A Singaporean man misplaced virtually all his knowledge recordsdata whereas transferring them into an exterior solid-state drive (SSD) that he had newly purchased on an e-commerce platform.
When he opened it up, he was shocked.
Picture by way of Mothership Reader
The way it occurred
Talking to Mothership, Bong shared that he determined to buy an SSD on-line as a result of he was operating out of storage on his laptop.
He admitted that he was “not probably the most tech-savvy consumer” and, thus, was not sure of the present market charge for exterior onerous drives.
As somebody who prefers procuring on-line, he determined to look via Lazada, the place he discovered a verified retailer named “Harboring Shore”, which has over 571 followers and 88% optimistic vendor scores.
Whereas the SSD itemizing was not rated nor reviewed, he felt the vendor was “professional” as a consequence of their excessive scores and thought it will be a protected buy.
Screenshot by way of Lazada
In keeping with the itemizing, the merchandise is a transportable SSD with a storage capability of 8TB and prices S$29.90.
Bong obtained the merchandise every week later. When he plugged it into his laptop, it confirmed that the drive had a storage capability of seven.6TB, near the marketed capability.
After efficiently transferring considered one of his recordsdata into the drive, he began transferring the remaining.
His recordsdata had been round 1TB, so he waited over two days to finish the switch course of.
Nonetheless, he realised that many of the folders within the SSD remained empty after two days.
To make issues worse, he had minimize and pasted the recordsdata from his laptop folders, which meant that his authentic recordsdata had been additionally lacking from his laptop.
Alarmed, he headed to a knowledge restoration centre, the place they knowledgeable him that his SSD was doubtless a pretend product.
He was additionally quoted at the very least S$380 to get well his misplaced knowledge recordsdata. This didn’t embody the price of a brand new exterior onerous drive to retailer the recordsdata.
He determined to forgo recovering his recordsdata on the centre and as an alternative used a free knowledge restoration software program he discovered on-line. Happily, he managed to get most of his recordsdata again.
Managed to get a refund
Bong contacted the vendor thereafter however didn’t obtain a response.
He then escalated it to Lazada, whose customer support agent instructed him to attend for the vendor’s reply for twenty-four to 48 hours.
In addition they mentioned {that a} decision crew would work on his case.
Screenshot of dialog with Lazada, courtesy of Bong
He ultimately obtained a refund.
MicroSD card hidden inside
After some analysis, Bong found related scams.
Referencing the YouTube channel Linus Tech Ideas’ video on pretend SSD listings on Amazon, Bong found any such rip-off has been “rampant”.
Within the video, they dismantled an SSD to disclose a 64GB chip as an alternative of a 2TB one as marketed.
Picture from Linus Tech Ideas/ Youtube
In keeping with CNET, the inside of an SSD sometimes appears like this:
Picture from CNET
Bong then took it upon himself to interrupt open his SSD, and he found a microSD card glued to a circuit board.
Picture by way of Mothership Reader
Bong mentioned that he had tried matching the microSD card’s serial quantity to “on-line identifiers” however couldn’t decide its origin.
He suspects that the true capability of the SSD he had purchased is within the vary of 64GB, which is the vary the place his recordsdata stopped transferring.
Whereas he has managed to get well his recordsdata and get his cash refunded, Bong hopes to share his story to assist elevate consciousness of any such rip-off.
Prime pictures from Bong and Lazada
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