Question PSA: Relegate your Sandisk SSDs to non-critical data storage

[igor_kavinski]

SanDisk Extreme SSDs keep abruptly failing—firmware fix for only some promised

Ars saw two 2TB units become unreadable, but SanDisk only confirms 4TB troubles.

arstechnica.com

I suffered my first Sandisk USB flash drive failure in 2008. Since then, I have had a few more UFDs fail and thus, never ever felt the urge to buy a Sandisk SSD, no matter how attractive the price was. I'm glad that my gut instinct in this matter served me well.

 

[Tech Junky]

I have a few SD devices and no problems yet. Never an SSD from them though. I do have one extreme pro that shows up as an SSD though that can make things a bit tricky.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I do have one extreme pro that shows up as an SSD though that can make things a bit tricky.

I HATE the physical design of that. The plastic shroud on the sides of the metal connector is too wide, forcing you to remove everything else from the adjoining USB ports. I actually damaged one of my ASUS laptop's USB 3.0 ports coz I tried to jam a 64GB Extreme USB without taking out the device from the adjacent port.

And the damn metal connector has trouble staying put. It likes to creep back into the plastic shroud. The designers there deserve to be punished.

 

[coercitiv]

A quote from the comments in that Ars article:

I work in the data recovery industry and the number of the these drives we see come in is nuts. I would say at least 3-4 a week and we receive 30-50 cases a day. PMIC failures, firmware issues are very common. 4TB especially but we see a lot 2TBs as well. Probably half or not recoverable.

And remember, Sandisk is owned by WD now.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Someone smell a class action suit? Where are the lawyers?

 

[Tech Junky]

@igor_kavinski

I was talking more about using Rufus to make images than the size or dimensions. The plus though is if you shrink your install you can make a system image and be portable with a full os vs using pe. The Pro model hits 300MB/s+ for speed. Since it shows up as an SSD windows doesn't complain.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Since it shows up as an SSD windows doesn't complain.

Has plugging that USB into some other PC (with a different CPU) ever resulted in the OS installation on it failing to boot? What about activation?

 

[Tech Junky]

Has plugging that USB into some other PC (with a different CPU) ever resulted in the OS installation on it failing to boot? What about activation?

I unintentionally plugged it into my server and it booted right to windows. I don't recall it complaining about anything though.