By no means purchase one thing that’s too good to be true. A Chinese language client realized this lesson the exhausting means. Considering he had snagged a discount, he bought what was marketed as an exterior M.2 NVMe SSD. However because it turned out, the drive’s efficiency was far beneath that of a typical solid-state drive, even underperforming when in comparison with a regular exterior HDD.
Suspicious of its subpar efficiency, the buyer determined to research and open the machine. He found, as revealed by the images shared on MyDrivers, that the so-called SSD was nothing greater than two microSD playing cards linked to an outdated controller.
The precise specs and storage capacities of the microSD playing cards weren’t even disclosed and, as Tom’s {Hardware} suggests, may very well be misrepresented through the controller firmware. Regardless of having a modern USB-C port, the counterfeit drive solely supported USB 2.0 knowledge switch speeds. It’s instructed that the drive may solely handle a meager most learn velocity of 100 MB/s, with write speeds suspected to be even decrease.
Counterfeiting is a widespread downside, and it’s not distinctive to China. Within the Philippines, the Mental Property Workplace reported an uptick in studies regarding counterfeit items at first of the “ber” months this yr.
It’s value noting that microSD playing cards may also be counterfeit themselves. Usually offered at unbeatably low costs, these fakes normally don’t ship the storage capability they declare to supply. As such, netizens purchasing on-line should know methods to distinguish genuine microSD cards from their counterfeit counterparts.