Lenovo thinkplus 256GB

  • Obtained from: AliExpress
  • Price paid: $9.99
  • Advertised capacity: 256GB
  • Logical capacity: 250,139,901,952 bytes
  • Physical capacity: 250,139,901,952 bytes
  • Fake/skimpy flash: Skimpy (2.29% skimp)
  • Protected area: 134,217,728 bytes (inaccessible)
  • Speed class markings: Class 10, U3, V30, A2
  • CID data:
    • Manufacturer ID: 0xdf
    • OEM ID: 0x2306
    • Product name: 0x5344323536 (ASCII: SD256)
    • Product revision: 0x20
Sample #123Average
Serial number0x000002080x0000092a0x0000090fN/A
Manufacture dateJun 2023Jun 2023Jun 2023N/A
Sequential read speed (MB/sec)89.9590.4788.7689.73
Sequential write speed (MB/sec)39.4941.7939.5340.27
Random read speed (IOPS/sec)1,611.521,693.191,655.011,653.24
Random write speed (IOPS/sec)295.95302.96293.82297.58
Read/write cycles to first error246308320291
Read/write cycles to total failureNot yet determinedNot yet determinedNot yet determinedNot yet determined
Total days to complete failureNot yet determinedNot yet determinedNot yet determinedNot yet determined
Card reader usedJJC CR-UTC4ACJJC CR-UTC4ACJJC CR-UTC4ACN/A
Package frontN/A
Package backN/A
Card frontN/A
Card backN/A

Discussion

While cruising through deals on AliExpress, I came upon this model. While I was not entirely convinced that it wasn’t fake, it seems like the seller did try a little harder to pass this off as genuine than some of the other options I’ve come across — so I decided to give it a try.

The packaging for this card looks more like what I’d expect from a name-brand card. Branding is present and on-point, color schemes match the brand’s color scheme, the card’s capacity is printed on the packaging, there are disclaimers printed on the package about the definitions of a kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte, and there is contact information printed on the package. While none of these factors individually would be enough to convince me that a product is genuine, the combination of all of them tells me that this product is — dare I say — most likely genuine.

So far, this actually seems to be a decent card — not a great card, but not a terrible card either. I was pleased to see that it was not fake flash, and at $0.04 per gigabyte, it’s starting to rival the price for platter-based drives. (For comparison, a new WD Blue 3.5″ mechanical drive runs between $0.016 and $0.045 per gigabyte, at the time of this writing, depending on which capacity you buy.) Additionally, all performance metrics were within one standard deviation from average — with sequential I/O speeds being above average, and random I/O speeds being below average. Of the speed class markings that it bears, it performed well enough to qualify for all of them except for the A2 marking. I’ll give my standard disclaimer — perhaps it would have done better if it had been tested under proper conditions — but the A2 mark requires a random write performance of 2,000 IOPS per second, and these cards only made it about 15% of the way there. I seriously doubt it would have done significantly better had it been tested with a reader that offered the capabilities needed to test it properly.

All three samples are currently undergoing endurance testing:

  • Sample #1’s first error was a six-sector wide address decoding error during round 247. It has survived 588 read/write cycles in total so far.
  • Sample #2’s first error was an eight-sector wide address decoding error during round 309. It has survived 595 read/write cycles in total so far.
  • Sample #3’s first error was a two-sector wide address decoding error during round 321. It has survived 609 read/write cycles in total so far.

Side note: samples #1 and #2 did technically experience errors earlier on, but I’m almost positive that they were device mangling errors and thus not the card’s fault. Therefore, I’ve decided to discard those errors.

August 8, 2024

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