Never buy something that’s too good to be true. A Chinese consumer learned this lesson the hard way. Thinking he had snagged a bargain, he purchased what was advertised as an external M.2 NVMe SSD. But as it turned out, the drive’s performance was far below that of a typical solid-state drive, even underperforming when compared to a standard external HDD.
Suspicious of its subpar performance, the consumer decided to investigate and open the device. He discovered, as revealed by the images shared on MyDrivers, that the so-called SSD was nothing more than two microSD cards connected to an outdated controller.
The exact specs and storage capacities of the microSD cards weren’t even disclosed and, as Tom’s Hardware suggests, could be misrepresented via the controller firmware. Despite having a modern USB-C port, the counterfeit drive only supported USB 2.0 data transfer speeds. It’s suggested that the drive could only manage a meager maximum read speed of 100 MB/s, with write speeds suspected to be even lower.
Counterfeiting is a widespread problem, and it’s not unique to China. In the Philippines, the Intellectual Property Office reported an uptick in reports concerning counterfeit goods at the start of the “ber” months this year.
It’s worth noting that microSD cards can also be counterfeit themselves. Often sold at unbeatably low prices, these fakes usually don’t deliver the storage capacity they claim to offer. As such, netizens shopping online must know how to distinguish genuine microSD cards from their counterfeit counterparts.