joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

This moning, my San Disk Extreme Pro 2tb portable SSD failed. It’s not even six months old. All data, almost 1tb of my photos and LRC catalog gone. Everything was backed up but still a big pain. This evening I received this article in an email:
https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandisk-portable-ssds-are-failing-so-frequently-we-can-no-longer-recommend-them/

Gatorcoach Loc: New Jersey

Well, that does explain why they have been so cheap lately. Glad I procrastinated long enough to not buy one!

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Ouch! Happy you were backed up, though! Interesting article, too… thanks!

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

Yes, the big discount attracted me.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

They laughed when I said I'd rather have a HDD........

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

👍👍

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I’d suggest Samsung or Intel SSDs instead.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

In fairness, one manufacturer’s “bad” run of SSDs does not mean that HDs are, in general, more reliable. In fact, the opposite is likely true.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

True. But no one knew that until it happened...
They'll be even better when time gets all the bugs worked out...
I have some hard drives that are over 10 years old, but they were not running 24/7 when in service.
Trusting sole, aren't I.
In over 30 years of using hard drives, (in over a half dozen different computers) I had one that the monitoring software basically said "something's not right with this drive, you should replace it.". I did, with a WD Gold drive. That was in 2017. All the other old hard drives were recycled because they were too small for anything. I still have two 500GB and one 1TB Seagate Barracudas that I use for backups in an external drive dock. Even though my new desktop has a 512GB SSD and a 1TB HD, I added the 6 year old WD Gold 2TB drive from the old desktop to the new desktop as primary data storage.
(Our total storage requirements are less than 500GB so far.)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Again in fairness, I think the “bugs” have been worked out of SSDs for a long time, at least in the brands I mentioned. I also have a couple of old Seagate Barracudas that last I checked, will still spin up, BUT I also have 5 Intel SSDs that have been running 24x7 for ~ 10 years. With the large yearly price drops and the HUGE performance increase (not to mention size and robustness), the only rational reason to buy new HDs is if you REALLY need more than a few TB storage or are doing constant writes, and 99% of those are enterprise mass storage customers. Since those are the big users of drives, we don’t yet have the long term data on large installations of SSDs that we do on HDs, but from initial data, they appear to be twice the reliability of spinning disk.

If you’re currently running a spinning disk and want to transform your computer’s performance, spend $50-$75 on a Samsung SSD and migrate your OS, applications and scratch space. You WILL see a big difference. My wife had a Win 7 Dell I-5 8GB laptop that was at least 10 years old and just about unusable because the disk was so slow. Spent $50 for a 500GB SSD and bumped it up to Win 10, and now it’s a very usable machine which I use in my ham radio station and runs multiple aps simultaneously with ease.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Our desktop and both laptops have SSDs for system disks running Win 11.
The 10 year old Win 7 desktop was the last holdout.
Yes, faster that a HD boot, but then, did MS change the startup process for Win 10/11 also?

I also found that Win 11 (the desktop) will run an application that resides (installed) on another computer (my laptop) on our home "network". THAT surprised me!!! The shortcut that Windows installed on the desktop when setting it up (new computer) actually referenced the laptop. I tried putting the shortcut in the task bar, but it wouldn't let me, so I looked at the properties for the shortcut and found the target was on the laptop! I wonder what other surprises the new desktop has for me, other than not showing the color dots for Carbonite,... yet... I'll have to talk to Carbonite about that.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

That surprises me also!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I wondered why the program had "already been configured" on the desktop. I didn't remember doing it.
Once I changed the target to the copy on the desktop, I had to configure it (new installation on the desktop).

Gatorcoach Loc: New Jersey

I have 2 Crucial SSDs and am very happy with them. Wouldn't hesitate to buy another if needed.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Understand - I buy Crucial for DRAM where they have an excellent record - the brand is owned by Micron, a major DRAM and memory fab company in the US who at one time owned Lexar before selling it to the Chinese. I’m not saying Samsung or Intel is the only game in town, just saying that their reliability has been proven over many years and hundreds of millions of units. Samsung seems to be leading in terms of performance/$.

As far as SanDisk SSDs suddenly failing and losing data, it’s a known issue for its latest SSDs. While they make the standard for SD cards, I wouldn’t touch one of this series of SSDs:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

https://www.engadget.com/western-digital-promises-to-release-firmware-update-for-failing-sandisk-extreme-ssds-211924180.html guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE7MCQj9DWusXqgihbQCgv2_nVbY17hPxPjQaLqoKitnRVqH-cbTyDOXq_kCA5I_ezmU9ULojDiSoZ5kzcKY36fy0yAj8SLiRbaSc4rKAGhHNX-IgFZS_mruXIGslraS_XGMiOG0TeTh4thHWIQLq3wKx0YIe9X3NOhLSaTCOMjj#:~:text=If%20you%20own%20a%20SanDisk,generally%20known%20for%20their%20reliability.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/22/23733267/sandisk-extreme-pro-failure-ssd-firmware