Now 16TB M.2 SSDs do indeed exist, but they’re not $20. 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. 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. No M.2 drive in sight. Instead a microSD card. Basically, the drive is a USB-C microSD card reader. The microSD card was corrupted and totally unusable. Nothing I tried could bring it to life. Basically, it’s all junk. Well, the little bag and the USB-A to USB-C cable was nice and all, but not $20 nice. Remember, if a deal looks too good to be true, it is.
