A 30 terabyte SSD for $38.99? Unbelievable… but false

August 27, 2022

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We have been talking about the drop in prices of graphics cards for some time (which came from the terrible situation of said market throughout 2021), and just a few days ago we told you that stock is beginning to accumulate in warehouses, which indicates that in the short term we can wait for the arrival of more and better offers, both in terms of components as well as complete systems, both portable and desktop. Only Sony, with the rise in price of the PlayStation 5, seems to be sailing against the tide. Of course, with the disproportion between supply and demand, you can afford it.

Thus, it is a good time to stay tuned for the offers that appear. Although you don’t need to become a tracker either, remember that every Friday we publish our special Red Friday, with the best deals you can find on the marketto which are also added the specials that we publish on specific dates and at times of the year when it is more common to have to carry out purchases of this type.

When we make our product selections we always take into account some key points, which we can summarize by stating in that they have a remarkable price, that they are recommendable products and that you can acquire them with peace of mind and security. And it is that on some occasions it is possible to find exceptional offers, but whenever we find one of this type, we subject it to an exhaustive analysis, to confirm that they are real and reliable, that is, that they are not trying to give us a cat for a hare .

And why do I mention this? Well, because for some time now, external SSD storage units have begun to appear, first on Aliexpress and more recently on the popular American retailer Walmart, for scandalous, exceptional, demolition prices… all adjectives fall short to qualify a unique and unrepeatable offer: ua 30-terabyte SSD external drive for $29. Too good to be true, don’t you think?

Have you ever heard the expression “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well AliExpress is currently advertising a 30 Terabyte SSD for $29. And I just had one delivered. Let’s open it up, shall we? /1 pic.twitter.com/cVXtr42LW5

—Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) August 25, 2022

The good news is that cybersecurity expert Ray[REDACTED] has published a very interesting thread on twitter, in which he extensively documents the tests he has performed on one of these units, which he purchased through Aliexpress. A process in which he analyzed the interior of the received unit, to verify that it contains two small capacity microSD cards soldered to a USB 2.0 compatible board. The firmware on this board has been modified so that each of these cards reports its capacity as 15 terabytes to the operating system, for a total of 30 terabytes, although the actual capacity of the cards is obviously much less.

The drive is even smarter and trickier, because when the user uses it to store files, keep the folder structure you have defined and create files with the names you are copying from… but without content. Thus, the surprise comes when you try to access any of them, since they obviously do not contain anything at all. A rather ingenious trick, we can’t deny it, but it reminds us again that when something seems too good to be true, it is quite likely that it is not. And if you need a fast and real SSD, remember the offer that we told you about this morning, in this case it is real: