If Amazon sells a 16TB portable SSD for under $100, don’t buy it. Such drives cost thousands of dollars. These are just scams and don’t work at all. We bought it and got a glorious 64GB hard drive.
When it comes to portable hard drives, bigger is usually better. You need a lot of space for photos, videos or other things. So when Amazon offers a 16 TB external hard drive for under $100, it sounds perfect. Unless it’s a huge scam. I know because I bought one and took it apart.
Oversized Tiny Hard Drive with Suspiciously Low Price
You don’t have to go far to find these fake hard drives. Start searching for a 16 terabyte (TB) external hard drive and you’ll see dozens of entries. Most of them are brands I have never heard of, such as “WIOTA” and “SAJIULAS”. But while these odd brands offer hard drives for under $100, options from big name brands like Western Digital are in the hundreds of dollars range.
increasingly suspicious. If you compare the sub-$100 product with others, you’ll find that the case is much smaller. The famous brand does not offer him a 16TB SSD portable drive. They are nothing more than traditional spinning drive enclosures. However, the sub-$100 brands claim to be M.2 SSDs. This is he one of the most expensive and fastest formats. For reference, the largest portable SSD Samsung offers is 2 TB and costs $180.
Another thing that bothers me is that the photos are exactly the same regardless of whether it is “WIOTA” or “SAJIIULAS”. All of which do not pass the smell test. It’s hard to imagine he could find a way to sell the most expensive type of storage for a third of what the good brands offer in slow formats.
But if you look around, many “WIOTA” hard drives have 5-star reviews, often with hundreds of votes scattered about. what to give I bought one because I wanted to know. And it’s not pretty.
This is definitely not an M.2 SSD
I had some trouble procuring a 16TB portable SSD. The listing said it would come directly from Amazon, but instead of being shipped quickly within 2 days, my package went completely wrong and got lost for a second. I’m not sure how the courier got Wisconsin and Ohio mixed up. But maybe that was Amazon’s mistake. The company informed me of the delay and turned the package over to UPS to resolve the issue.
When it arrived, it contained an equally unassuming box containing a hard drive and a USB-C cord. The box makes some grand claims:
- USB 3.0 Micro B to USB 3.1 Typc_c (Gen 1).
- M.2 Portable SSD
- 16 terabytes
- Compatible with smart TVs, Android, Windows 7, 10 and | OS.
The last one is not a typo. It is “|OS”. USB 3.0 Micro B is also a mistake. The included cord is USB-A to USB-C. Either way, with a USB C 3.1 connection to your M.2 SSD, this should scream.
To keep things safe, this hard drive is only connected to a freshly factory reset Windows laptop that has never been connected to the internet. I have a second freshly formatted flash drive with the files and tools to run tests on the drive. In my first test, I moved a folder containing 1 gigabyte files to a portable hard drive. If I’m correct, it should have taken less than a minute at most. It took 20 minutes.
This suggests a USB 2.0 connection, not USB 3.1. And I can’t test putting 16 TB of data into the drive at this speed. From here it’s just a matter of tearing down some software and testing it. A few additional tests revealed no malware, but that didn’t disappoint.
Definitely not a 16 TB drive either
First, I had to check how big this “SSD” actually was. So I used common tools to write data until the drive was full. A “USB 3.1” connection could still take a while, and I expected speeds like 2.0 to take longer. After an hour, the test filled the hard drive with 64 GB of data. rice field. Not small, but definitely not 12 TB.
Another useful tool, ChipGenius, provided more information. Hard drive components could not be determined, but the device was determined to comply only with the USB 2.0 specification. This is consistent with the speeds I’m seeing. That certainly rules out USB 3.1. The only thing left is to disassemble the hard drive.
not an SSD
Whoever made this hard drive obviously didn’t want people to take it apart. There are no seams, screws or obvious access points. I found a pinhole that looks like a SIM card access point near the USB-C port. However, no matter how hard I tried, it had no effect. So I took apart my trusty iFixit tool and pried it open.
“What will I find inside?” I carefully pushed one end into the case. Hopefully I didn’t break what’s inside.Maybe a really magical he 16TB M.2 SSD drive. Perhaps I just installed it incorrectly and it wasn’t working properly. Or, if I were to suggest a more probable outcome, I would open the casing and find world peace. Or the solution to unlimited energy. Or at least the answer to why hot dogs come in 10 packs while hot dog buns come in 8 packs.
Alas, when I took the drive apart, I found exactly what I suspected in my testing. A micro SD card inserted into a circuit board that acts as a USB-C adapter. The micro SD card has no engraving on the front and some serial numbers on the back that seem to confirm the 64 GB size that my testing reveals.
So why does Windows show a 16TB drive? It’s probably part of the board’s firmware, incorrectly reporting a size that doesn’t exist. This is a complete lie from top to bottom.
The real problem is the Amazon listing
If you’re a techie, you know that buying a 16TB external SSD for under $100 is way too expensive. But what about everyone else? Most people assume “bigger is better” and look for the largest drive they can find. From there, you can read the reviews.
And there lies half the problem. Dozens of listings of this product have been identified, including an “8 TB” version. Many of these have hundreds of 5-star reviews, and if that’s all you’re judging a product for, it sounds like a good deal. However, a closer look revealed that the reviews often didn’t match the product.
Amazon allows product sellers to update accurate listings and “take over” in the process. That means adding new photos, titles, descriptions and works. By the time this scammer was finished, what had been a list of steering wheel covers had turned into selling fake portable hard drives. But despite all the changes, the reviews remain the same. At least until Amazon finds out. This little scam is often called review consolidation.
I reached out to Amazon asking for comment on both the fake hard drives and this process of listing the acquisition. We have not yet received a statement, but will update this article when we do. Honorably, the listing has become ‘unavailable’ after providing the Amazon link to these fake hard drives .
However, the list I personally purchased disappeared on its own before I contacted Amazon. And a new one took its place. I suspect that once enough people buy these hard drives and the reviews decrease, the scammers will remove the listing and re-list it in a new location.Like whack-a-mole.
Equally worrisome, all of these hard drives are “Fulfilled by Amazon.” Not sold by Amazon for clarity. But they are usually offered on Prime and shipped from Amazon’s warehouses. If you thought sticking with “Amazon Fulfilled” products would give you some level of security, think again.
If it’s too good to be true, don’t buy and check the reviews
The old adage is still true: If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. , if it looks like you’ve magically found a way to sell your product for a tenth of the price, it’s probably a scam.
That’s not always the case, Wyze has popped up out of nowhere and lowered prices on many of its products. If you’re not sure, double check the reviews. Do they match the product? If not, run: And after all, don’t spend money you can’t afford to lose. No matter how careful you are, you can still be deceived.
Hopefully Amazon will take steps to remove these fraudulent products. But I really hope the company does something about the product listing takeover. Now I have to figure out what to do with my expensive micro SD card and USB 2.0 USB-C board. Frame them for posterity.
