally identified many suspicious factors on the packaging of the product field. On the entrance, the field says this can be a normal M.2 NVME SSD. Nonetheless, the learn and write velocity of the drive is sort of sluggish in comparison with a normal NVME SSD mannequin, which is just equal to a normal M.2 SATA drive. In actual fact, out of the field, the drive really makes use of a SATA connector.
To not point out, after eradicating the sticker on the drive, this YouTuber additionally found the act of erasing all identification marks of the drive’s elements, so simple as the SSD controller chip. Though it’s potential to learn some codes on NAND flash chips (with as much as 2 completely different codes on 1 SSD), der8auer couldn’t discover any technical details about them.
After inspecting the looks of the drive, der8auer determined to put in his new ‘Samsung 980 EVO 4TB’ SSD into the pc to test the parameters. Fairly surprisingly, when linked, Home windows displayed this machine as an SSD drive with 3.72 TB of free house.
Even the well-known onerous drive testing instrument CrystalDisk Information additionally shows the above free house stage. Nonetheless, when testing the learn and write velocity exams, this SSD mannequin “‘Samsung 980 EVO 4TB” actually…”revealed its true type”. Accordingly, the learn velocity recorded was 36.25 MB/s and the write velocity was even worse, reaching solely 0.84 MB/s. It may be seen that the velocity of ‘faux’ SSD drives is even slower than SSD drives, that are less expensive.
The “Seagate” faux exterior onerous drive is totally… clean, apart from a board that converts reminiscence playing cards to USD ports, and a soldered reminiscence card.
It’s identified that, together with the faux Samsung 4 TB SSD, Roman Hartung additionally tried shopping for a collection of different faux storage drives on AliExpress to confirm. For instance, this Youtuber purchased 2 Seagate branded exterior SSDs with marketed capacities of 64 and 128TB, together with an M.2 onerous drive with the product code “Samsung 980 Professional 4 TB” (whereas the primary model The corporate has not but launched in the marketplace).
After all, all of them have very low cost costs, together with the standard high quality of a faux product. For instance, contained in the “Seagaate 64TB” is just connected…a USB to microSD card adapter, together with a 64GB reminiscence card.
In the meantime, the Samsung 980 PRO 4TB ‘faux’ SSD mannequin (priced at 55 USD) is a bit higher, reaching learn and write speeds of two,473 MB and 1,057 MB respectively. Nonetheless, this writing velocity solely lasts for a short while, earlier than lowering sharply on account of lack of buffer reminiscence. As well as, the 4TB capability of the drive is definitely solely almost 1TB.
Artificial
