In our line of work, data is everything. We juggle terabytes of 4K video footage, sprawling photo libraries, and massive project archives. The need for more storage is a constant, relentless drumbeat. So, when we first came across the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive, the proposition was almost too good to be true: a massive 2TB capacity, the blistering speed of USB 3.0, and a sleek, ultra-portable design, all at a price point that seemed to defy the market. It promised to be the perfect solution for digital nomads, content creators on a budget, and anyone drowning in a sea of digital files. The dream is always a device that’s fast, reliable, and affordable. The nightmare, however, is a drive that fails when you need it most, taking your irreplaceable memories or critical work projects with it. It was with a healthy dose of professional skepticism and a glimmer of hope that we brought this drive into our lab for a full, in-depth evaluation. What we discovered was not what we expected.
- Portable External Hard Drive Surprise Product Description: HDD USB3.0 Data cable with fast speed and low power consumption. external hard drive for increased durability
- Portable hard drive with slim body: it is a portable external hard drive with ultra-thin body, easy to lie down in the palm of your hand or slip into your pocket to share high-resolution photos, 3D...
What to Scrutinize Before Buying an External Hard Drive
An external hard drive is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for safeguarding your digital life. It’s the vault for your family photos, the backup for your critical work documents, and the expanded library for your media collection. The primary benefits are peace of mind through data redundancy and the freedom of portability, allowing you to carry vast amounts of information in your pocket. Without a reliable external drive, you’re one system crash, accidental deletion, or laptop theft away from potentially catastrophic data loss. Choosing the right one isn’t just a matter of picking the largest capacity for the lowest price; it’s an investment in security and convenience.
The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing a storage crunch—photographers, videographers, students with large project files, or anyone who simply wants to back up their computer. They need a simple, plug-and-play solution that works without fuss. However, a portable drive might not be suitable for those who require network-level access for multiple users, for which a Network Attached Storage (NAS) system would be better. Likewise, users who need the absolute fastest speeds for real-time 8K video editing might look towards more expensive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 RAID arrays. For most people, a straightforward USB portable drive is the sweet spot, but navigating the market requires a keen eye.
Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:
- Technology & True Speed: The most significant divide is between a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and a Solid State Drive (SSD). HDDs use spinning platters and are cheaper for high capacities, but are slower and more fragile. SSDs have no moving parts, making them incredibly fast, durable, and silent, but they come at a higher cost per gigabyte. Be wary of listings that ambiguously use both terms or provide transfer speed specs that don’t align with the interface they claim (e.g., a USB 3.0 drive with USB 1.0 speeds).
- Capacity/Performance: Don’t just look at the advertised terabytes. Investigate the read and write speeds, usually measured in megabytes per second (MB/s). A true USB 3.0 drive should offer speeds well over 100 MB/s for an HDD and over 400 MB/s for a SATA-based SSD. Anything drastically lower, like single-digit MB/s, is a massive red flag indicating outdated internal components, regardless of what the port looks like.
- Brand Reputation & Durability: In the world of data storage, reputation is paramount. Established brands like Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie, and SanDisk have years of research, development, and user trust behind them. While a sleek metal casing might look durable, the real durability comes from the quality of the internal components and the honesty of the manufacturer’s claims. An unknown brand with too-good-to-be-true specs warrants extreme caution.
- Ease of Use & Warranty: Most modern drives are plug-and-play, but check for compatibility with your operating system (Windows, macOS). Furthermore, a solid warranty is a manufacturer’s promise of quality. A one-year warranty is standard, but reputable brands often offer two, three, or even five years of coverage, giving you a safety net if something goes wrong.
Navigating these details is crucial to avoid disappointment and, more importantly, to prevent the loss of your valuable data. It’s about ensuring the product you receive is genuinely the product that was advertised.
While the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive presents an interesting case study, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models we’ve tested and trust, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:
- Easily store and access 2TB to content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive
- Easily store and access 1TB to content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive
- Easily store and access 4TB of content on the go with the Seagate Portable Drive, a USB external hard drive
First Impressions: When Sleek Design Hides a Troubling Secret
Unboxing the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive was an initially pleasant experience. The packaging is minimalist and professional. Inside, the drive itself feels surprisingly solid, encased in a cool-to-the-touch silver metal shell with a matte finish. It’s incredibly thin and light, easily fitting into a pocket, embodying the “portable” aspect of its name perfectly. The aesthetic is clean and modern, mimicking the design language of more premium tech products. It comes with a single USB 3.0 cable, and that’s it. There are no complicated power adapters or software bundles to worry about, promising the simple plug-and-play experience we all crave.
However, the moment we plugged it in, the red flags we’d noted in the product specifications began to wave furiously. The drive mounted on our test systems (both Windows 11 and macOS Monterey) without issue, and it did report a capacity of approximately 2TB. But the first file transfer was alarmingly slow. This initial hands-on test immediately brought the product’s conflicting claims into sharp focus. The marketing promises the high speed of a USB 3.0 interface, yet the technical data listed a transfer rate of just “1 Megabytes Per Second.” Furthermore, the listing was confused about whether this was a mechanical Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or a Solid State Drive (SSD). This initial performance hiccup suggested a deep and troubling disconnect between what the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive claims to be and what it actually is.
Advantages
- Sleek and attractive minimalist design
- Extremely thin, light, and portable
- Simple plug-and-play functionality
- Appears to offer a very large capacity for its price
Drawbacks
- Deeply misleading and contradictory technical specifications
- Performance is catastrophically slow, not representative of USB 3.0
- Internal components are not a true 2TB HDD or SSD
- High risk of data corruption and loss due to fake capacity
Performance Under Scrutiny: A Deep Dive into the GUSMUBA Drive’s Real Capabilities
This is the part of the review where we usually break down a product’s performance, benchmark its speeds, and discuss how it feels in real-world use. With the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive, however, our analysis quickly turned into a forensic investigation. The performance wasn’t just subpar; it was indicative of a product fundamentally different from its description. Our tests uncovered a device that fails to deliver on every single one of its core technological promises, posing a significant risk to any user who entrusts their data to it.
The Great Deception: HDD, SSD, or Something Else Entirely?
The product page for the GUSMUBA drive is a masterclass in confusion. It’s marketed as a “Portable External Hard Drive,” suggesting a mechanical HDD. Yet, in the technical details, it’s listed as a “Solid State Drive.” These are two completely different technologies, and a legitimate manufacturer would never confuse them. Our testing revealed the shocking truth: it is neither. After experiencing abysmal transfer speeds, we became suspicious. The drive felt solid, but almost too light to contain a 2.5-inch platter-based HDD. Furthermore, it lacked the characteristic silent, lightning-fast random access speeds of an SSD.
Our findings aligned perfectly with alarming user reports. One user who opened the device found not a hard drive or an SSD, but a tiny, low-capacity USB flash drive, a metal weight glued inside the chassis to give it a feeling of substance, and a subpar cable. This is a classic bait-and-switch tactic. The user is buying a premium-feeling enclosure that contains cheap, low-grade components. This explains everything. A small flash drive is not designed for the sustained, heavy-duty read/write operations of a proper external drive. It’s prone to failure, slow, and completely misrepresents what is being sold. This isn’t just a matter of poor quality control; it’s a fundamental deception about the product’s core identity. You are not buying a 2TB hard drive; you are buying an empty box with a tiny, unreliable flash drive inside. You can see its full feature set and deceptive claims on the product page for yourself.
A Tale of Two Speeds: USB 3.0 Claims vs. USB 1.0 Reality
The most easily testable claim is speed. The GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive boasts a USB 3.0 interface, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 625 MB/s. A decent portable HDD on USB 3.0 will typically deliver sustained speeds of 120-150 MB/s, while a portable SSD will push 450-550 MB/s. The GUSMUBA drive’s own technical specification bizarrely lists its speed as “1 Megabytes Per Second.” We hoped this was a typo. It was not.
In our benchmark tests using CrystalDiskMark on a Windows PC, the drive returned sequential read and write speeds hovering between 1 and 5 MB/s. This is not a typo. These speeds are not even indicative of USB 2.0 (which tops out around 40-60 MB/s). These are the speeds of a USB 1.1 device from the late 1990s. To put this in perspective, transferring a single 10GB video file, which would take about 20 seconds on a real portable SSD and a minute and a half on a portable HDD, took our test machine over three hours to complete with the GUSMUBA drive. Backing up a 100GB photo library would be an overnight affair, if it completed at all. The drive is, for all practical purposes, unusable for its intended task of storing and transferring modern, large files. The USB-A port is blue, the universal color code for USB 3.0, but this appears to be purely cosmetic. The internal hardware is bottlenecked by ancient technology, making the USB 3.0 claim an outright falsehood.
Capacity Catastrophe: The Dangerous Reality of “Fake” 2TB Storage
This is the most dangerous aspect of the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive. While the slow speed is frustrating, the capacity claim is a ticking time bomb for your data. Our drive reported to our operating system that it had 2TB of available space. This is a common tactic used by fraudulent storage devices. The drive’s controller firmware is hacked to report a false capacity, while the actual physical memory inside is a tiny fraction of that—perhaps 32GB or 64GB.
To test this, we used a specialized tool called H2testw, which writes unique data to every sector of a drive and then verifies it. The process was agonizingly slow due to the drive’s speed, but the results were exactly as we feared. The test started writing data, and once it passed the 60GB mark, it began overwriting the data from the beginning. When the verification process began, it reported that approximately 60GB of data was written successfully, and the remaining 1.94TB of data was completely corrupt and lost. This means if you were to use this drive as a backup, you might successfully copy over your first 60GB of photos. Then, as you add more, the drive would silently start destroying the files you copied first, without giving you any error message. You would only discover the catastrophe when you tried to access your “backed up” files and found them gone forever. This is not a defective product; it is a maliciously designed one that is guaranteed to cause data loss.
What Other Users Are Saying
Our in-depth technical analysis painted a grim picture, and it seems our experience was not an isolated one. While there may be a mix of feedback online, the most technically detailed user accounts corroborate our findings with chilling accuracy. One French-speaking user provided a particularly insightful and damning review that gets to the heart of the issue. They asked, “SSD disk? NO,” and went on to describe the internals as a “USB1 flash drive,” a “metal plate to give it weight,” and a “sham wire.”
This single piece of feedback is incredibly valuable as it confirms what our performance benchmarks suggested. The catastrophic 1-5 MB/s speed is explained by the USB 1.0-era flash drive. The surprising heft of the otherwise lightweight device is explained by the useless metal weight, a deceptive tactic to make the product feel more substantial and valuable than it is. This user’s willingness to open the device and expose its fraudulent construction serves as a critical warning to other potential buyers. It transforms the product from simply being “low quality” to being an actively deceptive scam.
Reputable Alternatives: How Does the GUSMUBA Drive Compare to Real Storage?
To understand just how far the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive falls short, it’s essential to compare it to legitimate, reputable products from established brands. These alternatives may cost more, but that price difference buys you actual performance, reliability, and the peace of mind that your data is safe.
1. WD 6TB My Book External Hard Drive
- Massive capacity, up to 18TB capacity (1 1TB = one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less depending on operating environment.)
- Includes software for device management and backup with password protection (Download and installation required. Terms and conditions apply. User account registration may be required.)
For users whose primary need is massive storage capacity for backups at a desktop computer, the WD My Book is a titan. With 6TB of space, it offers three times the advertised capacity of the GUSMUBA drive. As a desktop drive, it requires external power, so it isn’t as portable. However, it delivers consistent, reliable HDD speeds over USB 3.0 (typically 150+ MB/s) and comes with Western Digital’s trusted software for backups and security. This is the choice for someone setting up a home office or media archive who values sheer space and reliability over pocket-sized portability.
2. LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB External Hard Drive
- Travel with massive capacity of up to 2 TB in an ultra compact portable external hard drive — LaCie Rugged Mini
- For those who have a need for speed, seamlessly connect to USB 3.0 computers and transfer content fast with speeds of up to 130 mb/s
The LaCie Rugged Mini is what a real, portable 2TB drive looks and acts like. It is specifically designed for photographers, videographers, and travelers who need a drive that can withstand the elements. It’s drop-resistant, shock-resistant, and rain-resistant. While it is a traditional HDD, its performance is reliable and well within the expected range for USB 3.0. For a user who needs to carry their data into the field and can’t risk physical damage, the LaCie is in a completely different universe of quality and durability compared to the GUSMUBA drive. It offers the same advertised capacity but with proven toughness and brand trust.
3. LaCie Rugged Mini 5TB Portable External Hard Drive
- Students: Store music, video, and confidential school documents on a secure device that fits in a backpack
- Travelers: Protect valuable data from loss, theft, or accident while on the road
If you need both the ruggedness of the LaCie brand and a capacity that dwarfs the GUSMUBA’s false promises, the 5TB version of the Rugged Mini is the ultimate choice. It packs an enormous amount of storage into the same tough, travel-ready orange enclosure. It provides a real 5TB of space for extensive video projects or comprehensive system backups on the go. This model often includes Seagate’s Rescue Data Recovery Services, adding another layer of professional protection against data loss—a feature that is unthinkable in the context of a generic, unbranded drive like the GUSMUBA.
Final Verdict: An Expert Warning on the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive
After a thorough and frankly alarming testing process, we cannot recommend the GUSMUBA 2TB Portable External Hard Drive to anyone, under any circumstances. This product is not merely a low-budget alternative with a few performance compromises; it is a fundamentally deceptive device that fails to deliver on its three core promises of technology, speed, and capacity. Our investigation suggests it is not an SSD or an HDD, but a very small, ancient-technology USB flash drive housed in a weighted shell, with firmware manipulated to report a fake 2TB capacity.
The performance is catastrophically slow, rendering it useless for any modern file transfer tasks. More dangerously, its fake capacity guarantees data corruption and loss for any user who attempts to fill it past its true, tiny storage limit. Entrusting your valuable photos, documents, or projects to this device is not a gamble; it is a certainty of loss. In the world of data storage, reliability is the only feature that truly matters, and this product has none. We strongly advise consumers to invest in reputable brands like Western Digital, LaCie, or Seagate, where you are paying for tested technology and honest specifications. If you are still curious and wish to check the latest price and availability for yourself, please do so with extreme caution and with the full knowledge of our findings.
Last update on 2025-11-07 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API