Samsung 990 Pro, the SSD often called the "king of speed," has become the center of a growing problem: sophisticated counterfeits. With the AI boom sending component prices soaring, scammers are exploiting shoppers' hunt for bargains and pushing low-quality products dressed up in flashy packaging. What is alarming is that the fraud has now reached a level where it can fool even the most trusted software checking tools, turning a simple PC upgrade into a risky gamble.
How Fake Samsung 990 Pro Drives Are Made: A Polished Shell With a Rotten Core
Not long ago, spotting a "fake" drive was fairly easy. You plugged it in, and the operating system either threw an error or showed a bogus capacity. The new generation of counterfeits is far more dangerous. They are loaded with heavily tampered firmware (the software that controls the drive) designed to deceive the computer. When you connect one of these devices, everything from Windows File Manager and Disk Management to the well-known health-check tool CrystalDiskInfo reports a genuine Samsung 990 Pro, complete with "too good to be true" specifications.
One recent case that stirred up the Reddit community is a stark wake-up call for users. The victim bought a 2TB drive for about 205 USD (roughly 5 million VND) from a third-party component reseller. Every reported spec looked perfect until the buyer started copying data. Real-world write speed crawled along at just 20 MB/s, about as slow as a cheap USB 2.0 stick from a decade ago, while the rated speed of Samsung's flagship drive should reach 6.900 MB/s.
The scary part is that the victim tried everything, from reinstalling drivers to updating the BIOS, without finding the problem. Only when the dedicated tool Samsung Magician flagged the drive as counterfeit was the mask finally pulled off. In some earlier incidents, fakes were even good enough to fool the official software, leaving users to delid the drive and inspect the components inside before they realized they had been scammed.
Samsung SSD Prices Have Doubled, and What Buyers Should Take Away
Why is counterfeiting of Samsung SSD models exploding right now? The answer lies in scarce supply. NAND and DRAM chipmakers are devoting all of their production capacity to AI data centers and neglecting the mainstream consumer market. As a result, the price of a high-end drive has more than doubled in just a few months, from under 150 USD last October to over 300 USD today.
When a component becomes as valuable as gold, it becomes easy prey for scammers. They use discarded memory chips that are slow and short-lived, then package them in the polished shell of a major brand. Kioxia, a giant of the flash memory industry, has even warned that budget SSDs under 50 USD have all but disappeared, and that the shortage could last until 2027.
So how do you make sure you get the real thing? First, remember the old rule that you get what you pay for. If a price looks suspiciously low, be suspicious right away. Second, after you buy a drive, do not trust the name it displays. Run CrystalDiskMark right away to push the drive to its limits (a benchmark). Counterfeits can fake a name, but they cannot fake physical speed. Finally, buy from major retail chains or authorized distributors in Vietnam so you get an official warranty.
