It is not the first time we have heard about the sale of counterfeit products in technology. In fact, we recently learned of the case of a user who bought a 2TB hard drive for 10 euros on Aliexpress and found only an empty casing in the package. However, the case that we are going to talk about today is somewhat more elaborate, since it is a counterfeit of a Samsung SSD 980 Pro.
As mentioned by the user @harukaze5719 on Twitter, he bought a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD from the Chinese Baidu store. What he did not expect was that ended up receiving a counterfeit product. However, this solid-state drive also ended up outwitting Samsung’s official software, despite significantly lower performance.
Not even the Samsung software detected that it was fake
Contraband products are not new, and there are those who fall for the game, especially when they find an offer that is too juicy to be true. This is what happened to this user, when it came to testing the new SSD that had arrived at his home, he realized that something was wrong.
[FAKE] Samsung 980 PRO SSDhttps://t.co/SjcIDPpmmd pic.twitter.com/OXbEqz9Avd
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) March 14, 2023
Although the Samsung Magician software pointed to a genuine SSD, the read and write tests that appeared on the screen were not what this user expected. It was at that moment when the user detected that the SSD I had received was not original.
The package even arrived in an original-looking package, according to the user. Also, all the stickers were in the right place. However, when taking them off to see the hardware inside, the user realized where the problem came from. And it is that the SSD that he had in his hands used a different controller and chip than the original.
In this case, the SSD made use of the 12nm Maxio MAP1602A PCIe 4.0 SSD controller instead of the 8nm Elpis controller that Samsung uses in its SSDs. In addition, the chip it used was also different, making use of YMTC’s TLC 128-layer 3D NAND instead of Samsung’s 128-layer V-NAND. That is why the performance of this SSD was noticeably lower.
The fact that the Samsung software was not able to detect that the product was not original could be due to the fact that the firmware of the SSD itself it had also been modified so that it did not set off the alarms of this software. However, Samsung should update its tool to make it easier for users to recognize whether or not the product in their hands is genuine.
According to the user, the product was purchased for around 127 dollars, while the current price of this SSD in its 2TB version is usually around 200 euros (somewhat less if we find it on sale).
Image | xataka
Via | sammobile
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