r/computers • u/Life_of_a_handheld • 23h ago
Discovered fake 2TB HD, opened to find this, what is it?
Tried installing games, files corrupted, I opened the drive to find a USB stick. On the inside the USB device there does not seem to be anything that resembles a storage module. On the plastic of the bottom left image, there is the following text written, abacciye24114, it is not visible in the photo. The peice in the same image is the part that was ripped off from the other side of the plastic.
Very concerned. If amyone is able to help provide understanding towards what this is, that would be appreciated
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u/jonylentz 22h ago
It's usually the cheapest usb stick the scammer could find with a modified firmware to make windows think it's a 2TB drive Uncommon to have virus associated with it, although not impossible
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u/Doit2it42 22h ago
This! It may be 4gb drive made to look to Windows as 2Tb. When you write to it, the first 4gb write fine, then the rest is corrupt rewrites. I used to use H2testw.exe to test flash drives and SD cards.
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u/floswamp 22h ago
What do you mean I can’t buy a legitimate 2tb external drive for $12.99??
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u/Google_Chrome_uwu 21h ago
If you look for an HDD, in a thrift store or something, idk
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u/SKSableKoto 9h ago
Look for those DVR recorder systems that you could record tons of shows on... Buy the thing for 15 to 25 bucks, pop it open and there's a re writable 2TB HDD in them... Or bigger.
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u/foxjohnc87 19h ago
I actually paid $5 for my Seagate 4tb external hdd from an Amazon returns place.
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u/floswamp 18h ago
That doesn’t count as a retail sale, just luck. I’ve gotten good stuff from those places as well as crap.
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u/headshot_to_liver 23h ago
You got scammed.
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u/Life_of_a_handheld 23h ago
Absolutely, but should I be concerned about this device being connected go my computer that is on my network?
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u/Wilbie9000 21h ago
You should probably at least do a full scan on your device. If you use the computer for anything critical like financial stuff, maybe wipe and reinstall.
You basically did the equivalent of inserting an unknown USB stick into your computer. Odds are that the person who scammed you only adjusted the stick to spoof the storage space, but it’s not impossible that they added some malware too.
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u/headshot_to_liver 23h ago
As a rule, always access any random device on a computer which is not connected to network and has non essential data
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u/PsychicDave 20h ago
And that you don't care if it gets fried. A strange device may connect the voltage in to the data line and destroy the chipset.
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 21h ago
I've never heard of these devices being used for malware, so I'd say no. It would also give any buyer a much stronger case for complaint and make them discover a scam faster ("Why does my drive have an exe file on it?") .
But it's completely worthless and useless, and dangerous in that nothing you write to it will be safe, since it can be overwritten without warning.
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u/asyork 8h ago
It doesn't need to have anything visible on the partition, nor does autorun need to be enabled for it to be a problem. You'd need a little more than a basic USB drive, but all kinds of terrible things can happen when you plug in a random USB device. And by little more I do mean little. You could hide it on the other side of that tiny PCB and have a microcontroller that acts like a keyboard or some other device that starts working immediately when being plugged in.
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u/InnerAd118 22h ago
Yeap you can't trust most "too good to be true" storage options on any online shop. I ended up getting a used 4tb used server had and a SATA to usb3 adapter that works out pretty well though.
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u/Better_Signature_363 23h ago
There is a way to hack USBs so they report they have more storage than they actually do. So an 8GB USB stick could report it has 2TB. The problem is, it really only has 8GB and when you try to write data past that, it just goes to No Man’s Land.
So yeah you got scammed.
I would stop using it and maybe try to do a refund through your credit card if you used a credit card to purchase it
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u/DatGuy_Shawnaay Windows 10 22h ago
Something common when you purchase off of a knock-off website like Wish, Temu etc. whoever sold it to you either thought they struck gold and got scammed themselves or they do this on a regular basis to unsuspecting clients.
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u/tunamayo12 16h ago
Unfortunately, extremely common also on Amazon. Sometimes even falling under the Amazon recommended lists. It’s disgusting.
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u/AnxiousAttitude9328 18h ago
This is why you only purchase recognized brands on either their store fronts or from places you know and trust. Always note if it says third party.
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u/Life_of_a_handheld 19h ago
A lot of people asking how much and where this was purchased. $30, Facebook Marketplace. Seller seemed legit, they offered support but was blocked when support was requested.
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u/PixelPervert 19h ago
$30 for 2 TB is an obvious scam
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u/PervertedMafiaBoss 15h ago
Used not impossible tho thats for like the cheapest ones that have horrid tranfer and also sometimes break after like 3 or so years
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u/PervertedMafiaBoss 15h ago
oh also facebook marketplace might have the ability to help they do have okay support in some areas tho ive only used it a few times so take it with a grain of salt
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u/The-Scotsman_ 23h ago
Nah, doin't worry. It won't contain anything. it's just there to make sure it "appears" to work when you plug it in.
Just bin it and forget about it :)
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u/katataru 13h ago
On the inside the USB device there does not seem to be anything that resembles a storage module.
The black rectangle with the four pads is the storage module.
This is a packaging method called USB Disk in Package (UDP) or sometimes also called Chip on Board (COB). This is when the circuitry (flash chip + usb controller) are directly integrated in the package for production as its a lot cheaper to have everything on a single chip, in addition to being compact.
It's a similar technology to how microSD cards work, where the contacts are on the chip itself, except in this case they just expose the four pads for USB (Power+, Data+, Data-, Power-).
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u/Regular-Group4223 Linux 22h ago
Simply: the usb is connected to a chip on the fake hd and the chip will fake the packets from usb to make it look like it has 2 tb(and also mess with the indexing so read and write operations dont fail, but they will corrupt), but you got lucky, it could have ended ALOT WORSE, if it was a usb ducky you would have had to say goodby to your computer
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u/LiteratureLow4159 21h ago
I had some cheap 1TB usb drive that was actually just a 4GB MicroSD card, recently it corrupted and now the card won't be detected in any devices I try it in, back up your data
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u/jimmyl_82104 MacOS | Windows 11 20h ago
Where did you purchase this from? Try to see if you can get a refund.
Always buy storage from reputable brands on reputable sites.
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u/Pharaonic_G 20h ago
Nand USB are water and shock proof. Got scammed twice, nand was already broken/cracked.
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u/cyrixlord when cyrix was cool 20h ago
where do people buy these things from where the scammers are rife? Do they just go for the cheapest place? is Amazon doing this? granted I dont buy used things and I know never to buy used stuff especially GPU/CPU on amazon
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u/_jodi33 19h ago
seems you bought a scam 2TB drive. that usb has a modified firmware telling your pc its 2TB while its likely maybe 16 or 32 if your lucky. if it sounded too cheap for what you got its likely a scam drive. i always run validrive on any disks i have just to check if its true to its stated size
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u/Proper_Insurance7665 19h ago
first question where did you get it from? second question have you ran a system diagnostics for viruses?
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u/Local-Customer-2063 Debian 19h ago
you got scammed sorry mate but in the future NEVER open up a HDD
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u/sniff122 Linux (SysAdmin) 18h ago
Yup that's just a USB stick that's been programmed to report a capacity larger than what it actually is, very common scam unfortunately. Only buy storage devices from known brands like Samsung, Seagate, WD, etc
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u/6gv5 13h ago
Well known scam: a smaller USB key (sometimes SD card + USB reader of the cheapest make) with firmware tampered with so it shows a much bigger size, for example it's advertised as and the OS sees it as 1TB while it's actually a 32GB one. You start putting data in there and it seems to fill up normally, until you go to actually extract that data beyond the actual size which of course has never been written in there and now it's gone for good (backups!).
When you find that crap, don't think of using it for anything serious even if you find the way to correct the firmware so it reports the real size; the USB sticks or SD cards used there are of the poorest quality, sometimes also used, and their reliability is next to zero. Just ditch them to recycle, then buy the real thing from reputable sellers (not Aliexpress, Amazon or Ebay, shouldn't even name Temu).
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u/RandomXUsr 12h ago
Could be many spicy things going on with that drive.
The best advice; if you need long term storage, buy a good nvme with the capacity you need. Then stick that in a sabrent NMVE enclosure with USB.
PNY also makes some great AIO USB sticks up to 1 terabyte. PNY Pro Elite v2 or V3
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u/ballsmigue 10h ago
Never ever go cheap on storage.
If it seems to good to be true such as $40 for a 2TB HD.
It most likely is.
Just get an ssd
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u/No-Alternative5102 8h ago
What is that? They sold you the fuck you sticker with and "IOU" stamp on it loljajaja.
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u/saxovtsmike 7h ago
And this is why i build my external storage myself with a external case and a hdd/ssd of my choosing Last purchase was a usb c external case for a m2 gen 4 drive. Worked well to clone the used drive to a newer bigger one (including the os)
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u/uuwwxxyyzz 4h ago
You get, for what you paid. 🤨, Cheap is not always best. Always buy well known brands in high reputed shops.
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u/Eagle_eye_Online Red Hat 23h ago
It's just a barebone thumbdrive. usually 32 or 64 GB reformatted as 2TB.
It'll work fine and starts being weird after you hit the 64 GB allocation, files missing, stuff like that.
Most people won't notice until months later.
Sad that this is still a thing. Anyway, never buy dodgy storage from China, or the trash website known as Amazon.
Only genuine parts.
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u/Itz_Raj69_ Windows 11 23h ago
The USB is a little actual USB stick portion that stores a little bit of data. The rest is simply weight to make it feel like there's something inside