If idiosyncratic tries to merchantability you 30TB of solid-state retention for little than $40, see turning astir and moving away, nary substance however galore clip-art rockets they usage successful their pictures.

It feels similar high-capacity SSDs are getting cheaper each the time, but successful the words of a information researcher known arsenic Ray Redacted connected Twitter, determination are inactive immoderate deals that are too bully to beryllium true. In the tone of discovery, helium bought a "30TB" outer SSD from AliExpress for $31.40, which besides happens to beryllium listed connected Walmart's website for $39 (I americium linking it for acquisition and amusement value, delight bash not bargain it).

On the inside, this "SSD" looks similar 2 small-capacity microSD cards blistery glued to a USB 2.0-capable board. This board's firmware has been modified truthful that each of these cards reports its capacity arsenic "15.0TB" to the operating system, for a full of 30TB, adjacent though the existent capableness of the cards is overmuch lower. This is different giveaway; Windows reports thrust capacities successful gibibytes (1,024 mebibytes) oregon tebibytes (1,024 gibibytes), portion thrust manufacturers usage gigabytes (1,000 megabytes) and terabytes (1,000 gigabytes). This is wherefore a 1TB thrust usually lone has a reported capableness of 930-ish GB, alternatively than a bully circular number.

Enlarge / On the inside, this "SSD" features what appears to beryllium a brace of microSD cards oregon immoderate different benignant of cheap, low-capacity flash representation blistery glued to a circuit board.

The thrust is adjacent much clever erstwhile it comes to tricking radical into reasoning it's working. It preserves the directory operation of immoderate you're copying, but erstwhile it's "copying" your data, it conscionable keeps penning and rewriting implicit the tiny microSD cards. Everything volition look good until you spell to entree a file, lone to find that the information isn't there.

Replies to Ray Redacted's thread are afloat of alternate versions of this scam, including aggregate iterations of the hot-glued microSD mentation and astatine slightest 1 that hid a USB thumb thrust wrong a larger enclosure.

Fake USB retention devices are neither caller nor rare, though this 1 makes spectacularly egregious claims astir its price-per-gigabyte. When it comes to buying retention online, common-sense proposal is best: instrumentality to sanction brands, bargain from trustworthy sellers (not conscionable retail sites you trust—the Walmart listing is sold by "JD E Commerce America Limited," immoderate that is), and cognize that if a woody seems excessively bully to beryllium true, it astir surely is.