I was looking to buy a new high capacity external USB hard drive, but as the first ranked choice Coupang recommended me this almost too good to be true flash memory USB stick with a whopping 2TB capacity at USB3 speeds for the supposedly discounted price of 28,6000 won.
If you don't know much about memory sticks, etc., that is a shockingly huge size for this type of compact form factor at an outrageously cheap price. Amazing! Right?
2TB USB 3.0 초고속 대용량 메모리 - USB메모리 | 쿠팡
But... I am 95% sure it's a scam. There is no way flash memory can be produced at 2TB, nor 1TB, nor 500GB, at this price point. I am super skeptical about this. Let me show you why I think so.
Reason 1: other products
For example, compare this with a similar name brand product:
This Sandisk flash drive is just 256 GB. That's 7x less capacity at double the price. Honestly overall still pretty damn good deal even in 2026 for that capacity at this price, priced at 58,000 won. That's about 226 won per gigabyte. This is actually a good deal and I might buy it. Rivals the HDDs I was looking at, but still, I trust them more than flash memory.
This generic "#1 Recommendation!" item meanwhile is 14 won per gigabyte. Unless they have come up with some amazing process that cuts production cost by a factor of 10 and kept it secret, something is wrong here.
And note that I can't even find a 2TB name brand flash drive at all. Not a single one from a legitimate, name brand source there.
There is this supposedly Lenovo one that ridiculously advertises 16TB (absolutely absurd) and yet when you go to choose the purchase options, that's not even an option. 2 or 5 TB. And I am sure those are B.S. too. Look at it! It's the same stick, with different writing on it.
There are plenty of other 2TB flash drives but they are all completely generic and seemingly made from the same factory. Notice how they're all the same price too, but their "original prices" range from 30,000 to 50,000, probably just to make you feel like you're getting a deal when in fact they're just all sold at ~25,000 no matter what.
I think these are all from 1 factory being sold under various sellers, opening up new listings when one gets taken down or flooded with too many negative reviews. Diversify your portfolio as they always say.
Reason 2: supposed speed stats
Look at the chart they included, probably in English because it looks more official and technical that way. Love how the blue text doesn't seem at all to have matched from the original table.
I'd be skeptical about this too. They seem to want to highlight the read ability, but that's not a big deal if you're just reading from the flash stick. What about writing? It looks hugely variable to me, super jumpy, suggesting that it's not actually writing data at all but probably just discarding as it progresses and reporting back in random chunks what it managed to copy, potentially by overwriting what it previously wrote. Assuming it even actually wrote anything to disk at all. This just seems fishy to me. If you know more about disk usage, feel free to comment and correct me if I'm wrong.
Reason 3: user reviews
The user reviews are overwhelmingly positive, written as if by professional reviewers, with lots of full color photos from various angles. Ask yourself, if you bought a USB drive from Coupang, would sit there and photograph it at multiple angles? Would you go out of your way to write an extraordinarily lengthy and detailed review, reviews that constantly mention stuff like wedding albums, family photos, professional photography needs, etc? Would you talk about your real life just to review a cheap USB stick? I know some people like to do this just to gain Coupang points or whatever but these seem over the top personal and frankly awkward. I think these are fake, done by AI at wholesale amounts.
Look at this spread. It's like they padded the "AMAZING" reviews, put just enough even numbered 2-4 stars to seem legit (have you ever seen the 2, 3, and 4 stars all have a roughly equal spread?), and then a surprising glut of 1-star reviews. Even this spread seems suspicious to me. And all this since mid 2025? I'm more inclined to believe 1186 people actually bought this and the rest are just rapid fire buy/return transactions by the seller himself or his bot farm.
It's the 1-star reviews that suggest what seems the truth. Here's my favorite:
▶ 유령 용량의 정체
h2testw로 48시간 테스트 결과:
표기 용량: 2TB (1,862GB)
실제 저장량: 28GB (!!) → 98.5% 사기
치명적 문제: 30GB 넘어가면 자동 파일 삭제됨. 웨딩사진 20GB 복사했다가 신부 얼굴 50% 검은 화면으로 망가짐. 복구 업체 "저장매체 불량으로 복구 불가" 선언에 300만 원 청구...
▶ 속도 테러 현장
"초고속 USB 3.0" 주제에:
쓰기 속도 초당 1.5MB (동영상 1분 전송에 10분 소요)
발열 90°C → USB 포트 녹아내림 (노트북 수리비 50만 원)
100% 전송 실패: 5GB 이상 파일은 "CRC 오류" 발생
1990년대 3.5인치 디스켓이 더 빠릅니다.
Exactly. I believe Buyer Kim here. It's actually funny, as if written by a real human behind a real keyboard, and actually knows what he's talking about. The drive is actually just 28GB but spoofing it's capacity to your device so it thinks it's 2TB drive. It's not. Once you start copying over that 28GB of files you're going to start getting errors and format issues. Even the speed is in real life low quality.
This could be that classic scam of altering the chipset to make it report its size as something it's not. Your device will happily start copying over files until, whoops, the drive has an error. Some users reported this, and the seller gives generic reasons that might have caused this (your old computer, dust in the port, etc., things that might cause it not to mount at all but nothing that would actually cause a write error like this).
Meanwhile look at this review too:
1-star review, where every paragraph is praising it while trying to sound natural? Suggesting he used to use WeChat to transfer files before buying this? Not Kakao or Naver Drive but WeChat? Methinks this was a canned positive response that, whoops, the lazy minimum wage review writer at the Middle Kingdom bot farm messed up and hit 1-star on.
Here's another buyer complaining the capacity is not right and was unable to contact the seller afterwards:
Even the responses from the seller are awkward.
This guy seems to know what he's talking about so the seller suggests he buy a different product? Huh? Is this preemptive damage control? Odd selling tactic.
And he even outright tells people not to bother returning it, they'll just give a refund if unsatisfied. I know this is common on Amazon, but for a supposedly high capacity product like this, where no equivalent seems to exist, ask yourself, why would they want you to just trash it and just process a quick refund? Answer: because it's possibly junk that took $5 to manufacture and shutting you up by giving back your money is probably safer than risking you reporting them for suspicious selling and most people don't know what a GB or a TB is anyway and by the time they "fill" their drive they'll think there's some file error on their end and not consider their computer is lying to them about the available space.
Final Thoughts
Maybe I'm just skeptical. I don't know if it's a fake product or not. I'm not accusing Coupang of anything. They connect buyers and sellers. And they ensure refunds so to be honest they've got your back even against potential fraudulent sellers and their return policies in total are extremely generous, at least when buying from them and not a third party seller on the platform but even then they make it explicit when purchasing what your obligations would be if you return it. I think this safety feeling is why people still use it so much.
I'd just be deeply skeptical about a product like this. My big takeaways would be:
- Don't rely on star review numbers or even customer reviews.
- Compare your desired product with other products in the same spec category. If the price seems too good to be true, it it's not worth it.
- Check the 1 star reviews and see if people's complaints ring true. Most people don't bother complaining unless there's something to complain about.
Comments