- A fake Samsung 990 Pro SSD was found to be very convincing
- It looked authentic, reported the correct capacity, and even worked like a real 990 Pro in some benchmarks
- However, a full suite of testing revealed the weakness in the drive — and there are steps you can take to protect yourself
Fake SSDs and RAM scams are becoming more commonplace now that these products have gotten so expensive, but often such knock-offs are easy to spot — although that’s not the case with the latest imitation Samsung drive.
There are no clearly inauthentic packaging or product labels, or other obvious giveaways here, and as Japanese tech site Akiba PC Hotline discovered (via Tom’s Hardware), you might not even realize this Samsung 990 Pro SSD was a fake clone at all. As Akiba puts it: “More sophisticated counterfeit SSDs have appeared,” while warning that these fakes, which are “harder to distinguish from genuine ones, are now flooding the market” (bear in mind this is a translation).
Granted, there are clues for the tech-savvy Sherlocks out there to pick up, such as the wrong model of SSD controller on the drive (a Maxio MAP1602, rather than the Pascal controller it should be).
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There are plenty of folks who wouldn’t think to check that kind of detail, though, and overall, this forgery of a drive fully looked the part, plus it reported the correct capacity when installed.
It could even keep up the act through some benchmarks, and as Akiba found, 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 many fake SSDs would be completely off the pace with any such testing (and may not even report the correct capacity).
However, with sustained testing, Akiba found that large file writing operations (copying a big video onto the drive) saw the fake SSD fall way behind its expected performance (once it had run out of cache). In these scenarios, it was running at about a fifteenth of the speed it should have been, and given that, it’s clear that something is very wrong.
Analysis: be careful where you buy – and call in the ‘Magician’ (or similar)
While some folks might feel that this drive isn’t that difficult to spot as a fake, everything is relative here. And because it appears to be a genuine Samsung 990 Pro in terms of the packaging and drive labelling, and reports the correct size in Windows — and even passes muster in quick tests with, say, CrystalDiskMark — the reality is that this is going to fool many people. Maybe not really techie folks, as noted, but it’s a convincing enough scam that it’s far more dangerous than the 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 this is how they’re carving out a profit (and where the performance falls down in sustained workloads). Given that the Samsung 990 Pro now costs around $250 in the US even in its smallest capacity of 1TB, there’s clearly money to be made — and large drives are now ridiculously expensive (for the 4TB model, you’re looking at a grand, no 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 something is suspicious about the SSD you’ve purchased, you’ll want to be dealing with a reputable retailer (and not, potentially, the architect of the scam itself).
Aside from that, if you buy a new SSD, make sure that you benchmark it thoroughly to put the drive through its paces and spot any potential weak points, such as the QLC switch-out seen here. Alternatively, with a Samsung drive, you can use the Samsung Magician software to check if the SSD is an authentic product — there’s no pulling the wool over the eyes of this app, as you might imagine.
Other drive makers offer similar tools — or verification methods on their websites — that you can use to ensure the authenticity of a purchased product. Contact the drive maker’s customer support if you’re unsure about how to check up on what you’ve bought, and you’ll doubtless be pointed in the right direction.
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