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Numerous Arsians are the go-to IT support representative for friends and family. If you’re fortunate, your enjoyed ones’ issues are quickly fixed with a reset, upgrade, or brand-new cable television. That wasn’t the case for a boy who just recently needed to break the news to his dad that the 20TB portable hard disk he acquired for about $50 was mainly simply a plastic box with weights and a PCB.
Ars Technica spoke to the Reddit user who published about his daddy bringing him a “new 20T[B] HDD to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.” The Redditor, who asked that we describe him by his given name, Martin, exposed that his father paid ₤ 38 (about $51.33) for what he believed was a portable HDD. That’s a warning. HDDs have actually gotten more affordable throughout the years, however not that low-costA 20TB external HDD usually costs over $200, and they’re normally much bigger than the portable-SSD-sized gadget that Martin’s daddy got. A 20TB HDD in a portable type element is rarer and can cost well over $300.
Taking a hammer to the gadget exposed that the chassis was almost empty, conserve for some iron wheel weights sloppily connected to the black plastic with significant globs of glue and a little PCB with some kind of flash storage that might link to a system by means of USB-A.
The “HDD” opened.
The “HDD” opened.
Credit: The __ Unflushable/Reddit
Similar to other PC storage frauds we’ve seen online, Windows checked out the so-called HDD as a”19TB drive, however would then simply hang if you attempt to do anything with it,”Martin stated on Reddit.
Setting the board’s firmware so that the drive looks like a high-capacity storage gadget on Windows is a smart technique that might encourage users they’re to blame. As Windows-savvy users would point out, Windows reports drive capabilities in gibibytes or tebibytes, so a genuine 20TB HDD would appear as around 18.2 TB in Windows.
Martin informed Ars:
The gadget appeared to install on the desktop with the gadget name in Mandarin (ended up this merely stated “Hard Disc”). I attempted copying a file, and the name did appear on the “hard disk.” It was just when I attempted to open this file from the hard disk that the issues started to emerge. The file might not be opened, no matter how tough I attempted, consisting of reformatting the hard disk. At that point absolutely nothing was “working” at all.
Questionable online listing
Martin informed Ars that his dad bought the phony HDD from a site called UK.Chicntech, which appears to mainly offer vehicle products, cooking area products, and home fabrics. Presently, the site does not note any PC elements or peripherals, however in general, its stock is quite restricted. Chicntech presently notes some other electronic devices, like a”[With Starry Sky Lid]AI Nano Mist Intelligent Car Aromatherapy Device” (connecting for explanatory functions just; we do not suggest shopping on this site) for $56.
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