How Not to Buy a SSD
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How Not to Buy a SSD
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Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#2Had the same issue with a Crucial drive from amazon. looked just like the real thing but for some small discrepancies.
Performed like an absolute dog and the SMART data was waaaay off.
amazon just refunded me the whole amount and I pulled it apart to see what was inside: https://imgur.com/a/NUSuuEh
quite annoying, though also amusing.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#3ebay is inundated with those fake retail SSDs. Designed to look like WD (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306437612011) or Samsung (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/396854754678), but without the logo. Internally they contain maybe 100GB of flash, a controller that pretends to have 4TB, and they brick themselves when you write 1 byte more than the underlying capacity. Ebay doesn't police that.
Haven't seen that for enterprise SSDs yet.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#4In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#5In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
I wanted to upgrade my NAS with some 12TB drives and two of them in the box from Amazon had been powered on (according to the SMART data) for over a year!
Thankfully got my money back.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#6In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
I've moved over to almost exclusively buying from B&H. They generally have similar prices to other vendors and they manage their own inventory directly with manufacturers, so no concerns about fraudulent hardware.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#7In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
I'm curious with what you mean with "Even sold by Amazon". The last few years I see nothing but reports of cheap fake products over Amazon.
Years ago I ordered some T-Shirts to test and they were all fake versions that barely survived the first wash. Haven't ordered anything since then.
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#8In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
[deleted]
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#9In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
> even sold by Amazon
Honest question: after all the reports of co-mingled inventory, plain fakes etc. being sold by Amazon - for years i might add - do you really consider Amazon being a reliable source for anything that is not some unimportant trinket?
I went from spending > 10k€ per year to less than 5%, probably not even that, on there, all by their own fault.
And i see no reason to buy there anymore:
- the default assumption of having the best price on the web went out of the window years ago
- next (or 2) day delivery - does not happen anymore in most cases, Prime or not
- even finding (!!) what you're searching for is a total sh.t show
- for years, Amazon is now a front for chinese cr.p shipped by the boatload
- the once useful review system has been and is being gamed, it is beyond broken these days and should not be trusted (basically forget everything that scores 4.5 or less, read all reviews and ensure that the review you're reading is not for some other variant of the item you're looking for or that the review you're looking at hasn't been swapped one item for another, because that's a thing as well on there...)
I mean - buying things on Aliexpress is more trustworthy, for crying out loud - yet, most people can't seem to be bothered. scratchinghead
Re: How Not to Buy a SSD
#10In general I am afraid to buy storage devices except directly from the vendor at the moment. I've heard that there's also lots of fraudulent HDDs being sold with botched SMART data, even on Amazon, even marked as "New", even sold by Amazon. Scary proposition unless you're dying to test out your RAID array redundancy.
I'm curious with what you mean with "Even sold by Amazon". The last few years I see nothing but reports of cheap fake products over Amazon. Years ago I ordered some T-Shirts to test and they were all fake versions that barely survived the first wash. Haven't ordered anything since then.
I think this comment references something many people don't realize: Even items that say "Ships from
Amazon, Sold by Amazon" could be counterfeit, because the inventory from third party sellers is co-mingled with Amazon's own inventory.
If you see "Ships from Amazon, Sold by RandomCompany" you might worry about counterfeits. But the "Sold by Amazon" item might also have been sourced from (or counterfeited by) "RandomCompany".