[HN Gopher] SanDisk Portable SSDs Are Failing So Frequently, We ...
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SanDisk Portable SSDs Are Failing So Frequently, We Can No Longer
Recommend Them
Author : mikece
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-08-09 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| 58x14 wrote:
| Damn, I have a few of these. I keep them backed up to a RAID
| setup but still disappointing to hear.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I use them and have had no issues, but it is worrying how hot
| they get, even when idle. They are warm when not being used at
| all which seems wrong.
|
| Of course I back them up to a 8tb portable hdd weekly using borg.
| You should do that no matter what brand of ssd you use!
| wtallis wrote:
| Portable storage devices should only be treated as temporary
| storage. Use them for sneakernet, not as a working drive or a
| place to park important backups. Even in high-end portable drives
| like this that are just a M.2 NVMe SSD in an enclosure, you still
| have to worry about bugs in the NVMe to USB bridge chip and
| unreliable connectivity and power delivery over USB.
|
| There was a time period where it almost made sense to use 2.5"
| SATA SSDs in hot-swap bays as if they were floppy disks.
| Unfortunately, the form factor proved unnecessarily bulky for the
| PC form factors that are popular today, and SATA was a dead-end
| for performance. But a typical consumer SATA SSD is durable
| enough for portable usage and more reliable than anything
| involving USB.
| isr wrote:
| That's a huge, and rather meaningless, overreaction.
|
| I'm sure others have their own personal anecdotes. Here's mine:
| I've run a number of Linux installs directly off Samsung
| external ssd's. Heck, I've used multiple Samsung miniature USB
| flash drives (so, not their fastest USB flash drives) as
| permanent installs (mainly for chromebooks with limited
| internal, non-replaceable drives) - they just extrude a tiny
| amount, so one can just leave them in, and treat them as
| permanent storage.
|
| It just ... works. For ... years.
|
| SanDisk sticks and ssds (especially their mini USB sticks) on
| the other hand, always seem to run too hot. Try a different
| manufacturer.
| wtallis wrote:
| For what it's worth, I have both a SATA-based Samsung
| portable SSD and a NVMe-based SanDisk portable SSD, and
| they've both been almost completely trouble-free for me--
| though I am careful in how I use them. I'm definitely not the
| disgruntled customer you seem to think I am (especially
| because both of those drives were review samples).
|
| For the smaller USB-native flash drives, I have not noticed
| any particular pattern to their unreliability, but I trust
| them even less because that product segment is a dumping
| grounds for low-grade flash memory.
|
| For NVMe-based portable SSDs in particular, I am wary in part
| because of the long-running thread on the AnandTech forums
| documenting how all three suppliers of NVMe to USB bridge
| chips (JMicron, Realtek, ASMedia) have had extensive problems
| with both reliability and compatibility. Companies like
| Samsung and SanDisk can certainly be expected to do more QA
| on their products incorporating those chips than smaller
| brands, but that's not a guarantee that they'll avoid the
| problems from their upstream supplier.
| mikece wrote:
| Temporary storage, yes, but they are marketed as rugged and
| reliable external SSD for photographers and film makers to use
| for storing their images/video on rather than filling up their
| MacBook Pro out in the field. Very disappointing.
| wtallis wrote:
| Taking storage marketing at face value is _also_ a serious
| mistake that you 'll eventually regret.
| macintux wrote:
| How, pray tell, are people supposed to determine that
| certain categories/manufacturers of drives are inherently
| unreliable? It's not as though most of us run dozens of
| them for long periods of time to evaluate their
| reliability.
|
| Most of us wait for someone who does do so to spread the
| news. Which is what is now happening.
| wtallis wrote:
| > How, pray tell, are people supposed to determine that
| certain categories/manufacturers of drives are inherently
| unreliable?
|
| Certainly not by thinking the marketing department is
| giving you the full story. I don't have a problem with
| news like this being reported. What I have a problem with
| is acting like it's a surprise, or acting like a user who
| loses 3TB of data because of the failure of a single
| portable drive is a blameless victim (especially when the
| failed drive in question was a warranty replacement for a
| previous drive failure).
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(page generated 2023-08-09 23:03 UTC)