Red's Overpriced "Mini Mag" Cards - The Real Story

[Spotty]

4 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

In the case of RED, in the original video, the previous drives that contained true 512GB drives, actually had more space

I'm a little confused. I must admit I'm not at all familiar with RED products.

Are the drives that were advertised as 512GB mag minis sold by RED prior to 2017 actual 512GB drives after overprovisioning? (ie. higher raw nand capacity than 512GB).

If they changed the drives used to a difference capacity it could explain why the product displayed on the website was changed to being advertised 480GB capacity.

If that's the case, then I don't understand why in the original video they claimed that RED was misleading consumers claiming they were "512GB drives when in truth they're only 480GB"?

For reference what I'm referring to:

 

They suggest that if you open a "512GB" RED mini-mag you would find a 480GB SSD inside.

[Razor512]

More of that is delved in this video.

 

Wanted to also add, for the 480GB drive in the video,there is no telling the original capacity (assuming a defect free die) since no datasheets are available.

 

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-made-usa-standard

 

From the forum posts, it also appeared that at a certain time, the 512GB labeled drives were more expensive than the 480GB drives, even though they started to place 480GB drives into the 512GB enclosures.

[Razor512]

Wanted to also link this here http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?150422-All-Out-of-1TB-MINI-MAGs&p=1702571&viewfull=1#post1702571

 

" The good news is even though the prior-gen drive was 512GB, we were able to preserve nearly the same usable space for you guys on the 480GB. "

 

https://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2m11n6/brent-carter

 

It seems at some point they just started sticking the 480GB SSDs in the 512GB enclosures,having the camera firmware read specific SSD models as 512GB regardless of their actual capacity, they would be labeled as a red minimag 512GB, though the available storage space reading would reflect that of a 480GB drive.

 

Thus customers purchasing the 512GB during that period, paid extra for a 480GB drive compared to just getting the 480GB model.

[Spotty]

@Razor512 Thanks. As I initially suspected it does indeed appear that the "512GB" model was actually a 480GB drive inside (misleading!), up until it was changed several years ago to be sold as 480GB and described correctly.

I didn't recognise the docking connector used on them so I wasn't sure if it was a proprietary design by RED, but if it's a standardised design which it appears to be then RED is pretty much screwed legally speaking and can't really complain if someone comes along and uses it.

[TechyBen]

10 minutes ago, Spotty said:

@Razor512 Thanks. As I initially suspected it does indeed appear that the "512GB" model was actually a 480GB drive inside (misleading!), up until it was changed several years ago to be sold as 480GB and described correctly.

I didn't recognise the docking connector used on them so I wasn't sure if it was a proprietary design by RED, but if it's a standardised design which it appears to be then RED is pretty much screwed legally speaking and can't really complain if someone comes along and uses it.

Sounds like cost savings? Was the original a legit 512 drive but provisioned for 480... then to save money, they just started slapping in 480 drives and not bothering with overprovisioning?

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Sounds like cost savings? Was the original a legit 512 drive but provisioned for 480... then to save money, they just started slapping in 480 drives and not bothering with overprovisioning?

No no... The "480GB" advertised capacity on the drives is after overprovisioning.

You don't have 480GB drives without reserving some capacity for overprovisioning. NAND flash modules come in base 2 form. So will be modules of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, etc. A 480GB drive might contain four modules of 128GB capacity flash memory for a total of 512GB. Then a portion (in this case 32GB) is locked off in the firmware to be reserved for overprovisioning and the drive is [usually] sold as 480GB capacity.

 

Reserving and locking off capacity is required for SSDs to work with the way they handle data and rewrites. You can't rewrite individual bits of data on an SSD, they're stored in blocks or pages and if you want to delete a bit you need to copy what you don't want to delete to a new block, and then delete the entire old block.

 

So if you have stored on one block A B C D E F G... And you want to delete the letter D. You can't just go in and remove D. You have to create a new block and copy to it  A B C E F G and then delete the entire old block which has A B C D E F G on it.
This means that if you fully fill a SSD without space reserved you won't be able to rewrite data as you won't be able to write new blocks. All SSDs sold will have some capacity locked away, hidden from the user. When they advertise the capacity of the drive, they do not include the volume that is locked away and hidden from the user. However, it seems that RED did include that capacity when they sold their "512GB" drives (which were 480GB available + 32GB hidden = total 512GB).

 

There's also other concerns, such as each cell only being able to handle a certain number of rewrites reliably. So if a bad cell is detected there's reserved space that can be used in its place. This means that you can increase write endurance by increasing the amount of reserved space.

 

As an example here's a teardown of the Kingston A400 120GB SSD. https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/kingston-a400-120-gib-ssd-review/

It has four 32GB flash modules on it, for a total of 128GB raw capacity. 8GB is then reserved & locked away by the firmware, and the drive is sold as 120GB capacity.

 

RED advertising the drives as 480GB is the correct way to do it.
RED previously advertising the drives as 512GB is misleading, and it is not how the storage industry advertises SSD drive capacity.

 

The "512GB" and "480GB" SSDs sold by RED could be identical and nothing more than a name change. At first I thought they just updated the product description on the website changing it from saying 512GB to 480GB after this controversy, before realising they made the change to the drives years ago.

[TechyBen]

18 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Spoiler

 

No no... The "480GB" advertised capacity on the drives is after overprovisioning.

You don't have 480GB drives without reserving some capacity for overprovisioning. NAND flash modules come in base 2 form. So will be modules of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, etc. A 480GB drive might contain four modules of 128GB capacity flash memory for a total of 512GB. Then a portion (in this case 32GB) is locked off in the firmware to be reserved for overprovisioning and the drive is [usually] sold as 480GB capacity.

 

Reserving and locking off capacity is required for SSDs to work with the way they handle data and rewrites. You can't rewrite individual bits of data on an SSD, they're stored in blocks or pages and if you want to delete a bit you need to copy what you don't want to delete to a new block, and then delete the entire old block.

 

So if you have stored on one block A B C D E F G... And you want to delete the letter D. You can't just go in and remove D. You have to create a new block and copy to it  A B C E F G and then delete the entire old block which has A B C D E F G on it.
This means that if you fully fill a SSD without space reserved you won't be able to rewrite data as you won't be able to write new blocks. All SSDs sold will have some capacity locked away, hidden from the user. When they advertise the capacity of the drive, they do not include the volume that is locked away and hidden from the user. However, it seems that RED did include that capacity when they sold their "512GB" drives (which were 480GB available + 32GB hidden = total 512GB).

 

There's also other concerns, such as each cell only being able to handle a certain number of rewrites reliably. So if a bad cell is detected there's reserved space that can be used in its place. This means that you can increase write endurance by increasing the amount of reserved space.

 

As an example here's a teardown of the Kingston A400 120GB SSD. https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/kingston-a400-120-gib-ssd-review/

It has four 32GB flash modules on it, for a total of 128GB raw capacity. 8GB is then reserved & locked away by the firmware, and the drive is sold as 120GB capacity.

 

RED advertising the drives as 480GB is the correct way to do it.
RED previously advertising the drives as 512GB is misleading, and it is not how the storage industry advertises SSD drive capacity.

 

The "512GB" and "480GB" SSDs sold by RED could be identical and nothing more than a name change. At first I thought they just updated the product description on the website changing it from saying 512GB to 480GB after this controversy, before realising they made the change to the drives years ago.

 

 

Huh? You can buy 480gb 500gb and 512gb drives. These exist. Overprovisioning or not, they have *user* accessible amounts of that amount. If RED changed that, and advertised it as "512/500" then that's cheeky to say the least. But who knows if they were overprovisioning to 480gb all along? (Some drives can go to 500, or even bare it all at 512 and just lose performance when not given enough down time to TRIM)

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-inch-Solid-State-Drive-Black/dp/B00LF10KTO

 

"MZ-7KE256 (256 GB) MZ-7KE512 (512 GB) MZ-7KE1T0 (1,024 GB) MZ-7KE2T0 (2,048 GB)".

 

Where as other brands may overprovision more/less/use different extra chips (or less chips), for 500GB or 480GB. But advertise and lock them to that. Crucial do NOT advertise their 500GB drive as "512".

 

[edit] Gah. My bad. Samsung lists them both as 500gb and 512gb.

 

My point still stands if they were changing the overprovisioning sizes, and undercutting the advertised sizes.

[Siana]

Linus says the Virtium StorFly he found in his RED disk is a "low-cost model"...

 

...OK...

 

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/virtium-llc/VSFBM8CC480G-150/VSFBM8CC480G-150-ND/7393837

($450-ish for 480GB)

[SkyHound0202]

At least Apple tried to engineer a proprietary form factor and interface for basically an off-the-shelf Samsung NVMe SSD (SM951 or 950 PRO), in a machine that is not supposed to be user-upgradeable.

 

 

Meanwhile, Red took put a standard adapter and a mid-tier SSD in a casing, called it a day, and sold it for much more than it actually costs.

 

Wow.

[Nystemy]

RED's price for their 480 GB mini-mag is 1350 $

And the price for their 960 GB mini-mag is 2350 $

 

Considering what is bundled into this price, it might be more or less logical.

• First most obvious thing bundled into the price is an aluminium enclosure.Exactly how thick/strong it is, is though a better question. But I would consider it fair to say that it likely is more rugged then a typical SDcard, or the mSATA SSD on itself. The use of proprietary connector could also be due to this reason. (Since an mSATA edge connector can easily be scuffed up or broken over time.)
• Linus mentioned data recovery being a thing RED offers at no charge. (can be seen at 12:50 in the video) So we need to consider data recovery as part of the price. And also take into consideration that data recovery on SSDs tends to be more expensive/difficult then on HDDs. If data recovery is always included, then that is about another 500-1000 USD. (Could be higher.)
• The RED brand. (Yes, brands do cost money, but that is money one technically pays to ensure that the company lasts and can offer good services in the long run. If it is used as a blatant cash grab, then it defeats the point in this added value.)

I can understand the idea that the connector and case adds to the price, as well as data recovery, but why is doubling the capacity nearly doubling the price?

And isn't the prices a bit steep? Okay, it is a "high end product", well, then I would like to see NVMe or something, preferably a RAID 1 configuration within the drive, or at least support for two drives on the camera itself.

 

Then there is the problem that one can easily buy a 1TB NVMe drive for about 200-300 USD. (Offering 4x PCIe 3.0 (giving 32 Gb/s a lot better then 6 Gb/s offered by the mSATA)) Maybe not needed for recording, but it could potentially speed up ingest.

 

But I wouldn't state that the proprietary connector is there to hide away the fact that it is a normal drive inside. I would suspect it has more to do with rigidity of the device. After all, these cameras could be lugged out into literal desserts, and other less friendly environments. So having a drive that likely will survive being driven over by a car is not a too bad of an idea. If only it also were redundant either internally, or on the camera itself. (though, both would be even nicer.)

 

With added redundancy, data recovery would suddenly be a pointless thing and those 500-1000 USD should then likely be cut off from the price of the drives. Unless the drives gets redundancy internally by the use of two SSDs, since a second SSD and a raid controller will add cost again. But then it at least has a far more logical price.

 

Since data recovery is as Linus said, a very ass-backwards approach to ensuring that one doesn't suffer data loss.

Not to mention that data recovery isn't 100% guaranteed to actually work either.

[Razor512]

The docking connector used is likely for the purpose of the self cleaning contacts where the contact surfaces apply a lot more force and are made of a thicker material than gold plated PCB traces on an m.2 card.The hiding of the connector type is likely secondary to having a connector that is less sensitive to a little dust other stuff getting on the connector. Furthermore, if the device ever needs servicing, then all they need to do is swap the adapter. I don't have a problem with them using those adapters since  the connector types have known utilitarian benefits over a standard m.2 connector when it comes to reliability and not needing to be cleaned as often.

 

For the data recovery services, that does not justify the pricing since there are many external drives sold that include "free" data recovery" that don't have anywhere near such an astronomical markup. (most are sold at a 150-200% markup, and their enclosures are often water and fire resistant and often come with a 5 year data recovery guarantee. The reason they can offer that is most people will never use it, and like home owners insurance, far more people pay into it then ever use it, thus the costs + profits can be spread out over many people. The only way their data recovery could justify such a large markup is if virtually every customer is experiencing failures that warrant the data recovery service to be used.

 

But beyond that, recovery is no excuse for redundancy. Even the best and most expensive recovery services are regularly unable to recover 100% of the data, and in some rare cases, nothing can be recovered.

[TechyBen]

48 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

The docking connector used is likely for the purpose of the self cleaning contacts where the contact surfaces apply a lot more force and are made of a thicker material than gold plated PCB traces on an m.2 card.The hiding of the connector type is likely secondary to having a connector that is less sensitive to a little dust other stuff getting on the connector. Furthermore, if the device ever needs servicing, then all they need to do is swap the adapter. I don't have a problem with them using those adapters since  the connector types have known utilitarian benefits over a standard m.2 connector when it comes to reliability and not needing to be cleaned as often.

 

For the data recovery services, that does not justify the pricing since there are many external drives sold that include "free" data recovery" that don't have anywhere near such an astronomical markup. (most are sold at a 150-200% markup, and their enclosures are often water and fire resistant and often come with a 5 year data recovery guarantee. The reason they can offer that is most people will never use it, and like home owners insurance, far more people pay into it then ever use it, thus the costs + profits can be spread out over many people. The only way their data recovery could justify such a large markup is if virtually every customer is experiencing failures that warrant the data recovery service to be used.

 

But beyond that, recovery is no excuse for redundancy. Even the best and most expensive recovery services are regularly unable to recover 100% of the data, and in some rare cases, nothing can be recovered.

Not for production use I'd assume. So I can understand the markup for the recovery option. But TBF, people will use their own consumables. Like... stop trying to control the world. Try to teach people instead. If they don't/won't learn? Well, I guess money is all the business sees, and all it does.

[Razor512]

Some companies offer recovery services while targeting business customers, e.g., https://iosafe.com/

[multifrag]

15 hours ago, Luscious said:

-snip-

Completely agree about the BMS part. A low quality BMS is number one reason why the battery fail prematurely.

I don't understand which part of xt60 or xt90 connector is ''proprietary connectors''. Even when they sell you a dolphin pack it comes with a standard power connectors. These connectors are the most popular choice... You're saying that the resistor failed in your BMS and i'm guessing you can't get any power out of the battery? Where is the problem with the connectors? All you have to do is replace the bms and if you have ''I have the knowledge to build my own battery, and a vastly superior one at that.'' shouldn't be a problem. The warranty is out either way so just replace the bms and be done with it. I'd recommend going with a bluetooth one. It will make your life easier knowing the bms is working properly and not killing the battery slowly.

In terms of warranty there would be little luna could do. With strict rules on shipping batteries, you wouldn't be able to ship it back even if you wanted to.

I'm all for people tinkering and learning new skills, but ebike batteries are one part that I'd refer to a specialist. I've repaired plenty of batteries and you have to have A LOT of patience. One wrong move and that thing will go on fire.

Ebike industry is still in it's infancy. It's still worth building your own from scratch unless your time worth more.

[Nystemy]

15 minutes ago, multifrag said:

I'm all for people tinkering and learning new skills, but ebike batteries are one part that I'd refer to a specialist. I've repaired plenty of batteries and you have to have A LOT of patience. One wrong move and that thing will go on fire.

This is true.

Never fun seeing people start off with their first DIY project and have it be a battery pack, or a mains power supply, or similar.
It usually ends badly. Shorting high energy stuff isn't fun. Especially batteries since they don't stop as long as they are shorted, unlike mains voltages where the fuse blows.

[hojnikb]

Just FYI, 512 (or 480GB for that matter) SSD does NOT have 512GiB of RAW NAND. It's actually a lot more that that. To quote Billy from Anand:

 

Quote

All SSDs have significantly higher raw NAND capacity than their user-accessible capacity. A "128GB" drive has a usable capacity of 128,035,676,160 bytes. 128GiB is 137,438,953,472 bytes, so you're getting access to at most 93.16% of the raw capacity of the drive. But NAND flash chips are never exactly 128Gb; they have spare area built-in to the chip to allow for defective blocks, and extra space to store error correction data. 

For Intel/Micron 32-layer 3D NAND, each 16kB page (16384 bytes) was accompanied by an extra 2208 bytes for ECC info, and the die had 2192 blocks instead of 2048. So the TLC part that was nominally 384Gb (48GB) had a raw capacity of 62,597,627,904 bytes, compared to the expected 51,539,607,552: an extra 21.4% that's never directly usable on any SSD, and usually not counted when talking about overprovisioning ratios.

 

 

Another thing to note. With most lesser known SSD brands, that use off the shelf controller and NAND, you can in most cases reflash the controller to use the remaining storage as user accessible (in this case from 480GB to 512GB). It's just a matter of identifying type of controller and downloading the correct MPTool. In most cases, they are publicly available.

[BlindSniper35]

On 7/17/2019 at 8:26 PM, Razerian said:

I believe that was covered at 4m 50s where he explains that there technically is 512gb, though only 480gb is available for the user. It's just a cheap way to bend the truth to make it seem bigger, like when you buy a 10TB drive and you can only see 9.3TB when you install it.

This has nothing to do with extra space for whatever purpose. this boils down to people using units prefixes wrong for over 25 years

1 gibibyte(GiB) is 1024 mebibytes(MiB) 

1 gigabyte(GB) is 1000 megabytes(MB)

1 kibibyte(KiB) is 1024 bytes

1 kilobyte (KB) is 1000 bytes

I'm I'm not sure how this happened but the "I" got dropped from mebibytes(MiB) to MB. people just associated the standard metric prefix form with the binary prefix meaning instead of the technically correct base 10 metric prefix. This is why hard drive manufacturers have always(mostly) been correct on the size of their drives they're using the correct definition of gigabyte.

SSD manufacturers are using gigabyte incorrect most of the time except for when you see a non power of two. mainly because no one's heard of gibibytes(GiB) it would make sense to use the binary (base 2) system because that's going to give you nice round numbers when making nand flash do to the fact that nand flash (and other memory) is composed of ons and offs.T Thusanswering the old question why is my hard drive always smaller then what it says it's because Windows is lying to you. it's using binary counting but labeling it with the incorrect metric prefix instead of the binary prefix and this is why every time you say you have x gigabytes of RAM you are always wrong you have x gibibytes of RAM.

no we will never be able to stomp out this confusion and unless you see or hear GiB you're left guessing what  actually mean

[Siana]

(deleted)

[Siana]

(deleted)

[hojnikb]

9 hours ago, BlindSniper35 said:

This has nothing to do with extra space for whatever purpose. this boils down to people using units prefixes wrong for over 25 years

1 gibibyte(GiB) is 1024 mebibytes(MiB) 

1 gigabyte(GB) is 1000 megabytes(MB)

1 kibibyte(KiB) is 1024 bytes

1 kilobyte (KB) is 1000 bytes

I'm I'm not sure how this happened but the "I" got dropped from mebibytes(MiB) to MB. people just associated the standard metric prefix form with the binary prefix meaning instead of the technically correct base 10 metric prefix. This is why hard drive manufacturers have always(mostly) been correct on the size of their drives they're using the correct definition of gigabyte.

SSD manufacturers are using gigabyte incorrect most of the time except for when you see a non power of two. mainly because no one's heard of gibibytes(GiB) it would make sense to use the binary (base 2) system because that's going to give you nice round numbers when making nand flash do to the fact that nand flash (and other memory) is composed of ons and offs.T Thusanswering the old question why is my hard drive always smaller then what it says it's because Windows is lying to you. it's using binary counting but labeling it with the incorrect metric prefix instead of the binary prefix and this is why every time you say you have x gigabytes of RAM you are always wrong you have x gibibytes of RAM.

no we will never be able to stomp out this confusion and unless you see or hear GiB you're left guessing what  actually mean

 

SSD manufacturers are using this prefixes correctly, just like HDD manufacturers use. An 120GB ssd will consist of 120,000,000,000 bytes, which roughly translates to ~111GiB, just the capacity Windows reports as 111GB.

So nothing is really wrong here. Whenever things are power of two or not (like 128GB SSDs) doesn't really matter in this case.

 

What is wrong is RED marking a 480GB drive as 512GB. They are technically stealing 32GB of space because marketing. Even though the SSD is perfectly capable of being a 512GB if it needs to be (it just a firmware thing to setup the drive as 480GB or 512GB user accessible)

[Zodiark1593]

 

At 17:00, did the JinniMag guy just make a jab at our Linus there?!

[hojnikb]

Heh, the "protection" is even dumber than i thought. It doesnt even take a special ID (like "RED MAG SSD") just a scrambled serial number tucked inside SMART sector 90h.

 

You can actually do this yourself. While knowing how sn is scrambled (jinni conveniently forgets to mention this) would make this even easier, it doesnt even matter.

 

Pick a random msata ssd, that has a 3rd party controller (like phison or silicon motion), take controllers mptool, change serial number to any known red minimag one (that also has scrambled id available) and rewrite smart log 90h.

 

bam, you got yourself a cheap red ssd. I'm just waiting for aliexpress to pop up with minimag cases, allowing for msata to fit. Or perhaps even m.2, since those are more commonly available.

[Tesla73]

Honest to God, I thought that this was fine. So what? You still are getting a not completely terrible "mini-mag" card. Then I saw the price....I about threw up.