News Buyer beware: Fake Samsung 1080 Pro 4TB SSD promising unbelievable 15.8 GB/s speeds for $43 is too good to be true

[bolweval]

Can't these manufacturers get busted for false advertising, or the seller, how are they able to get away with this??

 

[bill001g]

Can't these manufacturers get busted for false advertising, or the seller, how are they able to get away with this??

Costs too much money to try to enforce any laws. Lets take a simple case where the manufacture is in a different state and rips you off. Can you afford to file a lawsuit in a different state. Now try a different country where the laws are not as consumer friendly. Lots and lots of ripoff stuff sold on amazon of every type. When they get caught they just shut down and get new accounts. Then you have sites like ali express that makes no attempt to even stop sale of stuff that is actually illegal, just ripping off customers is nothing to that site.

 

[USAFRet]

Hmm.. I don't know why Samsung is mentioned in the article title... on SSD label I see no Samsung and to my knowledge Samsung doesn't even make 1080PRO model. It's like saying (Mercedes) A180 is a fake Audi -simply because Audi A6 exists.
Yes, it's welcomed if you point out the fact that we should be careful at buying, however that can be done more seriously, with less populism (a.k.a click bait). Just my opinion.

Bogdan

Samsung is referenced, because the labeling on that looks exactly like the next level Samsung NVMe drive might look like.
950/960/970/980/990....next level up might be 1080.
Same font, same colors.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok, so the controller just tells the OS whatever, but what is the actual capacity of the NAND on this drive?

"Capacity" is unknowable. And may not even be the same across multiple models of that sold.

Whatever barely functional chips the can get are put into that.

OK...maybe knowable if you take it apart and see what each NAND reports as.
This requires expensive equipment to test each chip individually.
Far too much work for a known fake.

 

[Order 66]

"Capacity" is unknowable. And may not even be the same across multiple models of that sold.

Whatever barely functional chips the can get are put into that.

OK...maybe knowable if you take it apart and see what each NAND reports as.
This requires expensive equipment to test each chip individually.
Far too much work for a known fake.

Isn't there a program that is designed to test these fake SSDs by continually writing data until it starts overwriting itself, and thus determining the true capacity? I know that validrive can do this for external drives, which you could always take this fake SSD, and connect it to an external enclosure.

 

[Li Ken-un]

As much as I roll my eyes at these types of articles (to people like me, the articles may as well be authored by Captain Obvious) I think pumping out such articles frequently is another way to help combat sales of fake memory/storage devices. This shouldn’t be just on Tom’s Hardware’s front page, but every other site publishing such content.

To writers all over: when you are bored enough to write yet another "how to choose the right SD card" article, why not instead bang out another "beware of fake [insert memory format of the day]" article? Making a proclamation of what not to buy is likely to do far more societal good than cherry-picking a few good products among a crowded market of good products. Your average buyer isn’t looking for the cream-of-the-crop, and those who are probably know what they want already.

 

[USAFRet]

Isn't there a program that is designed to test these fake SSDs by continually writing data until it starts overwriting itself, and thus determining the true capacity? I know that validrive can do this for external drives, which you could always take this fake SSD, and connect it to an external enclosure.

I forgot about that application.

But still irrelevant.
And one of those you buy today may not be the same chips inside as you buy a month from now.

 

[jeffy9987]

I forgot about that application.

But still irrelevant.
And one of those you buy today may not be the same chips inside as you buy a month from now.

its not about somone reading this and wanting to buy one its intrest in this as its not an ordinary fake this is the first time iv heard of a fake ssd using a real ssd controller and nand

 

[Colif]

its not about somone reading this and wanting to buy one its intrest in this as its not an ordinary fake this is the first time iv heard of a fake ssd using a real ssd controller and nand

its only a fairly new twist, for a long time they stuck to ssd sata drives that actually just have sd cards in them. Its only in the last 8 months or so I seen other formats used.

Check anything exists before buying it, and helps to know a sensible price too.

speed seems to indicate they are pcie 3 controllers so the speed of the drive is still one way to know its fake. I didn't think they would have pcie 5 controllers yet. Its too late once you bought it, depends on if shop honors returns.

 

[void555]

"Capacity" is unknowable. And may not even be the same across multiple models of that sold.

Whatever barely functional chips the can get are put into that.

OK...maybe knowable if you take it apart and see what each NAND reports as.
This requires expensive equipment to test each chip individually.
Far too much work for a known fake.

It is not necessary. Just write (almost) 4 TB and then check that files match bit-by-bit.

I do that with every USB stick, MicroSD, and SSD I buy (including a 4 TB model from AliExpress for $189 - and yes, it is real and works without issues, albeit not really fast). The reviewers didn't bother to do this, the most important part...

 

[Colif]

Software to test its size are listed here: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-an...b-flash-drives-bought-from-ebay-with-h2testw/

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

It is not necessary. Just write (almost) 4 TB and then check that files match bit-by-bit.

I do that with every USB stick, MicroSD, and SSD I buy (including a 4 TB model from AliExpress for $189 - and yes, it is real and works without issues, albeit not really fast). The reviewers didn't bother to do this, the most important part...

Testing 4TB of data when the read/write speeds will drop far below 100 MB/s is going to take a while. If it can maintain 100 MB/s I suppose that's only 11 hours (give or take), and it could be less. But realistically, there's no way a single Intel 96-layer TLC chip will hold 4TB. In fact, all you need to do is look at the data sheets.

According to Quasarzone, it identifies the single NAND chip as having two ranks of 512Gb, or 1Tb total, which means 128GB of storage. The highest density NAND packages at present have 16 stacks of 1Tb in a package, allowing for a maximum of 2TB. But this is NAND from several years back and is thus 1/16 that capacity.

So I guess someone should test the drive to see what happens after you write 128GB of data to it. Does it just fail, or overwrite existing data? It would be mildly interesting to see what's going on.

 

[GabrielFerrazTPU]

My guess is that the drive only has 128GB or 256GB of actual capacity — maybe 512GB (because there's only a single NAND chip) — certainly nowhere near 4TB. So even if it can put up some seemingly decent numbers in synthetic tests, real-world tasks like copying files are going to choke. Copying will hit both reads and writes, and at that point the controller may simply choke. The bogus firmware (assuming it reports 4TB?) would also run into issues. Real-world file transfer speeds are often half as fast, or even one fourth as fast, as what ATTO shows.

You are correct, i bought that drive as a project that i'll show how to "undo" this fake project, since it is in fact a 128GB TLC SSD with 2 512Gb B17A FortisFlash Die (Micron 64-Layers) with a trashy Realtek NVMe controller