- A fake Samsung 990 Pro SSD was found to be very convincing
- It looked authentic, reported the correct capacity, and even performed like a real 990 Pro in some benchmarks.
- However, a full suite of tests revealed the disk’s weakness, and there are steps you can take to protect yourself.
Fake SSD and RAM scams are becoming more common now that these products have become so expensive, but often those knockoffs are easy to spot, although that’s not the case with Samsung’s latest drive knockoff.
There’s no clearly inauthentic product packaging or labels here, nor any other obvious giveaways, and as Japanese tech site Akiba PC Hotline discovered (via Tom’s Hardware), you might not even realize that this Samsung 990 Pro SSD was a fake clone. As Akiba says, “More sophisticated counterfeit SSDs have appeared,” while warning that these counterfeits, which are “more difficult to distinguish from genuine ones, are now flooding the market” (note that this is a translation).
Of course, there are clues that tech-savvy Sherlocks can pick up on, such as the incorrect model of SSD controller in the drive (a Maxio MAP1602, rather than the Pascal controller it should be).
Article continues below.
However, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t think to check those kinds of details, and overall this fake of a drive looked completely fine, plus it reported the correct capacity when installed.
It could even keep pace through some benchmarks, and as Akiba discovered, some basic tests showed performance very close to what you’d expect to see with the Samsung 990 Pro. It was close enough that the drive wouldn’t be questioned on that basis, while many fake SSDs would be completely off pace with any such test (and may not even report the correct capacity).
However, with sustained testing, Akiba found that large file write operations (copying a large video to the drive) caused the fake SSD to fall far behind its expected performance (once it had run out of cache). In these scenarios, it was running at about one-fifteenth of the speed it should have been, and given that, it’s clear something is seriously wrong.
Analysis: Be careful where you buy and call the ‘Wizard’ (or similar)
While some people may feel that this album is not that difficult to detect as a fake, everything is relative here. And because it appears to be a genuine Samsung 990 Pro in terms of the drive’s packaging and labeling, and reports the correct size in Windows, and even passes quick tests with, say, CrystalDiskMark, the reality is that this will fool a lot of people. Maybe it’s not really tech people, as noted, but it’s a convincing enough scam to be much more dangerous than typical efforts we’ve seen in the past.
The likely scenario with this drive is that the scammers have used cheap QLC instead of Samsung’s TLC flash memory that should be in the 990 Pro, and that’s how they’re making a profit (and where performance drops under sustained workloads). Given that the Samsung 990 Pro now costs around $250 in the US, even in its smallest 1TB capacity, there’s clearly money to be made, and the large drives are now ridiculously expensive (for the 4TB model, you’re looking at nothing less these days).
So how can you be more vigilant and avoid a scam like this? For starters, don’t buy from third-party marketplace sellers, because if there’s anything suspicious about the SSD you bought, you’ll want to deal with a trusted retailer (and not, potentially, the architect of the scam itself).
Aside from that, if you buy a new SSD, be sure to compare it thoroughly to test the drive for potential weak spots, like the QLC shift seen here. Alternatively, with a Samsung drive, you can use the Samsung Magician software to check if the SSD is an authentic product; There is no way to cheat this app, as you can imagine.
Other drive manufacturers offer similar tools (or verification methods on their websites) that you can use to ensure the authenticity of a purchased product. Contact the unit manufacturer’s customer service if you are unsure how to verify what you have purchased and they will certainly point you in the right direction.
The best SSDs for all budgets
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and tiktok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
