Reviewer tests $3 SATA SSD, gets exactly what they paid for

Enlarge / The 120GB SSD in question. (credit: AliExpress)

As we’ve detailed here at Ars before, there are some sketchy SSDs sold online. They tempt the unsuspecting with supremely low prices, but in the end, all you’re guaranteed is disappointing speeds. Heck, you might not even get solid-state storage—one popular scam passes off microSD cards as cheap SSDs. So what can you expect to get from a 120GB SATA SSD selling for $3?

StorageReview went through the remarkable journey of testing a $3 SSD from AliExpress (linking only to show the product listing. Don’t buy this SSD, of course). The Goldenfir-brand SSD was reportedly given to the storage site by one of its Discord users for testing.

A $3 SSD, tested

StorageReview tested the drive by putting it into a Lenovo SR635 1U server with an AMD Epyc 7742 processor and 512GB of DDR4-3200 RAM.