YouTuber exposes scam 30 TB SSD that cost US$38.99 on Walmart leading to swift product removal

In a shocking SSD exposé, the YouTube channel Computer Clan discovered that a 30 TB SSD that was being sold on Walmart for just US$38.99 was not actually what it claimed to be. The fact it was fake was hardly the shock as 30 TB for US$38.99 is ridiculous; a 1 TB T5 portable SSD from Samsung currently costs US$139.99. The shocking part comes when the channel host, “Krazy” Ken Doe, tests the drive and then deconstructs the device to find out what is going on inside. It’s important to point out that the dodgy 30 TB SSD was being sold by a third party called Petmoto via Walmart, and the product pages for the drives have since been taken down.

The “Portable SSD” is deliberately designed to ape the look of the top-rated Samsung T5 and T7 SSDs, but it certainly does not perform anything like them. It managed a data transfer rate of 18.1 MB/s, despite being advertised as a USB 3.1 Gen 1 drive (5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s)). The device was then checked with H2testw software, which revealed 116.3 GiB of the data was “OK”, with 116.3 GiB being equivalent to 124.9 GB. In addition to exposing the actual storage size of the scam 30 TB SSD, the true theoretical speed of 400 Mbit/s was discovered, which is USB 2.0 speed (480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s)). The deceptive SSD controller was able to create new allocation table files while keeping old ones that were being read by the host computer but now contained no data.

In a glorious reveal, it was found that the 30 TB SSD with its Samsung T5 copy case actually contained a 128 GB MicroSD. When tested outside of its restrictive container, the card actually managed 61 MB/s while transferring data, so it was over three times faster than when integrated with its dodgy shell and corrupt controller. But even at a cost of US$38.99, buyers have still been deeply ripped off because there are plenty of 128 GB SD cards on Walmart from well-known brands such as PNY and SanDisk that can be picked up for less than half the price of the beguiling “30 TB” SSD. The video report was uploaded a few days ago and Walmart has clearly taken action, but it definitely pays to double-check obscure third-party and non-branded storage devices that are listed on the company’s retail site.

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