The cheapest SATA SSD with 1 terabyte of storage space, the Patriot Burst Elite, cost less than 45 euros, according to our price comparison at the time of going to press. The terabyte SSD from Ebay dealer Kendihion, which is also available in different colors: red, green and blue, was a euro cheaper. It is no coincidence that these are exactly the three colors that Western Digital uses on its drives.
c’t reader Uwe R. bought such an SSD and began to have doubts during his first tests: the write rate dropped to well below 100 MB/s after a short time, which is why he stopped trying and asked us. We then bought two of these SSDs to be on the safe side – in case one didn’t pass the test.
Not a bargain, but a fake: This cheap SSD from “Chona” is not only lame, but also only has a fraction of the promised capacity.
verified
The good news: The SSDs we ordered arrived within a day and achieved around 450 MB/s reading and writing in short tests. However, when we tested it with our capacity test program H2testw, the write rate quickly dropped to values below 10 MByte/s. After several hours, H2testw then certified the terabyte SSD as having a real capacity of only 110 GB – so it is definitely fraud, as has been common with USB sticks and SD cards for some time.
The two flash chips on the circuit board of the SSD are printed with a Micron logo, and the part numbers also indicate Micron flash – but this type does not exist. The surface of the SSD controller has been sanded off, a board label on the underside points to the Realtek RTS5732 controller – a cheap controller without DRAM support. Tools to manipulate this controller can be found in the dark corners of the web.
Incidentally, we did not come up with the indication of origin in the title of this article ourselves. It comes from the sticker on the back of the SSD. The serial numbers printed there are the same for both SSDs, they do not match those determined by a SMART tool. Speaking of the SMART tool: This reported a constant temperature of exactly 30 °C, regardless of the load. However, a thermometer showed higher values.
request a refund
After some back and forth, the retailer first offered us a refund of 10 euros, then the entire purchase price – provided we hadn’t used the SSDs yet. This gave the impression that he wanted to sell the SSDs again.
With the currently extremely low SSD prices, there is often only a few euros between the original and the counterfeit – so a counterfeit cannot be identified from the price alone. That’s why we advise against looking for cheap offers on windy trading platforms: Find out more in the usual price search engines and buy branded goods from reputable dealers, even if it costs five euros more.
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c’t 7/2023
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VPNs with peer-to-peer technology exchange keys as if by magic, making setup much easier. In c’t 7/2023 we explain how to set up Tailscale, Nebula and Co. and network all your devices remotely. Cheap smartphones up to €200 and four AI writing aids have to assert themselves on the test bench this time. In our anniversary article, we take a look back at the hype surrounding Second Life. We also looked at the Linux all-rounder Vanilla OS and rapped together with ChatGPT. You can read that and more in c’t 7/2023!
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