I recently purchased what I thought was a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD on eBay. Upon receiving it, I noticed several unusual things. First, it shipped from China, which raised my suspicions. Some of the images on the listing seemed off as well. Now that I have it in hand, I'm conflicted. Visually, it looks genuine, but when I checked it with Windows, CrystalDisk, and Samsung Magician, it shows as a 4TB drive but isn't recognized as a Samsung product. I'm curious what others think: is it safe to use, or have I just bought a dud that might fail soon?
4 Answers
If Samsung Magician says it’s legit, I’d say it’s likely fine. If it doesn’t identify it as a Samsung drive, that’s a big red flag though.
Just to make sure, you did install it in the M.2 slot directly, right? Using an external USB connection can change things.
This looks fake to me. Check the silver controller under the sticker on the right; it should match the size and angle of the sticker, but yours is much smaller. Remember, it’s easy to fake a drive that says 4TB; they can set a small chip to report a bigger storage size.
The board seems different from legit models. I've noticed that there should be a bigger hole in the corner instead of those smaller ones. Also, there's usually a black chip on the right edge that’s missing here. From what I've seen in discussions about fake 990 Pros, this one looks suspiciously identical to those. You might want to check out a detailed article about it too.
Great observation! It really does look like they copied the design closely, probably just used a real one’s label. I wouldn't trust it too much.