Someone gave me a "free" backup drive that wasn't a drive at all!!
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So I got this "free" backup drive from a friend, who was so happy that they were able to purchase it for just a few dollars from a Chinese shopping website.
I got the box and it looked like the box for an 8TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim external hard drive, but the box didn't have the typical Seagate logo on it. So I opened it and compared the "drive" in the box to pictures of actual Seagate Backup Plus Slim drives online, and it didn't look the same - it had a different form to it. So I decided I'd better pry the whole thing open and see what kind of hard drive was actually inside it before I tried to use it.
It took awhile to get it open, as there was a ton of glue used to keep the enclosure tightly together, but when I opened it up I found the stuff in the attached picture:
1) Drive enclosure
2) A heavy hunk of metal. No drive at all - just a hunk of heavy metal that was glued to the inside of the drive enclosure to give it weight.
3) A USB thumb drive that was plugged into a typical USB3 external drive port.
So this is pretty weird. I'm quite certain that the USB thumb drive does not have "8 TB" of space on it. I'm afraid to plug it into anything, as it's just as likely to have a rootkit or some malware on it.
Just thought I would throw this out there for your thoughts. I guess I feel like I dodged a bullet on this one. Do you think I should try to figure out what's on the USB thumb drive?
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I am a translator!
I have read a number of things about such kind of devices, see for example https://petapixel.com/2022/09/01/walmart-sold-a-super-cheap-scam-ssd-that-fakes-a-30tb-capacity/.
> Do you think I should try to figure out what's on the USB thumb drive?
I would not try.
Interesting, so the main thing they do is report the wrong capacity and then just start deleting files when you go over their limited capacity.
At least I got a big hunk of metal out of mine - I can use that in my home and auto repairs somehow or other, I'm sure.
Wow, this is a genuine heavy hunk of metal.
The Seagate counterfeits are nowhere near providing the same stability.
Mine has ballast. It will help to steady me as I continue my voyage through the turbulent waves of life.
So true. Nothing beats concrete.
Steadily voyaging back home through the turbulent waves of life after visiting the shopping mall:
Is there a way to sandbox it from doing anything. I'm curious too see whats on it ?
If nothing else you can use it as a paper-weight or door-stop.
As Avron points out, these scam drives are sold at many shops including Walmart.
However there are also now many models of drives from Western Digital (including SanDisk Extreme SSDs and WD My Passport) considered worthless as they wipe your data and even crash your computer when you plug them in.
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