Deceptive Losedows Device Manager

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nadebula.1984
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Iscritto: 05/01/2018

One of my friends recently received a notebook with a "CMR" hard disk, and s/he complained that the random writing performance was just as poor as an SMR one. I suspected that it was actually an SMR one, but s/he sent me a Losedows Device Manager screenshot, showing a CMR disk model under the Disk Drive list. There was also an SSD under the Disk Drive list.

In order to investigate this, I picked up a notebook which could hold two hard disks and installed one SSD on it. I restored default UEFI settings and installed Losedows on the SSD. I then powered off (actually, hibernating) the computer and installed a CMR hard disk. When I powered on (actually, resuming) the computer, the Device Manager showed the CMR disk properly.

I hibernated the computer again, and replaced the CMR disk with an SMR disk with the same capacity. When I resumed the computer, the Device Manager still showed the CMR model, although the disk had been replaced. Because of "fast boot", neither UEFI firmware nor Losedows system re-detected hardware configuration. And since the Losedows system was installed entirely on the SSD, replacing the HDD didn't cause Losedows to malfunction.

However, this trick could only fool the stupid Losedows Device Manager, and only when "fast boot" is enabled, and this deception couldn't survive a restart (e.g. forced by Losedows 10/11's system update) when Losedows re-detects hardware. Therefore it causes minimal risk to dark market customers.

If you want to play this trick on your rival, you'll need Losedows 8, because there is no forced update (and thus restart) on Losedows 8, the deception could last much longer (lasting a bit longer than warranty is just enough).