- The fake Samsung 990 Pro SSD was found to be very convincing
- It looked authentic, reported decent volume, and even performed like the real 990 Pro in some benchmarks.
- However, a full suite of tests has revealed vulnerabilities in the drive – and there are steps you can take to protect yourself
Fake SSD and RAM scams are becoming more and more common as these products are already very expensive, but most of the time it is easy to spot these scams — though not with the latest Samsung imitation drive.
There’s no obvious fake packaging or product labels, or other obvious offers here, and as Japanese tech site Akiba PC Hotline found out (via Tom’s Hardware), you might not realize that this Samsung 990 Pro SSD was a fake clone at all. As Akiba puts it: “Fake SSDs have become more advanced,” while warning that these fakes, “hard to distinguish from the real ones, are now flooding the market” (remember that this is a translation).
Admittedly, there are hints that more experienced Sherlocks have been taken in there, such as the wrong model of the SSD controller in the drive (a Maxio MAP1602, instead of the Pascal controller it should be).
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There are a lot of people who wouldn’t think to check that kind of detail, though, and overall, this drive hack looked completely the part, and reported the correct capacity when installed.
It can keep up with the action through some benchmarks, and as Akiba found out, some basic tests showed performance very close to what you’d expect to see with the Samsung 990 Pro. It was close enough that you wouldn’t question the drive on that basis, whereas most fake SSDs will be completely off the scale with any such test (and may not even report the correct capacity).
However, with further testing, Akiba found that large file write operations (copying a large video to the drive) saw the fake SSD crash after its expected performance (when it ran out of cache). At these events, it was running at about a fifteenth of the speed it was supposed to go, and given that, it’s clear that something is wrong.
Analysis: be careful where you buy – and call ‘Magic’ (or similar)
While some people may feel that this drivel is not that hard to spot as a lie, everything is relative here. And because it seems to be the real Samsung 990 Pro in terms of packaging and drive labeling, and it reports the right size in Windows – and it passed a quick test, say, CrystalDiskMark – the truth is that this will deceive many people. Maybe not really techie people, as noted, but it’s a convincing scam that’s more dangerous than the usual attempts we’ve seen in the past.
A possible scenario with this drive is that cheaters use the cheap QLC instead of Samsung’s TLC flash memory that should be in the 990 Pro, and this is how they make a profit (and where performance drops on sustained loads). Given that the Samsung 990 Pro now costs around $250 in the US even at its smallest 1TB level, there’s clearly money to be made – and larger drives are now ridiculously expensive (for a 4TB model, you’re looking at good, not cheap, these days).
So, how can you watch out and avoid such a scam? First, don’t buy from third-party market sellers, because if there’s anything suspicious about the SSD you bought, you’ll want to work with a reputable seller (and not, possibly, the scam builder himself).
Also, if you’re buying a new SSD, be sure to mark it properly to put the drive through its stages and identify any potential weak points, such as the QLC output seen here. Alternatively, with a Samsung drive, you can use the Samsung Magician software to check if the SSD is a genuine product – there’s no pulling the wool over the eyes of this app, as you might imagine.
Some drive manufacturers offer similar tools – or verification methods on their websites – that you can use to verify the authenticity of the product purchased. Contact the drive manufacturer’s customer support if you’re not sure how to check your purchase, and you’ll no doubt be pointed in the right direction.
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