A player wants to save money and orders a very cheap SSD for about 20 euros. But when the package arrives, he is afraid of it: it looks dangerous according to him and he seeks help.
SSDs and RAM have been getting more expensive for months. A bargain hunter probably thought: Why invest hundreds of euros in a 4 TB SSD when you can order a device like that for 17 euros from China on Temu? Temu is, like Aliexpress, an online market from China.
The mentioned user therefore bought a SSD directly from Temu for 20 US dollars (about 17 euros). Meanwhile, his purchased SSD is at home and he has first opened it. However, after opening, he is worried that he might catch a virus or something similar with the device. He explains on Reddit:
Does anyone know what this actually is? I suspect it is something harmful. The refund process was suspiciously fast.
Cheap SSDs and hard drives from China are often fakes with significantly less capacity
So, what did he actually buy? In the picture, it can be seen that inside the casing, there is not really an SSD or a suitable memory. Instead, the manufacturer has inserted a micro SD card into a card reader and connected the construction to the SSD connection.
Some users explicitly warn against using such a device for their own data. Because the memory controllers are often manipulated: The SSD claims to offer 4 TB of storage, but in reality, only a few GB are available. If you try to write significantly more data, it gets lost. Whether there is additionally a virus on the SD card is not visible at first glance (via Reddit.com):
This has been a problem for some time now, also with USB sticks. They are manipulated to display the specified capacity, but actually offer much less storage space and simply fail once you try to exceed this actual physical capacity.
Such very cheap bait offers can be found not only on Aliexpress or Temu, but also on Amazon or eBay. In general, it holds: If the offer looks too good to be true – like a 4 TB SSD for 20 euros – then it’s better to stay away from it.
Check comparison portals like Geizhals or Idealo to see where the current prices are. These usually provide a good orientation for assessing offers.
Another user was lucky and showed a special treasure: Because he received a lot of RAM from his father, who saved it from the trash can. That sounds good at first, but it’s not really useful. Because with 2,000 GB, he can do little personally. Read more about it on MeinMMO: 2 years ago, he rescued 2,304 GB of RAM from the trash can: Today, the hardware is priceless, but useless for him
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