I bought FAKE Samsung SSDs from AliExpress...Don't buy these! (990 Pro 1TB & 1080 Pro 4TB)

[@SMOOREZ]

*I know this scam may be obvious to some folks but you can never be too careful when it comes to these things. Please do not buy these fake drives and stick with reputable companies for your storage* (Also I do apologize I had to have text in the videos but sellers steal my footage to advertise these scam drives) Hey everyone, welcome back to another installment in my iWish series! I kept seeing these on AliExpress and thought "How bad could these be". Plus I wanted to add to my list of "Fake Drives" I've looked at on the channel. I know I said I wouldn't do another one but these just peaked my interest. If you've come across this video by finding these on AliExpress, I hope you know not to buy them. I hope you enjoyed this rather shorter video from me today. Let me know what you thought of this one down below. TIMESTAMPS: Intro & Disclaimers: 0:00 What I Purchased, Pricing & Red Flags: 1:31 Unboxing both drives: 3:21 The 1TB 990 Pro Drive: 4:31 The 4TB 1080 Pro Drive: 5:36 Connecting the Drives to a PC and Issues: 6:52 Testing the 1TB 990 Pro & Results: 8:41 Testing the 4TB 1080 Pro & Results: 10:25 Conclusion of the Investigation: 11:23 Final Thoughts & Outro: 12:33 Be good people!

[@titanisback1]

Don't have to apologize for the text on the video. I'd much rather you put "This is a scam" than have people see a video talking about the item and buy it.

[@sorsu]

its fine that you have to put text on it, just sucks that they would take videos to advertise their knockoffs :(

[@chrisre2cn]

Aliexpress is protecting those scammers... bought a SSD advertised as TLC but got a QLC SSD. Complained to Aliexpress and according to them there is no difference between TLC and QLC.

[@TheMoonSpoon]

I understand why the fake USB drives sell, but how many people are actually tech-savvy enough to know and install an M.2 drive, and still fall for this BS?

[@EvanPang-w4i]

My mom still falls for those! 1tb usb 3.2 drive, no name I tell her to only buy name brands: lexar, sandisk, pny

[@account-now-closed]

​​@@EvanPang-w4iyou provided an example of USB, not NVMe

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Unfortunately, there are people who purposely buy such drives, install them to computers and sell them to gullible. For example, install them to laptop, install Win 10, tell to customer you have working computer with 2/4 TB drive. At first glance it looks so, then after some time computer starts crashing, but the seller is already gone.

[@Boogie_the_cat]

M.2 drives are easy to install. You remove one screw and slot it in. They're literally the easiest component to install in a PC. No wires, no cables, nothing to get wrong.

[@TheMoonSpoon]

@@Boogie_the_cat Lucky for you that you never had to play friends and family tech support. Most normal people don't know what an M-key M.2 slot is, if their device has one and how to open said device.

[@indask8]

Expectation : Cheap 4TB drive Reality : Expensive 128GB unreliable drive

[@ademiravdic]

The latter​@agustinusreynaldi7101

[@TheRetroEngine]

You can never do enough of these types of videos. A lot channels cover it once or twice, presume you got the message, then go onto something else. I love you come back to it, keeps it fresh in people's memory and shows newer scam products.

[@mi-rek]

120GB low speed SSDs? Even worse than that. These can't be formatted to make them proper 120GB drives.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

they could be if you could figure out what the controller is and find the mptool for it. but that's a whole lot of effort for a slow junk SSD :D

[@DJdoppIer]

They even advertise these fake Samsung SSDs on eBay. So frustrating when you find a good deal on a Samsung SSD and then realize it isn't a Samsung at all.

[@chazlabreck]

Yeah I'm a tech and I got scammed from eBay.. I knew better and I still got took

[@lordowl3533]

Maybe sort of unrelated but i used to work for auto auctions and we had a truck with an aftermarket radio that didn't work and they sent me to an audio shop to put a new radio in it and they gave me the broken radio to figure out what to do with it and the top of the radio said "NAMSUNG" in the Samsung font

[@chronic_hemphog]

Going by wiki at the very least, namsung is surprisingly an actual company... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namsung_electronics

[@samholdsworth420]

​@thealmightydragon5401lol they make JENSEN

[@PrinsessePeach]

I always stay away from any storage sold on AliExpress.

[@nevfs08]

Not really, I bought plenty of crucial and WD drives (genuine) and even Chinese brands like xraydisk drives.. they all work great, never had any problems with customers about them (I resell them locally)

[@eggshapedisraelioperative6317]

Just stop buying from these sites full stop. Stop supporting this business mode

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

I see soooo many of them on the used market over here in Germany, some with sellers straight up pretending it to be Samsung, others just hinting at it without mentioning the brand. And always a bit cheaper than the real deal but not all that much, and some ridiculous explanation as to why they're selling this "awesome" SSD lol. It's just as bad as the slew of fake USB SSDs. And the worst part is, the people managing the takedowns on the platforms here in Germany don't seem to have any clue about the topic, cause all the fake offers stay up no matter how many times you report them as fake/counterfeit Edit: there's also a whole bunch of 2.5" SATA fake Samsung SSDs, sometimes without samsung branding, sometimes with butchered branding (Sumsang etc)

[@paranoiia8]

I seriously though that they are so cheap that when you peal those stickers.... it would rip chip with it xD

[@simontay4851]

ThoughT! Not though.

[@pierreuntel1970]

that controller is likely a realtek RTS5732, they've lasered it off which is pretty common for scammy things so they can't be traced by the manufacturer for using a rejected batch or scamming people

[@Erebus-PCFX]

Its not even that, it's a Realtek RayMX RM1135, behind it says "RM1135_DEMO". It's SATA3. The other could be a genuine PCIe controller (RTS5765DL/RTS5762DL) paired with terrible/dying NAND chips.

[@MandrakeFernflower]

"RAYMX RM1135" is just what the hacked RTS5732 reports back to windows 10

[@Erebus-PCFX]

@@MandrakeFernflower the RM1135 is actually specified as the RTS5735 interchangeably. So the RTS5732 & RTS5735 are both part of the RayMX range. There should just be a tiny difference between the two.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

@@Erebus-PCFX They likely used "discarded" quality control failures. the Micron (to most people known as Crucial) chip on one of them at 6:36 in the video appears to be genuine, and the BGA marking NW955 decodes to a 1 Terabit (128GB) chip on the official site

[@Erebus-PCFX]

@@Knaeckebrotsaege It could be recycled Flash packages from dead electronics too. The Chinese do that all the time for low-spec/low-price electronics (eg: the C602 chipsets of those cheap socket 2011 Xeon motherboards)

[@arudanel5542]

thanks to KZbin Dislikes Enabler being installed, I can see that AlliExpress' CEO downvoted the video. :P

[@Creedoo]

And now one of the employees making these scam drives

[@SrWolf90]

4:10 There is also the Serial ATA logo on the boxes hahaha, when this logo should not be there.

[@notsoseagatey]

Serial ATA is much slower than NVMe so yeah thats a problem

[@ThatTransistorGuy]

Careful, these scammers do tend to put malware on these drives that are able to execute as soon as you plug it in.

[@zombiemincaftr]

thats why he used his crappy laptop

[@6257pras]

and what scammers want to get from us,

[@ThatTransistorGuy]

@@zombiemincaftr indeed, but malware can hop to any device that is simply on the same network.

[@philiptownsend4026]

Addendum to my Fruugo comment. I have learned elsewhere that sellers are afraid of any PayPal chargeback against them succeeding. Apparently there are compliance points to be lost and penalties applied with a loss of reputation. This might apply with bank chargebacks too - banks may see chargebacks as damaging to their own reputations and might impose restrictions or costs upon account holders proven to be dodgy and may even close accounts. They take chargeback seriously and act on them. Soooo - never be afraid to persue a LEGITIMATE AND PROVABLE chargeback with a bank or PayPal as they are institutions operating under strict laws and oversight themselves. They will not tolerate dodgy dealing on their platforms.

[@zmywaczeq]

love watching fake phones/storage videos they always interesting for me

[@freedomofspeech361]

I wouldn't buy anything from Ali-Express or I-Wish...Way too shady to me to trust.

[@Holycurative9610]

The other problem with these fake drives is malware as well. People will still buy them though because they see a bargain and can't wait to buy them with out doing any research!

[@Erebus-PCFX]

First SSD: Realtek RayMX RM1135, SATA 3.0 only; (terrible controller, even for SATA speeds) Second SSD: Probably a Realtek RTS5765DL or RTS5762DL PCIe 3.0 x4; (bottom of the barrel PCIe 3.0 controller) The NAND Flash is either YMTC rejected chips or random recycled chips from dead SSDs, it should be why the speed is so low, those are dying/dead.

[@CanizaM]

I see Micron logo on 2nd one. Part number is a 1TB TLC, low speed is the norm for TLC without any cache.

[@Erebus-PCFX]

@@CanizaM I don't think 35MB/s under sustained load is normal for a PCIe SSD. Those are salvaged chips from dead drives or systems.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

@@CanizaM careful, it's 1 Terabit (128GB), *not* 1 Terabyte

[@jeffsan0.5]

Just looking at the M.2 connector you can tell the fisrt one is a SATA drive, It's has a M+B key while NVME drive would be in M key

[@Boogie_the_cat]

There will always be that one guy in the comments who claims you CAN buy a 4 TB NVME for $50. I don't know why those people exist.

[@mr-qt5oc]

Those types of people annoy me a bit. It's already known that scammers are going to scam hard and it's going to make matters worse if they encourage them to buy these scummy products.

[@supermarioantonio]

I was scamed too by Ali Express, but i can get a refund

[@ayylien]

I would also stay way from buying SSD from Amazon, with sellers you don't know if you are getting good drives or counterfeits. I bought a SSD recently from them and it did not come in a retail package, but luckily the return process went fine.

[@NeonNightmares]

They have reliable and really good stuff but its not easy to find with all these fake products taking over the website.

[@kenanthony2962]

Hey I did locate a few drives on Ebay (Original 1080Pro SSD Solid State NVME M.2 SSD Hard Drive Gaming 4TB 2TB 1TB New) $49.98 for 4TB

[@AtroposLeshesis]

They are selling these all over eBay too.

[@DUBeddston]

Thanks mate. Was about to buy a 4tb 990 pro off fb market place but watched this video right before meeting the guy saved me some coin

[@lamikal2515]

Once again, a sparking reminder of the old truth : "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"

[@AUM_3000]

Thank you very much for your effort. I would like to say that Lazada which operates in the Far East are a subsidiary company of Alibaba group. They also sell a lot (a lot) of fake electronics. They use the same ways to cheat on customers.

[@Jean-Denis_R_R_Loret]

The "980 Pro" isn't even a proper NVMe drive, it's just a mSATA drive (2 notches for mSATA vs 1 for NVMe) 😂

[@igorstollberg3780]

these are all over Ebay Germany, if you report them to Ebay, nothing will happen to the sellers as Ebay doesnt find an Issue with the drives. Please report them anyways

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

6:36 Micron (to most people known by their consumer arm "Crucial") has a NAND package marking decoder. Punching in NW955 from the second line yields "MT29F1T08EEHBFJ4-T" which is a 1 Terabit (aka 128GB) NAND flash chip (bits divided by 8 = bytes)

[@joeyratz123]

I feel for this one, sending them back. Some things on Ali Express are ok, most are not.

[@me-vo3di]

These are measured in bits, not bytes. So not 1 gigabyte but 1 gigabit drive. Wonder why companies in USA have not figured that trick yet.

[@Hajile_Ibushi]

Thanks, was curious about these. I knew these couldn't possibly be real especially as prominent features of the samsung labels were missing, but a new crop of 870 SATA SSDs have started appearing and i was wondering about those, the simple labeling on them meant they didn't have to change anything. And this video reminded me about these 980's and the 870's wouldn't be any more legit than those.

[@Muttsnutts75]

Thanks for your video. I just bought a ps5 for my son for Christmas and thought i would upgrade the drive as the ps5 is a digital version. I googled black friday deals and ali express came up with a very suspiciously cheap price. Had it in my basket but thought I would research before buying. Luckily I found your vid😮😊

[@kyle51895]

I’ve had a 250 GB Samsung SSD for 10 years now, definitely pays to get good stuff. Mostly just use the laptop for web and word processing so don’t need much space even to this day.

[@ItsJustElenore]

Love chinese scam naming. Samsung 980 is good, right? Let's call ours the 1080!!! It's even gooder!!

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

9:00 that's the partition alignment. has nothing to do with the drive capacity. this number will show up red (and with a big fat BAD) if the partition alignment is screwed up (from cloning a HDD to a SSD with a crappy tool) which would lead to NAND writes more than doubling for every write operation you do, ie degrading performance and wearing out the NAND *much* faster. obviously not a factor on junk like his, but on a real 990 Pro you'd hardly notice a performance difference, but meanwhile the SSD does a NAND killing speedrun in the background

[@artemistosini3617]

The NMVe SSD would likely be faster plugged into a machine directly. All the DRAMless SSDs I've seen in a while use Host Memory Buffer to cache their translation table, which won't work on USB adapters

[@devil5051000]

4:28 Last time I got such a cheapo screwdriver with something it broke while tightening the 4 screws that were installed on the product. 3 of 4 screws done, final one - pling! ^^ I bet that notebook is a war hero, saving its owner from a grenade explosion or a bullet. And it is even working after that.

[@Omnishredder]

£180 for a crucial 4tb p3+ from amazon works well been using a year now, if you want quality and value, good suggestion for anyone to consider

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

It's a DRAM-less QLC turd of an SSD that screeches to a halt (80MB/s) as soon as the pSLC cache runs out. As a secondary SSD as a pure storage drive or steam game library dump, it *might* be ok. Using it as your main drive with the OS installed? hell no

[@patg108]

Drives with about that capacity are worth around $20 usd in the usa at microcenter, give or take (not certain if it went up recently), and they'd be Inland (generic, probably noticeably slower than the better drives relative to their size and type) but still FAR better than these fakes. Better a generic slower than a fake that performs around SD card speeds

[@stevenspencer5367]

Cheers Smuz, I do find things like this interesting. Scammers will scam and these selling platforms really dodo enough to ensure that the products sold on their site are real. I don't buy from them anyway. Although a lot of I know have purchased stuff from these sites without issues. But they haven't bought any tech. I can see that some people would buy either of these modules to use in ipod modding. So reviews like this are needed. BTW was watching a video by a guy looking at Walmart Iphones and he had plasters on both thumbs. ( different styles to those you use). You've set up a trend. 😂

[@stevenspencer5367]

@agustinusreynaldi7101 well at least they are good for our favourite content makers.

[@danielgomes4754]

I purchased a Samsung 1TB SSD hard disk from Walmart online , It was not Walmart but one of their sellers. My PC would keep crashing and it was a pain to reinstall windows every time. After a few months I thought of Samsung and reached out to them. They said to send a pic of the disk. They came back and said it was fake. I asked them why it was fake as it looked perfect and good. They said it didn't have the barcode. I called Walmart and got a 100% refund, purchased a new SSD from Best Buy and no more problems.

[@gigitoby5359]

ALL THE SSD IN ALIEXPRESS ARE FAKE .. AMAZON TOO , I BAY 10 DIFFERENT AND ALL ARE FAKE AND DONT WORK

[@Poodleinacan]

For around 70$CAD, I can get a good 1TB TeamGroup NVMe M.2 SSD that will work well (that also have an integrated cache)

[@bramvandenbroeck5060]

These are getting more convincing! I got my 970 Pro from my local game store :p the drive was cheaper in the game store than in the actual pc shop . . .

[@CanizaM]

I think the NAND on the second one is a Micron part that they've tried, rather poorly, to scrub the markings from. It seems to say NW955, which corresponds to MT29F1T08EEHBFJ4-T:B, a 1Tbit (128GB) TLC flash.

[@EPIC0MUSIC]

Next time : fake 8tb 4070ti super plus pro 5G ssd on Aliexpress 😂

[@bitemykrank1970]

I bought a couple of the Aliexpress scam 990 4tb drives a year ago, neither worked at all upon installing them, neither seller gave me a refund. I lost about $120AUD for nothing.

[@beri4138]

Mine works. For now at least 😂

[@repairman2be250]

Simple: Do not buy any SSD from China.

[@tendosingh5682]

The risk you take when buying from aliexpress.

[@georgen.8027]

The Micron markings are real, just they failed QC and get sold on after being lasered over.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

Bingo. The BGA code NW955 from the 2nd line translates to a 1 Terabit (128GB) NAND flash chip

[@alrecks619]

i love how they lie about a SATA ssd being an NVMe lmao.

[@mr.number9279]

How are they this slow? What NAND chips are this bad?! It's so sad...

[@brianwalker7771]

Looks like sata speeds out of that 990 pro wannabe. Honestly faster than I would expect from these gems.

[@OptimizingNetwork]

Who is the "bright" gentleman that thinks he can buy 990 Pro for 3 times less than Amazon?

[@benyomovod6904]

Why those band aids all the time? Nailbiter?

[@jiggybucksington]

I bought that same exact ssd you had on the laptop and the same exact thing happened to it a couple years back. I was stumped at how they were able to do this. The part that it actually worked and function as an ssd was shocking at how far china has gone to scam us haha

[@vizard_ichigo_3893]

You even have to be careful with known brands because these fake items can be sold in or be accepted as returns at stores

[@pedrooooolma]

Try to make a Frankenstein cell phone using these welcome cell phones😂

[@paultheretrogamer]

Try taking a pic of the memory and zooming in if possible

[@chongtak]

Samsung and other brands are changing their design very often. People who don't get themselves updated would not even know those fake SSDs look like actual Samsung stuff. And those who are savy just skip those when they see them.

[@VistasSrinagarun]

Did I just read your post on reddit? about this same thing?

[@SMOOREZ]

No I never posted anything about this on reddit. Maybe someone else has?

[@DelanHameed]

No, I bought it from them and it's on its way. I can't believe it. Maybe I should return it to them. Thanks for this video.

[@lechkenassh9008]

buy 4 and de-solider then and put all 4 chips on 1 for 500gb m.2 and 3 spare bodies if the bodies fail !!! still cheaper than buy a real 500gb maybe. but you get spare parts if need be !!!

[@edzusozolins007]

Unfortunately some PC sellers are putting them into PC's to boost price.

[@NotNemesis0]

Buying pc components of ali's sites is always a red flag

[@mruczyslaw50]

RAM is actually good from aliexpress, I haven't really seen any sticks that were fake, they are pretty cheap and work fine with specs as in description.

[@MrJ0mmy]

i got a 512gb ssd for 23nzd and its real

[@Akahigep]

It is fine if you actually search for real products. And it's quite easy tbh. Just don't search for first brand super good price deals. SSD of chinese brands are decent, I use a couple of them

[@anonymousshoe842]

CPUs are also generally decent, normally you save a small amount compared to retail stores. The main caveat is that you don't have any warranty and you won't have a stock cooler, as you only get the CPU in the plastic tray.

[@paranoiia8]

Red with some start in one corner :D

[@bills6093]

Why is it that they can never, ever, get the printing righ with these fakest? It always looks just a little off, just a little fuzzy, just a little wrong.

[@nekowolf583]

I was hoping they would somehow fit a usb flash drive into a m.2 board.

[@namesurname4666]

That 2000's 😍 emoji, why 😅

[@JerryWasARaceCarDriver]

I figured they might not be that great, but they're actually terrible.

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Nicely done.

[@Spyd77]

I guessed 120Gb and they are, but that's an easy guess, as nowadays nobody manufactures the kind of flash chips an SSD controller uses in capacities below 120. In this case they can't cheat and use flash chips designed for USB drives... ...unless you design an M2 card with an USB host controller, an usb flash controller and a cheap 32Gb flash module, also having 3 chips in it will look as if the fake M2 SSD has a DRAM cache!, and this solution should be even cheaper than using a SSD controller and SSD flash modules. The scam manufacturers need to step their game if even I can come with better fake products on a KZbin comment.

[@TingFeng77]

installing a pcie to usb controller probably costs too much compared to just giving you reject bin 120gb

[@TC-tn9tb]

China has no shame

[@miciso666]

for me 320 euro 4tb. thats like half the price my pc costed me... holy crap. i got a 2tb a while ago black friday sale for like 140

[@pegcity4eva]

You can get a western digital 1tb for like 80 bucks now

[@Duncan-Donuts]

That 990 pro is probably a sata ssd instead of nvme

[@Iridescence93]

When you're getting something that even reputable Aliexpress brands (that do exist) charge $250 for for $50 honestly what do you expect?

[@4ida]

Try validrive (or whatever it's called) alternative to h2testw

[@Waldherz]

The 7400 read and 6900 write claims arent even that wild, if we ignore the fake drives themselves for a second. Any good Gen4 SSD can hit these marks with Gen5 ofc being much faster.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

not mentioned: overheating speedrun on all of those fast SSDs, especially Gen5

[@Maddin1313]

1080 Pro? 4K Pro or bust! 😂

[@ivito514]

You're funny (you actually made me laugh when you said that), you don't need to sabotage these drives to return them, they're already sabotaged 😆 Send them a link to your video, showing there is only one chip and the chip type along with your test results and tell them they're dirty scammers and they should be ashamed to sell this, and you want your money back, they won't argue 😉

[@NozomuYume]

Any chance the blue screens are being done by some fuckery on the PCI-E bus? Might be attempting to infect the firmware on your system with a firmware-level rootkit, would also explain why it doesn't work at all on the external enclosure because there it's trying to infect hardware that isn't there.

[@patrickcardon1643]

Amazed it's 128GB, thought it would be 64GB

[@tallpaul9475]

You ruined the performance and capacity of these drives when you peeled the stickers.

[@digitalsparky]

amsung... geez, could've at least called it Scamsung....

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

I've seen some 2.5" SSD fakes sold with "Sumsang" branding lmao

[@TheGeneReyva]

"Scamsung" "stick with reputable companies for your storage" This isn't on Samsung. This is an Aliexpress and Amazon thing.

[@DJdoppIer]

And even eBay too.

[@shardsprivatechannel]

so first sign. these are SATA keyed 1 notch, is M.2. 2, is SATA.

[@SMOOREZ]

So the laptop I used to test the 990 Pro only accepts pcie drives (it's an acer b311). The other one is definitely pcie though.

[@maksymiliankuznik4856]

can't wait for 2160 Pro SSD

[@eshkere_eshkere69]

The "Samsuka"

[@tba11]

I'm confused by something... why do you have the disclaimer at the bottom? Won't the scammers just zoom in on the video to "edit" the disclaimer out or are they too lazy for that?

[@SMOOREZ]

If they zoom it in then the footage won't be as usable. They can go the extra mile though to take whatever they need but there's not too much more I can do.

[@tba11]

@@SMOOREZ fair enough, just wasn't sure if they just rip straight from youtube or if they zoom in

[@50shadesofbeige88]

I'm still waiting on mine to show up. You beat me to the punch. 😂

[@CeMoreStudios]

you beat me to it I was going to make a video on these fake ones and the fake WD ones as well.. Guess I'll just make a video on fake Mic's and cams lol

[@der_kluger_gunther8391]

i will never trust aliexpress or temu or whatever online shop rather than the actual site of the manufacturer, i got a crucial one more than 10 years ago and it works fine. those ones are just too good to be true (and considering how much the prices for ssd have become so expensive) so just stay away. ps. poor acer it looks like it was in a war lol, how does it still work??

[@Johnny-c6p]

where to buy then

[@chesshooligan1282]

You should have bought the 1180 Executive Pro Plus 😂

[@sulx911]

I already bought the 1080 Pro 4TB before watching this video 😢😭😭😭😭😭 Should I test it when it arrives or should I quickly cancel order?

[@sulx911]

Btw it has many good reviews with pictures

[@ILOVEBACONBOY2018]

Amazon is just as scammy.

[@dylanlindsay1993]

smoorez i think the nand on that second fake ssd was actually a micron chip... i seen the m on it which is the logo micron uses... i still wouldnt trust them though! 1 cuz fake capacity n 2 they slower than a ide hard drive from 2002..