I recently bought a 2TB SSD from eBay for just $20, and now I'm having second thoughts about plugging it into my computer. It sounds too good to be true, and I suspect several reasons for the low price: it could be falsely advertised storage, it's really a hard drive instead of an SSD, or maybe the seller is spreading malware. I'm not too worried about the first two options since I only spent $20, but I'm really concerned about the malware. Is there a safe way to check this drive for viruses without risking my computer?
2 Answers
To avoid any auto-play issues, hold down the shift key while plugging in the drive. You might want to take a quick look inside; sometimes these drives are just SD cards with a cheap adapter that actually has a lot less storage than advertised.
It's very likely that you just bought a smaller SSD, like a 128GB one with firmware tricking your computer into thinking it's 2TB. If you try to put too much on it, the files might just corrupt. I'd recommend running it through some checks rather than just trusting it at face value.
Is there any way to avoid this? How can I tell if it’s really corrupted?