6 ms·

Sorry, can someone explain what is happening here? What's wrong with those products?

ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
The scam is that nobody makes 10TB SSDs. Scammers buy a 128 GB SD card, put it in a box, have it report itself as (very slow) 10 TB drive. Joe consumer doesn't fill 128 GB right away, so the drive looks fine at first. Then suddenly fails to write.
stevev 4y ago
[flagged]
- coder543 4y ago
  You don't see any scams...? How? 10TB SSDs do not exist. Any listing claiming to offer a 10TB SSD is a scam, by definition.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    SSDs of similar sizes, like 8 and 12 TB exist, but they're close to or are multiple thousands of dollars. A 10TB offering wouldn't be unreasonable to exist. Just not at this price.
    - coder543 4y ago
      "Similar sizes" are not "the same size", obviously. I've never found any manufacturer that actually makes 10TB SSDs. Whether it is "unreasonable" or not is entirely irrelevant when they don't exist. The price is an obvious clue to anyone who knows anything about storage, as you mention. But, choosing to use 10TB for the size in a scam seems like an odd choice. I have to imagine the scam would work equally well with a size that actually exists, but the current size should make it trivial for Amazon to filter out these listings, so it's odd that they aren't even tackling the low-hanging fruit.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Well, nothing exists until it does. There are oddball products out of China that are real. I suspect 10TB is a very good choice, as it is a round figure that may have broad general appeal to people, and it also dissuades people who understand the importance of powers-of-two in storage sizes -- if you're scamming people, it's better to filter for those who don't know better, rather than for people who know better.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
They're likely a cheap SD card inside the case with firmware that pretends to be 10TB. When you use them, they appear the correct size, but once you go over the size of the actual SD card (e.g. 256GB) you overwrite existing files and corrupt them. You can tell that they're fake as the price is unrealistic.
- mk89 4y ago
  I just searched for the prices of 256GB SD cards and they're about 20$. At this point I guess they put 128 or even 64 gb SD cards, otherwise it makes no sense...
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    Yeah, they go for the cheap ones so likely not 256GB. The only advantage of the bigger sizes is that it takes longer for the user to corrupt their files which is probably a disadvantage for those users. Another way to determine if you've got a fake drive is that the I/O speeds will be much slower than a usual SSD.
    - mk89 4y ago
      I really believe that most people don't notice, unless you specifically need the "extreme" speeds that some microSD manufacturer offer. I think the user journey is sort of like: - oh let me search for a portable SSD drive with a lot of space - wow, this one is BIG (1TB!) and costs less than Samsung ones; well who cares, even if it lasts 2 years, it's still 1/2 the price - buy it - be fine with the no-brand - write a great review where you think you got a great deal and you're smarter than those who pay so much for the same size (hahah!! lol!!) and the irony is that it might indeed last 2 years before they find out that it's BS :D
daggersandscars 4y ago
They aren't 10 TB products. The storage device (usually an SD card inside a larger case) has been modified to report 10 TB of space but actually has far less than that. Once the actual space has been filled, the device will write over the initial bytes (or some other undesired behavior). It's not possible to buy 10TB of storage for the prices listed as a hard drive, not to mention as SSD.
mk89 4y ago
They put microSD cards into boxes and sell them as SSD drives :) Thanks to OS abstractions and all, 90% of people will never notice, or once they do, they remember that too cheap is most of the time scam :)
tristor 4y ago
Well to start with, there's no such thing as a 10TB SSD (currently).
deathanatos 4y ago
If you understand the market value of non-scam SSD storage, the price of basically every item on that page is well into "too good to be true" territory. Further, a lot of them have the trappings of a scam: e.g., can't spell worth shit, the same product is somehow sold by 15 different companies all with very fake sounding names, etc. Go to a reputable manufacturer, like Seagate, and find a product. E.g., a 1 TB SSD will set you back $130. Now, the listings here are half the price for 10x? Too good to be true.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

The scam is that nobody makes 10TB SSDs. Scammers buy a 128 GB SD card, put it in a box, have it report itself as (very slow) 10 TB drive. Joe consumer doesn't fill 128 GB right away, so the drive looks fine at first. Then suddenly fails to write.

stevev 4y ago

[flagged]

coder543 4y ago
You don't see any scams...? How? 10TB SSDs do not exist. Any listing claiming to offer a 10TB SSD is a scam, by definition.
- kube-system 4y ago
  SSDs of similar sizes, like 8 and 12 TB exist, but they're close to or are multiple thousands of dollars. A 10TB offering wouldn't be unreasonable to exist. Just not at this price.
  - coder543 4y ago
    "Similar sizes" are not "the same size", obviously. I've never found any manufacturer that actually makes 10TB SSDs. Whether it is "unreasonable" or not is entirely irrelevant when they don't exist. The price is an obvious clue to anyone who knows anything about storage, as you mention. But, choosing to use 10TB for the size in a scam seems like an odd choice. I have to imagine the scam would work equally well with a size that actually exists, but the current size should make it trivial for Amazon to filter out these listings, so it's odd that they aren't even tackling the low-hanging fruit.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Well, nothing exists until it does. There are oddball products out of China that are real. I suspect 10TB is a very good choice, as it is a round figure that may have broad general appeal to people, and it also dissuades people who understand the importance of powers-of-two in storage sizes -- if you're scamming people, it's better to filter for those who don't know better, rather than for people who know better.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

They're likely a cheap SD card inside the case with firmware that pretends to be 10TB. When you use them, they appear the correct size, but once you go over the size of the actual SD card (e.g. 256GB) you overwrite existing files and corrupt them. You can tell that they're fake as the price is unrealistic.

mk89 4y ago
I just searched for the prices of 256GB SD cards and they're about 20$. At this point I guess they put 128 or even 64 gb SD cards, otherwise it makes no sense...
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Yeah, they go for the cheap ones so likely not 256GB. The only advantage of the bigger sizes is that it takes longer for the user to corrupt their files which is probably a disadvantage for those users. Another way to determine if you've got a fake drive is that the I/O speeds will be much slower than a usual SSD.
  - mk89 4y ago
    I really believe that most people don't notice, unless you specifically need the "extreme" speeds that some microSD manufacturer offer. I think the user journey is sort of like: - oh let me search for a portable SSD drive with a lot of space - wow, this one is BIG (1TB!) and costs less than Samsung ones; well who cares, even if it lasts 2 years, it's still 1/2 the price - buy it - be fine with the no-brand - write a great review where you think you got a great deal and you're smarter than those who pay so much for the same size (hahah!! lol!!) and the irony is that it might indeed last 2 years before they find out that it's BS :D

daggersandscars 4y ago

They aren't 10 TB products. The storage device (usually an SD card inside a larger case) has been modified to report 10 TB of space but actually has far less than that. Once the actual space has been filled, the device will write over the initial bytes (or some other undesired behavior). It's not possible to buy 10TB of storage for the prices listed as a hard drive, not to mention as SSD.

mk89 4y ago

They put microSD cards into boxes and sell them as SSD drives :) Thanks to OS abstractions and all, 90% of people will never notice, or once they do, they remember that too cheap is most of the time scam :)

tristor 4y ago

Well to start with, there's no such thing as a 10TB SSD (currently).

deathanatos 4y ago

If you understand the market value of non-scam SSD storage, the price of basically every item on that page is well into "too good to be true" territory. Further, a lot of them have the trappings of a scam: e.g., can't spell worth shit, the same product is somehow sold by 15 different companies all with very fake sounding names, etc. Go to a reputable manufacturer, like Seagate, and find a product. E.g., a 1 TB SSD will set you back $130. Now, the listings here are half the price for 10x? Too good to be true.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]