Samsung's new SSD 990 launched today, offering solid PCIe 4.0 performance, improved efficiency over the Evo lineup, and speeds exceeding 7 GB/s. Early reviews agree that the launch price leaves it in an awkward spot however, with the faster 990 Pro and and even some PCIe 5.0 SSDs often costing only slightly more.
With unusually high SSD prices, Samsung's flagship PCIe 5.0 9100 Pro 1TB stands out at $206 on Amazon – its lowest price in months. Delivering up to 14.7 GB/s read speeds, it's a rare chance to grab a cutting-edge Gen5 SSD at a meaningful discount.
CrystalDiskInfo 9.9.0 adds a new feature to help users spot counterfeit Samsung SSDs, an increasingly common problem as fake high-end drives are becoming more convincing. The utility can flag suspicious drives by checking hardware identifiers and firmware data.
ValiDrive is a free utility that checks whether USB drives, memory cards, SSDs, and other storage actually provide their advertised capacity. Designed to spot counterfeit or faulty drives with inflated storage claims, it can also identify potential read/write problems and give a quick look at transfer performance.