- Jan 1, 2018
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I was looking to purchase a USB optical drive for my desktop so I could play and RIP CDs I own. I had originally considered buying a USB to SATA adapter and using one of my drives from the parts bin, maybe with a 3d printed enclosure. But to save that work I ended up purchasing a "YOTUO" branded one on Amazon for about 15 bucks. https://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-Optical-Desktop-Windows/dp/B09ZXMHC4Q/ref=sr_1_3? This advertises to be USB 3.0 5gb/s, new, and using an "Original magnetic core"
The drive arrived and works perfectly. The generic box itself has no branding at all, but the device has the YOTUO branding on it in multiple locations.
However, my first inkling something was off was when I opened device manager, I noticed it identified itself as "HP DCD A DS8A4LH USB Device" I figured internally it was just using a HP drive, which in itself is not an issue. However, Googling this part number revealed it is a legacy product, with mentions in reviews over 15 years ago, which was a bit concerning. The other thought was perhaps it is some sort of a clone of a HP drive and was using HP firmware, but this seems far fetched in retrospect.
Cracking it open was only 3 Phillips screws and revealed the following:
You can see the drive claims to be manufactured by "Vision" on March 3rd of 2023. For a few seconds it fooled me into thinking it was just a generic Chinese drive. But if you look carefully, you can see a barcode peaking through the sticker underneath the black area. "What could that be?"
They really do not want you removing the sticker, but it revealed this is a genuine HP drive, but a very old one, almost certainly recycled. Its very unusual they made such a good effort to hide the fact it was using a 15 year old HP drive by a rather convincing coverup sticker, considering they didnt bother hacking the firmware so it shows up as something other than the HP drive it is in Windows.
Additionally, I do not believe the drive is USB 3.0 5gb/s compatible. Appears to be using a slimline SATA optical drive plugged into a USB interface board. The Initio 1618 bridge chip present appears to be a legacy model that is only USB 2.0 compliant. Doubt this effects performance considering its an optical drive, but still not what was advertised. I also find it unusual that this device actually is using a Mini USB cable, but its not externally removable meaning its functionally a fixed cable.
There appear to be dozens of listings for drives using similar or identical looking enclosures being sold at roughly the same price. I suspect this is an off the shelf enclosure that is rebranded under many names and resold on Amazon. Thus, it is very possible that many different listings for these USB optical drives are also falsely advertised in a similar manner.
As far as what I'm going to do? Make people aware of this situation via this thread and report to Amazon. I probably won't even return it. The drive works as expected, I have ripped almost 60 CDs (most of my library) with it in the past 24 hours (im crazy i know). I suspect if I purchased another one at a similar price it would be the same thing internally. As far as a preemptive counter to the argument that "You get what youve paid for, why do you expect these are cheap?", this listing alone has over 800 reviews on Amazon, meaning its very likely thousands of people have paid for what they believed to be a new product and unknowingly recieved a model pulled from an ecycling bin somewhere, and reliability may suffer as a result.
If I were to purchase again I would probably spend the extra $10 or so for a new Asus drive that was almost certainly not manufactured in 2010
The drive arrived and works perfectly. The generic box itself has no branding at all, but the device has the YOTUO branding on it in multiple locations.
However, my first inkling something was off was when I opened device manager, I noticed it identified itself as "HP DCD A DS8A4LH USB Device" I figured internally it was just using a HP drive, which in itself is not an issue. However, Googling this part number revealed it is a legacy product, with mentions in reviews over 15 years ago, which was a bit concerning. The other thought was perhaps it is some sort of a clone of a HP drive and was using HP firmware, but this seems far fetched in retrospect.
Cracking it open was only 3 Phillips screws and revealed the following:
You can see the drive claims to be manufactured by "Vision" on March 3rd of 2023. For a few seconds it fooled me into thinking it was just a generic Chinese drive. But if you look carefully, you can see a barcode peaking through the sticker underneath the black area. "What could that be?"
They really do not want you removing the sticker, but it revealed this is a genuine HP drive, but a very old one, almost certainly recycled. Its very unusual they made such a good effort to hide the fact it was using a 15 year old HP drive by a rather convincing coverup sticker, considering they didnt bother hacking the firmware so it shows up as something other than the HP drive it is in Windows.
Additionally, I do not believe the drive is USB 3.0 5gb/s compatible. Appears to be using a slimline SATA optical drive plugged into a USB interface board. The Initio 1618 bridge chip present appears to be a legacy model that is only USB 2.0 compliant. Doubt this effects performance considering its an optical drive, but still not what was advertised. I also find it unusual that this device actually is using a Mini USB cable, but its not externally removable meaning its functionally a fixed cable.
There appear to be dozens of listings for drives using similar or identical looking enclosures being sold at roughly the same price. I suspect this is an off the shelf enclosure that is rebranded under many names and resold on Amazon. Thus, it is very possible that many different listings for these USB optical drives are also falsely advertised in a similar manner.
As far as what I'm going to do? Make people aware of this situation via this thread and report to Amazon. I probably won't even return it. The drive works as expected, I have ripped almost 60 CDs (most of my library) with it in the past 24 hours (im crazy i know). I suspect if I purchased another one at a similar price it would be the same thing internally. As far as a preemptive counter to the argument that "You get what youve paid for, why do you expect these are cheap?", this listing alone has over 800 reviews on Amazon, meaning its very likely thousands of people have paid for what they believed to be a new product and unknowingly recieved a model pulled from an ecycling bin somewhere, and reliability may suffer as a result.
If I were to purchase again I would probably spend the extra $10 or so for a new Asus drive that was almost certainly not manufactured in 2010
Last edited:
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