Fake NAND found in SSD's

Interesting read here KingFast Unknowingly Sends Counterfeit SSD With Fake Memory For Review | The SSD Review from an ex NBR member. Read the disussion at the bottom, another site referenced finding fake Crucial drives.

 

That is insane. Great find, thanks for sharing.

 

Good read. I wonder how HongWang International is going to respond to this.

 

Probably by purchasing a plane ticket and getting the hell out of there with the money, ha ha.

 

So after reading this, am I right in assuming that it is best to avoid usb sticks as any sort of reliable back up? It would seem most of the nand memory in those modules would the 'fallout' stock not good enough for ssds? I currently use plain old fashioned 2.5 and 3.5 backup hdds, but ive seen some good deals on 64gb and 128gb sticks lately and was thinking of using them for some files on the go.

 

I've had one SanDisk flashdrive go bad on me for a day or two; Neither Windows nor Linux would recognize it. I've had better luck with my other SanDisk, PNY, and other flashdrives, but I would imagine that HDDs would provide better backup for the typical end-user. Or maybe even SDHC cards...

 

that is true up to a degree, some high performance USB sticks cost as much as MLC SSDs per GB due to the fact they use the same or better binned NAND. Generally the cost tells you everything you need to know, if it costs about $0.60 a gig then its probably low grade flash (worse than OCZ Agility quality), $0.80/GB is probably the better micron chips, I've encountered the uber high end ones that are about $2 a gig (the SLC MX-DS extreme ones) that are certainly more reliable than some SSDs.

 

Great read. Thanks.

 

That site owner has no clue about SSD's at all, and yet people still regard him as SSD deity.
He is just a good compiler of other's knowledge and experience.

 

At least the drive was functional and had full capacity, albeit at lower performance.

When I think of "fake" I think of motherboards BITD that had fake cache (remember when cache was on motherboards and not CPU?), or USB flash drives with fake capacities.

fake usb flash

fake cache

 

I would say HDD's are a good backup option assuming you overwrite your data every few years at least (because of the volatility of magnetic storage). If you do even monthly backups and don't necessarily need you old ones forever HDDs will work great. The less they're used the longer they last and they're a proven technology. The only risk is that the data will discharge over long periods of disuse (and it's a long time). As long as you don't write the data and lock it away for 30 years you should be good.

 

Yeap. I recall how he told about Windows Restore points killing and slowing SSD drive in magic way LOL.

 

I remember (on Anandtech Forum) he was strongly opposing the idea of over provisioning and couldn't grasp what it does at all.
Few of us couldn't even make him comprehend how SSD's work.
A while later I came across his web site and saw he is explaining about over provisioning.:hi2:
And no references at all.
The world is funny as it is, isn't it?

This comment is from Anandtech web site:

New SSD With Counterfeit Memory? - AnandTech Forums

 

Who in the world will buy a "KingWin" SSD. Fake nand is the norm when they can fake food and powdered milk .

 

BREAKING NEWS: That shiny new SSD you just bought may contain up to 100% horsemeat! News at 11.

That article was hard to read, not because of its content, but for the complete butchery of the English language by its author. I really hope English is his second or third language.

Counterfeit things are sold all day every day everywhere. It's not so shocking that a new chip supplier of some backwater SSD maker got duped and it affected ~30 shipped drives.

 

Not sure who that is for, but I read on his site that he used to be a reviewer here. Still no relevance to my post though.

No clue who the company is, but when I think of fake, I would think that if I am buying Micron NAND, and it is actually OCZ that has had all its marking stripped off and then a fake Mocron brand placed on it, it is counterfeit. However, I would not buy from an unknown company anyway.

It is NAND that is OCZ and then had everything stripped off and fake Micron branding replaced it. That is actually the definition of counterfeit. Very different than Micron buying the NAND and rebranding it. It would appear that a company bought the NAND from OCZ and then worked hard to counterfeit the Micron branding, no doubt to resell at a higher price.

I do agree with that " void the warranty if you open the SSD" can be protection from users knowing practices less than stellar or honest, because in reality, who knows if there are other companies buying counterfeit NAND. I have seen relatively new companies advertise or post on here for a while and sometimes their prices are much lower than name brand companies.

I don't know the person you refer to, but please don't allow your perception/knowledge of that person to take away the main message here. Buy from reputable companies, and as in my first post, there are issues buying counterfeit Crucial SSD drives also.

This is quoted from the original article. Disclaimer: I haven't taken the time to verify this.

"PommieB • 3 days ago −
Fake Crucial ssd's turned up on the Crucial forums about 4 to 6 months ago, the older M225 ssd's and at least one M4, I placed a caution in the news section of my thread at extreme overclocking, These ssd drives were not manufactured by Crucial and were discovered when the ssd's were rma'd, the M225 is a old Crucial drive that's been EOL for a while now, the rma's were naturally turned down by Crucial and a warning was placed in the Crucial forums."

 

Is everyone reading the same info I am?

Usually someone faking/remarking hardware tries to make the item out to be better than it actually is.

In this case the NAND that was rejected by OCZ as substandard for SSD use and sold off to a 3rd party was remarked to part numbers that are for lower quality NAND for USB flash drives.

Doesn't that seem like a good thing.

IMO it's simply poor quality control on the SSD makers part.

 

I have 5 USB drives from 128 MB (yes MB) to 8 GB - various manf. and all are used often. None have failed but any that contain important data are backed up to an external hard drive.
BTW anyone have personal experience with Centon USB drives I saw 128 Gb for <$70 US
good find Abidderman

 

Insane need to test the $320 512GB m4 when it comes in.

 

The NAND is not "Fake".

OCZ doesn't own a NAND Fab.

OCZ bought the whole waffers from Intel Micron and sliced it up into chips then screened them with their markings.

OCZ,upon testing the NAND memory chips found some did not meet their SSD NAND specs.

Having no use for the chips that didn't meet their SSD quality standard sold them off at auction.This is a common practice in the NAND market.

The NAND was eventually rescreened with Micron part numbers that reflect USB quality NAND.

Again not uncommon in the NAND market.

The NAND started life as Intel/Micron and ended up as Micron.

The SSD was made by KingFast and inspected and certified by them so can it be called counterfeit?

The NAND is Real Intel Micon so can it be called Fake?

How they ended up in a KingFast F3 SSD is the real question.

Deception or Accident

End users void their warranty if the open their SSD to check the components.

Let's take the NAND question a bit furher.

How much difference is there between a NAND chip that passes testing at the top of the specs and the bottom of the specs that would allow for it to be put in an SSD?

Most likely different makers will have different tolerances.

The NAND on mSATA SSDs is easy to see and read the markings.

Many have the Brand/Part#/Lot#/Production Date and the numbers can be Googled.

I saw some NAND on a particular brand and model of mSATA SSD that were not familiar to me and was not found on Google so I asked the rep that visits and posts on this forum frequently about the NAND chips but I didn't get an answer.

So,why does opening an SSD void the warranty if doing it doesn't damage the drive?

 

I had the fake cache on my 486 motherboard years ago.

Fake external hdd , the super low price should have set alarm bells off.

Good read.

John.

 

Whatsthepoint is right, it's not fake NAND, but it is lower quality NAND that seems to have been sold as something it's not so counterfeit, yeah, fake, no.

Removing the casing shows sign of tampering with the device so I guess that is why it voids the warranty, manufacturers assume that any tempering might go deeper I guess and you expose the hardware to static shocks even more I guess. I can see why they consider it voids the warranty even tohugh, in most cases it's harmless.

What Tinderbox linked is definitely fake though.

 

SSDs are a work in progress and everyone is learning every day something they didn't know yesterday.

Reviewers and end users I hope are smarter today than they were yesterday.

Just like there's no perfect SSD there's no perfect SSD review.

We need to read several reviews to get the best picture.

There's a lot I like about the SSD reviews on thessdreview and things I don't like.

The trend these days is using some unknown magical testing software that only a particular site has and end users don't so comparing results is impossible.

I like to see actual screenshots of known benchmarking apps especially Anvil Storage Utilities plus graphs comparing the SSD to SSDs previously tested.Only graphs often leaves information I'm looking for missing.

On thessdreview all tests are done on clean drives from a C: drive that's in Safe Mode to make the SSD look as good as possible.This is great for the manufacturers but not for end users that almost certainly put an OS and data on their SSD and use it as a primary boot drive.No SSD ever gets a bad review.

The absolute worse thing about thessdreview is that any comment that offers corrective criticism to the reviewer in the comments is deleted as are posts in the forums.