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SanDisk Extreme SSDs are “worthless,” multiple lawsuits against WD say
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm really furious at this. I bought a bunch in the past two years as that's my go-to brands for my backup solutions. And in the past week, had to buy different brands to diversify.
My main takeaway:
Don't buy SanDisk. Don't buy Western Digital.
I don't care if it's only a few models. I'm not risking my data.
Every drive in my computer: NVME, SSD, and HDD is a WD drive. 🫣
So far these issues only apply to these specific SSDs ... fingers crossed it stays that way, because like you I've got a number of WD HDDs in my life.
WD got in trouble not too long ago for deceptively marketing shingled drives as conventional. Back to back issues like this is going to leave a lasting impression on the kinds of people who buy drives.
I agree, I don’t buy WD drives any more. But I don’t want to replace the ones I already have unless it’s necessary.
Except their enterprise drives, of course. Because those customers have the resources to get even.
"so far" is the operative word.
You really don't want to discover you're suddenly part of the 2024 list of drives that also are corrupt.
I think the key thing here is that older drives you already own are probably ok. At least if they're a year old or so.
And frankly, your data should never be in question. Short of a drive failure where the whole drive dies, which would require data recovery services, your data should be safely stored. IMO that's the premise of data storage; and bluntly, it's the only job it has... To store, keep, and retrieve data when asked.
If it cannot do that, or has any nontrivial risk of being unable to do that, then it's not worth the plastics that make up the case. Unless you're using the drive as a temp/scrub/whatever disk, it's unusable in my opinion.
I used to only buy WD Reds for my NAS, until they secretly switched them to SMR. I agree that no one should buy from WD anymore.
So what did you end up buying and was that just random choice or based on some research/experience?
Samsung, bit more pricey but both my ssd and ram are both Samsung chips and I haven't had a single problem with either.
E. Seems that further down the thread someone is saying Samsung is having issues too, which is dissapointing as I've always trusted Samsung.
Samsung has been hit or miss. For example EVO 840 were a mess a few years ago, had two of them, both slowed to a crawl (Firmware issue, Samsung never managed to fix it).
It's all a mess :-/
Ye definitely hit or miss, they've been excellent for me. I got the 970 EVO last year or the year before and it's been rock solid, my RAM is also Samsung chips albeit B die so higher bin which probably explains why I've never had a single issue with them in 4 odd years.
Hmmmm
My main NVMe is a 1TB Sandisk Extreme and it’s been doing so well for me for almost five years now.
Perhaps I make more frequent backups.