Samsung Is the Latest SSD Manufacturer Caught Cheating Its Customers

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Wow, Samsung has joined the cheaters column after a certain manufacture date!!!

In the past 11 days, both Crucial and Western Digital have been caught swapping the TLC NAND used for certain products with inferior QLC NAND without updating product SKUs or informing reviewers that this change was happening. Shipping one product to reviewers and a different product to consumers is unacceptable and we recently recommended that readers buy SSDs from Samsung or Intel in lieu of WD or Crucial.

As of today, we have to take Samsung off that list. One difference in this situation is that Samsung isn’t swapping TLC for QLC — it’s swapping the drive controller + TLC for a different, inferior drive controller and different TLC. The net effect is still a steep performance decline in certain tests. We’ve asked Intel to specifically confirm it does not engage in this kind of consumer-hostile behavior and will report back if it does.

The other beats of this story are familiar. Computerbase.de reports on a YouTube Channel, 潮玩客, which compared two different versions of the Samsung 970 Plus. Both drives are labeled with the same sticker declaring them to be a 970EVO Plus, but the part numbers are different. One drive is labeled the MZVLB1T0HBLR (older, good) and one is the MZVL21T0HBLU (newer, inferior).

ExtremeTech

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Michael432, wavy

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Well … if this is true, this is more than cheating. This is fraud: you know, a thing people end up behind bars if convicted of doing it.

But I don’t know: someone from a German organization or company whose domain name is “Computerbase.de” (without e.g. “.org.” or “.com.” before “de”) explains things in a YouTube video that has a link with three Chinese characters that mean “Trendy Player”?

Maybe this is worth digging a bit deeper.

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It’s certainly deceptive and I would say unethical, but I don’t know if it rises to the level of fraud. As long as the drive is meeting its published specifications in terms of performance (which rely on the SLC cache of the unit in terms of write performance, not the TLC or QLC NAND), the manufacturer is probably off the hook for fraud. Products undergo revisions all the time, and some of these revisions result in noticeable differences on the consumer end.

One example that springs readily to mind is the Netgear WNDR3700 router, which was the one I was using until a short time ago. By the time I moved on to a newer router with faster wifi, the WNDR3700 had undergone something like six product revisions (for a total of seven different products). Different revisions had different levels of RAM, NVRAM storage, processing speed, and sometimes even different SoC providers, each with its own set of characteristics. Some were faster, some could accept a larger firmware image, some were more reliable, and so on, and they were all sold under “WNDR3700.”

In the case of that router, later revisions were often better than the earlier ones. The one I have is a first generation, and these were reported to sometimes have problems with the onboard radios. Mine doesn’t have any problem with that, but it was a well known flaw with the first gen units. They fixed that in the next generation, but people with first gen units that were out of warranty were also out of luck.

Some of the WNDR3700 models don’t have a DD-WRT custom firmware available, which is a big negative to me. Mine has had DD-WRT on it for several years, and it was good to be able to get updated firmware for it even if the plethora of features in DD-WRT were not needed, since Netgear released the final official firmware for the v1 unit many years ago, even though products sold under the same name were still in stores.

This is one of those times when “let the buyer beware” comes into play. It does seem that Samsung and the others were attempting to take advantage of the good reviews that the older product had earned while saving some pennies by producing a cheaper facsimile of the original, but at what point does it cross the line into unethical behavior to sell it under the same name? Minor changes are common as parts supplies fluctuate. There’s a line in there somewhere, a point where minor changes turn into “this really should be a different product,” and certainly I think swapping QLC and MLC is one of those, but that doesn’t mean it is fraud.

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oldfry

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Western Digital promises to be a bit louder next time

So, WD will continue switching to slower (and cheaper) NANDs but this time they will inform customers.

Western Digital says it will alert customers when it reformulates its products by modifying their firmware and electronics, as opposed to burying salient changes on a spec sheet without any public announcement.

This issue came up lately when the computer storage giant low-key altered the components in its WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD. The product data sheet was quietly updated to reflect the change. Nonetheless, Chinese tech site Experview spotted the refresh when it compared an SN550 SSD made on July 28, 2021 with an earlier model and found the flash memory identifier and firmware number differed…

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OscarCP wrote:

Well … if this is true, this is more than cheating. This is fraud

I totally agree. It is fraud and should be dealt like the HDD Gigabyte (1000 instead of 1024) storage capacity class-action lawsuit.

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The correct way to have dealt with that lawsuit would be to dismiss it with prejudice, and to admonish the plaintiff’s attorneys for wasting the court’s time. This is a classic example of a frivolous lawsuit. While you can never tell these days, dismissal is probably what would have happened if it had been fully litigated rather than being settled out of court. As it is, the settlement was to provide backup software to the “victims,” but WD already has a WD edition of Acronis True Image that they make available to buyers of WD drives. It sounds to me like this “loss” was even less of an actual loss than Microsoft’s “loss” with regard to Internet Explorer (where I would imagine Bill Gates and the upper management of Microsoft were popping champagne corks after their “defeat”).

It has long been the industry standard to use the decimal definition of megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte for hard drives. It’s been that way since I bought my first hard drive in 1990 (a 40 MB). If people don’t understand this, it’s on them, not the hard drive manufacturers for following the decades-old industry standard.

If anything, the fault lies with Microsoft (and apparently Apple) for using the term “gigabyte” (GB) when they meant “gibibyte” (GiB). That distinction did not exist at the time the industry standard was formed, when one of the first things budding young computer enthusiasts learned is that a “K” was not 1000 bytes, but 1024. That, of course, was a falsehood on the part of the people who applied “K” to 1024 of something, as that is not and has never been what “kilo” stands for. It was a bit of shorthand for want of a better term, and it did not redefine the existing terminology.

“Kilo,” “mega,” and “giga” are SI prefixes that mean 1000^1, 1000^2, and 1000^3, respectively. It has never been misleading, fraudulent, or in any way incorrect to use them in this manner. It’s misleading to use them in any other manner. A kilometer is not 1024 meters, but 1000 meters.

That little bit of ambiguity was solved when the binary, 1024-based definitions were given their own terms. Now 1024 bytes is a kibibyte, or “kilo binary byte,” which lets the person know without any ambiguity that this is the binary definition. Mebibyte, gibibyte, tibibyte, pebibyte, and so on are the preferred terms for 1024^2, 1024^3, 1024^4, and 1024^5.

If the people who didn’t know the definition of “giga” have anyone to be angry with for Windows or MacOS reporting the capacity as being lower than they expected, it would be Microsoft and Apple. It would have been incredibly easy for each of the companies to change the stated abbreviations in their software to add an extra ‘i’, where MB becomes MiB, GB becomes GiB, and so on. This is how things are represented in the OS I am now using (KDE Neon), and it would have been no harder for MS and Apple to add a few ‘i’ characters here and there to completely solve the issue.

It wasn’t WD that misrepresented the capacity of their drives. It was Microsoft and Apple who did that.

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…WD already has a WD edition of Acronis True Image that they make available to buyers of WD drives…

Western Digital offered Acronis True Image software available sometime after this lawsuit, so even though the lawsuit basis was frivolous it had this one positive effect for every future purchaser of Western Digital drives.

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Have any of these articles mentioned whether or not this situation is driven by the overall chip shortage or if it is just a ‘strategic’ move to increase profits?

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This article (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/) doesn’t directly address the chip shortage but there is a comment that linked to this story about Samsung’s controller factory in Texas having to close down this last March: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ssd-controller-shortage

I feel Samsung has been deceptive – or worse. Considering the significant write performance drops and higher operating temperatures due to the new controller, Samsung should have created a new model number, explained the reasons and NOT traded upon the well-deserved reputation of the 970 Evo Plus name.

I have one of the older, better 1TB 970’s and was considering replacing an aging 250GB with another 970. Not now.

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Alex5723

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What will you replace it with? The other manufacturers are doing the same thing.

cheers, Paul

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It is not fraud. If they claimed the products used type A chips, then really used type B inferior, then that might be considered fraud.

What concerns me is how, almost all of a sudden, multiple makers are using these same “tactics” (using the same SKU).

It makes me wonder if there is some conspiracy going on? That said, not sure this type of conspiracy would be considered fraud or illegal either.

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OscarCP

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” not sure this type of conspiracy would be considered fraud or illegal either.”

Can’t be sure either, but if it become something objectionable that a number of companies do, and they also agree among themselves to do it, then it would be a “cartel” kind of illegal conspiracy. Probably not the case here.

And I take back that this could be a case of fraud, beyond being a clear attempt to mislead buyers, after I read what has been written here and then reflected on it: the information of what was inside those SSD boxes was in their labels, so people could see that for themselves and decide whether to buy or not — if they new what “TLC NAND” and “QLC NAND” mean, that is.

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It seems to me that ExtremeTech, having published that headline/article, could easily have taken the next step and tested one of those “updated” Samsung (or Crucial or WD) products. A comparison of the test results from the modified product with the test results from the original product would make it clear whether or not the changes resulted in an inferior product.

In fact, a new policy of publishing updated test results of such modified products might cause these manufacturers to be more honest about their behavior.

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oldfry, OscarCP

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They did test with a new disk and the performance was affected.
See the original post about this, particularly the linked Tom’s Hardware Guide article. Topic: Western Digital Caught Bait-and-Switching Customers With Slow SSDs @ AskWoody

cheers, Paul

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And here’s a (Mandarin with English subtitles) video that presents testing differences between the two 970 Evo Plus SSDs. Be fast on the pause button so you can have time to read the changes in performance tests! 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_jee5Q08OI

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OscarCP wrote:

the information of what was inside those SSD boxes was in their labels, so people could see that for themselves and decide whether to buy or not — if they new what “TLC NAND” and “QLC NAND” mean, that is.

It is a fraud as the box didn’t indicate the 50% drop in performance from TLC to QLC and the price hasn’t droped by 50% accordingly. In fact prices for SSDs are going up every day.

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It would only be fraud if they claimed the old performance numbers and deliberately sold a product that does not live up to them. Failing to live up to published benchmark numbers from anyone except the manufacturer is not fraud. As long as it nominally meets the performance standards claimed by the manufacturer, there is no fraud.

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Alex5723 wrote:

It is a fraud as the box didn’t indicate the 50% drop in performance from TLC to QLC and the price hasn’t droped by 50% accordingly.

That is not fraud!

Companies can set the price to whatever they want.

And as long as the printing on the box states what is really in there, no laws are being broken.

Have you seen a roll of toilet paper lately? Fewer sheets. Narrower sheets. Higher price. Is that fraud? Nope.

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Paul T wrote:

other manufacturers are doing the same thing.

So if other manufacturers are doing the same thing it is right ?
As Steve S commented Samsung should have called the SSDs by new name not using the well known 970 Evo Plus name.
This is full fraud.

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Please stop using my comments out of context to push your barrow.

cheers, Paul

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Alex5723 wrote:

So if other manufacturers are doing the same thing it is right ?

Paul T wrote:

Please stop using my comments out of context to push your barrow.

I agree with Paul. Nothing Paul has said suggests it is right just because other companies do it.

The problem here (in this thread) is YOU, Alex! You do not understand, or refuse to accept what the definition of “fraud” is. Perhaps you are not very fluent in English, so I will look it up for you,

Fraud:

specifically: intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value.

Note it is “intentional perversion of truth”. And just in case, “perversion of truth” in this context means to “alter, corrupt, misrepresent, or falsify” the truth. And of course, “something of value” in this context is money.

If Toyota changes the base 4 cyl engine in their Camry next year to a different 4 cyl engine that produces 5HP less than this year’s model, AND the new specs properly indicate the lower horsepower, are you suggesting they can no longer call that model a Camry? That’s the same thing you are doing here with the 970 Evo Plus. And, that is NOT fraud because they did not pervert the truth, intentionally or even unintentionally.

What if Toyota changes that engine to produce 5 “more” horsepower? You would still claim they need to change the name of the car? What’s the difference?

Fraud would be if Toyota claimed that 4 cyl engine produced 200HP when in reality, it only produced 180HP, and they knew it but intentionally lied about it.

What if “Brawny Paper Towels” reduced the number of sheets in a roll from 80 sheets to 70 sheets AND the packaging properly indicated there were now 70 sheets? Are you going to claim it is fraud if they don’t stop calling them Brawny Paper Towels?

Samsung is NOT advertising one thing, then claiming another. Therefore, IT IS NOT FRAUD!

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CADesertRat wrote:

Both drives are labeled with the same sticker declaring them to be a 970EVO Plus, but the part numbers are different. One drive is labeled the MZVLB1T0HBLR (older, good) and one is the MZVL21T0HBLU (newer, inferior).

Since I have all Samsung SSD’s and NVME’s in my computers, and the only way to tell the inferior ones is by the part number, I won’t be buying any newer ones for quite some time.

When you order a drive do you ever look at the part number? My view is that they escape fraud by giving it a different part number although it is deceptive as heck. The main problem I see is that a large number of Manufacturers are going this route and that is extremely upsetting!!

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CADesertRat wrote:

When you order a drive do you ever look at the part number?

Umm, I do. You don’t?

Lots of computer components have subtle differences while having the same main model number. Motherboards are famous (notorious?) for this, as are drives. PSUs too.

Even entire computers do this. For example, look how many different Dell Inspiron 15 3000 laptops there are. They all have the same model number.

I don’t know. It’s not easy being a consumer when the laws seem to favor businesses over “We The People”. 🙁

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wavy, OscarCP

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Bill_Bright wrote:

Umm, I do. You don’t?

Nope, never thought it was necessary in the past but evidently this is a new world.

Bill_Bright wrote:

I don’t know. It’s not easy being a consumer when the laws seem to favor businesses over “We The People”

True statement and now more than ever.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
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OscarCP

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