What am I missing with these tiny 2TB Ebay drives? Can I use them for Time Machine for my MBPro?

[Turnpike]

Having an external drive for Time Machine on my MBPro is difficult, because who wants to lug these external hard drives around? I came across these tiny 2TB USB thumb drives, and because they are from China and almost free (under $12) I'm sure there's something inferior about them, but could someone tell me what it is? Would they be good enough for a Time Machine drive?

I read online that they're probably 64GB or something, I just got them, put one in and with Disc Utility reformatted it and it shows 2TB. I realize there's something I'm missing here, but could someone tell me what it is?

 

[russell_314]

Having an external drive for Time Machine on my MBPro is difficult, because who wants to lug these external hard drives around? I came across these tiny 2TB USB thumb drives, and because they are from China and almost free (under $12) I'm sure there's something inferior about them, but could someone tell me what it is? Would they be good enough for a Time Machine drive?

I read online that they're probably 64GB or something, I just got them, put one in and with Disc Utility reformatted it and it shows 2TB. I realize there's something I'm missing here, but could someone tell me what it is?

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Transfer some large files to it. It can say 100 TB without being 100 TB. That’s just with a chip is telling your computer is available. If the files are not corrupted and are usable you’ll know it’s legitimate

If it’s a genuine 2 TB drive it’s decent but I wouldn’t trust 100%. It’s a thumb drive not a SSD. I wouldn’t be doing your Time Machine backups on it. It’s meant just to move files from one computer to another.

 

[MBAir2010]

I successfully used a sandisk usb_c thumb-drive 128gb to time machine a macbook air m1 Monterey in 2022!

So perhaps that could work

 

[raythompsontn]

I came across these tiny 2TB USB thumb drives, and because they are from China and almost free (under $12) I'm sure there's something inferior about them, but could someone tell me what it is?

They are fake. A scam. Worthless. Probably less than 16 GB. The controller has been modified to report the incorrect storage. Run, don’t walk, away from these products. Stick with reputable brands. 2TB is normally $150.00.

 

[thepyrate]

These are fake. The price alone should tell you everything. Sounds too good to be true? High risk.

As others have said, this will be a much lower capacity flash drive modified to report itself as a higher capacity. it'll be nowhere near 100Gb let alone 2Tb. Total scam and very common on eBay unfortunately. I wouldn't buy flash memory from eBay full stop.

 

[Fishrrman]

Agree with ray above.

They're fakes.

(that's it, nothing more to say)

 

[dmccloud]

Unlike more classic scams where the packaging and sometimes devices themselves are mislabeled as having higher capacities, these drives were most likely modified on the firmware level to report 2TB despite having significantly less storage in reality. Another concern would be the possibility of some type of spyware being present on an invisible partition that Disk Utility can't see.