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If you see a 16 terabyte portable SSD on Amazon for $100 or less, don’t buy it. Such a unit would cost thousands of dollars. These are nothing more than a scam, and they don’t work well at all. We bought one and got a glorified 64GB hard drive.
When it comes to portable hard drives, bigger is usually better. You want plenty of space for photos, videos, or anything else. So when Amazon offers a 16TB external hard drive for under $100, it sounds perfect. It would be if it wasn’t a giant scam. I know because I bought one and broke it.
The Tiny Oversized Hard Drive Suspiciously Undervalued
You don’t have to look far to find these fake hard drives. Launch a search for a 16 terabyte (TB) external hard drive and you’ll get dozens and dozens of entries. Most of them are from completely unknown brands like “WIOTA” or “SAJIULAS”. But while these rare brands offer hard drives for less than $100, options from well-known brands like Western Digital are in the several hundred dollar range.
It becomes more suspicious. Compare the under $100 deal to the others, and you’ll notice that the case appears to be much smaller. Well-known brands don’t offer 16TB SSD portable drives; they are simply enclosures for traditional rotating units. But brands under $100 claim to be M.2 SSDs, one of the most expensive and fastest formats out there. For reference, the largest portable SSD Samsung offers is 2TB and costs $180.
Also worrying is the fact that whether it’s “WIOTA” or “SAJIIULAS” or some other unknown brand, all the pictures are exactly the same. All of that fails the sniff test. It is unlikely that generic brands have managed to find a way to sell the most expensive type of storage for a third of the price that good brands offer in slower formats.
Look around you, though, and you’ll see that many “WIOTA” hard drives have five-star reviews, often packed with hundreds of votes. What gives? I bought one to find out. And it’s not pretty.
This is definitely not an M.2 SSD
I had some difficulties acquiring the 16TB portable SSD. The listing said it would come directly from Amazon, but instead of fast two-day shipping, my package got completely wrong and was momentarily lost. I’m not sure how the courier mixed up Wisconsin and Ohio. But that may have been Amazon’s mistake, as the company informed me of the delay and turned the package over to UPS to fix the problem.
Once it arrived, I found an unassuming box with an equally unassuming hard drive and USB-C cable inside. The box makes some big 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 | SW.
That last one is not a typo; I’m really not sure what “| SO” is. USB 3.0 Micro B has to be a bug too; the attached cable is USB-A to USB-C. But regardless, with a USB C 3.1 connection to an M.2 SSD, this thing should scream.
To keep things safe, I’m just connecting this hard drive to a freshly factory reset Windows laptop that has never been connected to the internet. I have a second flash drive freshly formatted with files and tools to run tests on the drive. My first test involved moving a folder with 1 gigabyte of files to the portable hard drive. If the claims had been true, that should have taken a minute tops. It took 20 minutes.
That suggests a USB 2.0 connection, not USB 3.1. And I certainly can’t test putting 16TB of data on the drive at this speed. From here, the only thing left to do is get some software out and test it. Some additional testing revealed no malware, but it’s still better than sorry.
Definitely not a 16TB drive either
To get started, I needed to confirm how big this “SSD” really is. So I used a common tool to write data to the drive until it was full. With a “USB 3.1” connection, that could still take a while, and with speeds similar to 2.0, I expected it to take even longer. After an hour, the test filled the hard drive with 64 GB of data. It’s not small, but it’s definitely not 12TB.
Another useful tool, ChipGenius, gave me more information. While it can’t identify the hard drive component, it determined that the device is only compliant with the USB 2.0 specification, which matches the speeds I’m seeing. That rules out USB 3.1 for sure. The only thing left to do is disassemble the hard drive.
It’s not an SSD at all
It is clear that the manufacturer, whoever it is, did not want people to disassemble this hard drive. There are no seams, no screws, and no obvious access points. I found a small hole near the USB-C port that resembles a SIM card access point. But no amount of prodding did anything. So I broke my trusted iFixit tools apart.
“What would I find inside?” I wondered as I carefully pushed one end into the box. Hopefully I didn’t break what was inside. Maybe it really would be a magical 16TB M.2 SSD. Maybe they just installed it incorrectly and therefore it wasn’t working properly. Or maybe, if I had to suggest more likely outcomes, I’d open the casing and find world peace. Or the solution to unlimited energy. Or at least the answer to why hot dogs come in packs of ten while hot dog buns come in packs of 8.
Unfortunately, once I managed to take the unit apart, I found exactly what I suspected from my tests: a micro SD card inserted into a circuit board that acts as a USB-C adapter. The micro SD card does not have any markings on the front and some serial numbers on the back which seem to confirm the 64GB size my test revealed.
So why does Windows show a 16TB drive? It’s likely part of the board’s firmware, falsely reporting a size that doesn’t exist. This thing is a total lie, from top to bottom.
The real problem is Amazon listings
If you’re a tech person, you probably know that a 16TB external SSD for $100 or less is too good to be true. But what about everyone else? Most people just assume “bigger is better” and go for the biggest unit they can find. From there, it’s a matter of looking at the reviews.
And therein lies half the problem. I’ve identified dozens and dozens of listings for this product, including an “8TB” version. Many of these had hundreds of five-star reviews, and if that’s all you judge a product by, it sounds like a great deal. But upon taking a closer look, I found that the reviews often did not match the product. The reviews were for steering wheel covers, trims, pillowcases, and 64GB flash drives.
On Amazon, product sellers can update listings to be accurate, and in the process “take control.” That means adding new images, titles, descriptions, the works. When this scammer ended, what used to be a listing for a steering wheel cover is now selling a fake portable hard drive. But despite all the changes, the revisions remain. At least until Amazon finds out. This little scam is often called a review merger.
I contacted Amazon and asked for feedback on the fake hard drives and this listing acquisition process. I haven’t received a statement yet, but I’ll update this article when I have one. To their credit, after I provided Amazon links to these fake hard drives, the listings were no longer available.
But the listing I personally purchased disappeared on its own before I contacted Amazon. And a new one took its place. I suspect that when enough people buy these hard drives and the reviews drop, the scammer pulls the listing and puts it back in a new place. It is like squash a mole.
Just as worrisome, all of these hard drives are “shipped by Amazon.” It’s not sold by Amazon, to be clear. But they are usually offered with Prime and come from the Amazon warehouse. If you think sticking to “shipped by Amazon” products offers some security, think again.
If it’s too good to be true, don’t buy it and check the reviews
The old maxim still holds true: if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. If some company seems to have magically found a way to sell a product for a tenth the price with seemingly better hardware than any other company on the planet, it’s probably a scam.
That won’t always be the case: Wyze came out of nowhere and slashed prices on many products. But it’s still a safe bet. If you’re not sure, check the reviews carefully. Do they match the product? If not, run. And at the end of the day, don’t spend money you can’t afford to lose. No matter how careful you are, you can still get scammed.
Hopefully, Amazon takes action to remove these fraudulent products. But I really hope the company does something about product listing acquisitions. That would help immensely. Now I just have to figure out what to do with an expensive micro SD card and a USB 2.0 USB-C board. Frame them for posterity I guess.
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