Buyers, beware! Fake 64TB, 128TB SSDs flooding online marketplaces
AliExpress, eBay struggling with eliminating bogus bargains ahead of Black Friday
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Walmartis not the only big online retailer that’s struggling with fake products online. Hundreds of listings from dozens of vendors oneBayandAliExpressare currently selling64TBand128TB SSDsat rock bottom prices.
The problem is that there are no mainstream 128TB or 64TB SSDs.Samsungdemoed a 128TB SSD back in August 2022, while Nimbus Data sells a 64TBSSDto enterprise customers only, 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.
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TechRadarreader Colin M reached out to us last week having purchased a 30TB SSD from AliExpress, only to find out that he had been conned.
“It seems the actual drive capacity total is 128GB, which is 2 x 64GB shown as the two drives. I tried copying 250GB+ files to one of the ‘drives’ and although it appeared to be working as normal when it finished, I then clicked on properties to show actual GBs," he explained.
“I suspect the drive contains 2 x 64GB SD cards that are programmed to disguise the SD cards as 15TB drives. When the ‘drive’ is being copied to reach capacity, the program just overwrites files giving the appearance of working correctly.”
Buyers, beware
Counterfeited products have been a problem for centuries and online marketplaces like eBay,Amazonand AliExpress have allowed this issue to become global, making it far more difficult to eliminate.
Worryingly, not only are these drives fake, theycould also easily have been infected with malware. Earlier this year, hackers mailed out USB flash drives infected withransomware, even including teddy bears in the package.
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SSD prices are falling fast with 2TB models available for less than $100, an all time low caused by a crash in demand and an excess inventory. Despite this, we wouldn’t expect high capacity drives (4TB, 8TB or 16TB SSD) to experience any similar drop in price because demand is still high for those target markets (enterprise, businesses, prosumers).
Amazon seems 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 drivesor2TB microSD cards.
TechRadar Prohas reached out to eBay and Aliexpress to find out what they are doing to eradicate fake product listings and weed out the dodgy vendors ahead of the lucrative 11.11 Singles Sales,Black FridayandCyber Monday.
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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