Have you ever heard the expression “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well AliExpress is currently advertising a 30 Terabyte SSD for $29. And I just had one delivered. Let’s open it up, shall we? /1
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I was kinda expecting the package to say 30 gigabytes not 39 terabytes, which would be a somewhat credible “typo”. But note! It even says M.2! /2
It comes with a USB-C to USB-A cable, and two adapters : one is C to A, and the either is micro to A. /3
There are no apparent screws or brackets holding the case together, but there does seem to be a tiny hole next to the USB-C interface. Could that be a reset pin? An embedded LED? Some kind of secret terabyte release?
Ok that damn hole is tiny. A paper clip was too big. A SIM tool was too big. A single staple goes right in, but there isn’t anything behind it like a reset button or a release.
Ah ha! Using the razor blade trick I got it open !!! Let’s see what’s inside !!!
Board says HUB-TF2 and has two glued down cards (trans flash? SD Cards?).
Hey look at this! Remember that tiny hole? I think this is a tiny LED right behind it:
When the USB-C port is given 5V power, the LED lights up blue!
Windows reports it as two 15 terabyte drives !
My son just pointed out something interesting: It appears to only work over USB 2.0, using the cable they shipped with the device. That means it will only run at 480 Megabits per second, or 60 Megabytes per second. In order to test even 1 15 TERABYTE drive for capacity...
yep. USB-C to USB-C 3.1 cable does not work. They must have purposely made this device USB 2.0 only/
H2Testw says it can test HALF the capacity (15TB) in 250 days. Do we have the time?
The plot thickens. Apparently these are on sale at WalMart, including the “30 terabyte”ones. But check out some@of the reviews:
Let’s go ahead and submit for the full refund, and let’s show AliExpress this thread as well as sharing a video with the seller.
For those of you who are following this thread but not understanding the scam: Scammer gets two 512MB Flash drives. Or 1 gigabyte, or whatever. They then add hacked firmware that makes it misreport its size. Windows reports EXACTLY 15.0 terabytes. Not 14.89, Not 14.78
But when you go to WRITE a big file, hacked firmware simply writes all new data on top of old data, while keeping directory (with false info) intact. H2Testw actually WRITES & then RE-READS its data. But the scammer slowed the bus down from 5 gigabits per second to .48 gigabits
So in order to check all 30 supposed terabytes, it will take a minimum of 500 days. 250 per 15 gigabyte!
Replying to @RayRedacted
Interesting that there are different versions of that. I got it with a usb stick in it.
Check out this observation from
@sad_electronics, who was also kind enough to send two pictures as well:
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... the photos and a comment from
@sad_electronics"The circuit with the SL2.1A is really simple. So sad they clone the VID and PID... Doesn't even need a crystal because of clock recovery"
ArsTechnica picked up this story:
Added this little clarification in the comments on the Toms Hardware forums. Thought I should post it here in case anyone at Toms is wondering if that is really from me.
Update: This long tweet thread about SSD scammers was covered by several major publications and ended up with a bit over a million views. Many of you have been asking: what happened afterwards? Final outcome: full refund, and no review left. x.com/RayRedacted/st…
Have you ever heard the expression “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well AliExpress is currently advertising a 30 Terabyte SSD for $29. And I just had one delivered. Let’s open it up, shall we? /1
Interesting that there are different versions of that. I got it with a usb stick in it.
