Buyers, beware! Fake 64TB, 128TB SSDs flooding online marketplaces
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walmart is not the only major online retailer struggling with fake products online. Hundreds of offers from dozens of suppliers on eBay (opens in new tab) and AliExpress (opens in new tab) currently selling 64TB and 128TB SSDs at rock bottom prices.
The problem is, there are no mainstream 128 TB or 64 TB SSDs. Samsung demonstrated a 128 TB SSD in August 2022, while Nimbus Data will sell a 64 TB SSD only to enterprise customers, but neither will sell for the $30 that fraudulent vendors are asking for. Despite this being a clear case of “too good to be true”, dozens have been stung.
TechRadar reader Colin M contacted us last week after purchasing a 30TB SSD from AliExpress, only to find out that he had been scammed.
“It appears that the actual drive capacity is 128 GB in total, which is 2 x 64 GB represented as the two drives. I tried copying 250 GB+ files to one of the ‘drives’ and although it seemed to work as normal when it was done, I then clicked properties to see the actual GBs,” he explained.
“I suspect that the drive contains 2 64 GB SD cards that are programmed to hide the SD cards as 15 TB disks. When the ‘disk’ is copied to reach the capacity, the program only overwrites files, causing it seems like they are working correctly.”
Buyers beware
Counterfeit products have been a problem for centuries and online marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon and AliExpress have made this problem global, making it much more difficult to eliminate.
Worryingly, these discs aren’t just fake, they can also be easily infected with malware. Earlier this year, hackers sent USB flash drives infected with ransomware, even with teddy bears in the package.
SSD prices are falling rapidly with 2TB models available for under $100, an all-time low caused by a crash in demand and excess inventory. Despite this, we don’t expect high-capacity drives (4TB, 8TB, or 16TB SSD) to experience a similar price drop as demand for those target markets (enterprises, corporations, prosumers) is still strong.
Amazon appears to have successfully avoided that scam, probably because it has stricter controls on sellers from mainland China, although there are others – like fake 2TB USB flash drives (opens in new tab) or 2TB microSD cards (opens in new tab).
TechRadar Pro has reached out to eBay and AliExpress to find out what they are doing to stamp out fake product listings and weed out the dodgy sellers ahead of the lucrative 11.11 Singles Sales, black friday and Cyber Monday.