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Home Tech Computing Storage

I bought a '16TB external M.2 SSD' for $20 and got what I deserved

The internet is awash with deals that look -- and are -- too good to be true.

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer on May 12, 2022

Regular readers will know that I've been in the market for SSD drives. While I was shopping, I couldn't help but notice that there were a lot of cheap -- very cheap -- 16TB external M.2 SSD drives being offered by no-name sellers.

Now 16TB M.2 SSDs do indeed exist, but they're not $20.

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Try closer to $3,000.

OK, so while I knew it was a scam, I had to find out what made these fake drives tick.

So, I bought one.

Don't worry, the scammers don't benefit from this sale because I always claim a refund and report the seller for selling fake products.

I'd ordered this fake drive about a month ago, and today it arrived, and I was so excited that I ripped it out of the box and plugged it into a system (an isolated, sacrificial system, there's no way I'm plugging a random drive into my main systems).

Now, I was expecting one of those cheap, low-capacity drives that had been modified to look like a 16TB monster.

What I go was even more disappointing.

Here's the drive I received in the mail! On the face of it, it looks good.

Lots of promises of M.2 drive goodness on the packaging.

The packaging looks good. Looks like a genuine product.

I got the drive out of the box, plugged it into a test system (I'm not plugging a random drive into my main system).

Surprise, the drive didn't work.

I grabbed my tools and started digging in, and within seconds I had the guts out and the drive spilled its secrets -- there were no M.2 drives inside, but instead a no-name 64GB microSD card fitted into a USB-C microSD card reader.