Anyone else have a similar experience with one of these drives?
In the article they point out their first drive failed and sandisk replaced it. Now the replacement is dying in the same way. And the drive just so happens to be on clearance now, as if they’re trying to clear out stock.
Also, it’s an SSD, so it’s not a mechanical failure.
SSDs can fail at random as well. Often with less warning. It’s definitely newsworthy that there are lots of these failures, but the “We lost 3tb of data” angle is bullshit. The correct response to a USB drive dying should be “Bummer, RMA it, and get a copy from the NAS/cloud/resilient storage”
In 2 months though?
The fact that it was a known issue, should have clued them in that maybe it should be used for memes, NFTs, and other crap that means absolutely nothing in the real world.
Aside from design defects, most items havr a bathtub curve for reliability. Stuff either fails very early on, or very late.
These drives are obviously defective. But USB harddrives in general should be used for copying data from point A to B, or storing secondary/tertiary copies of data. But definitely not long term storage of valuable data.
I get what you’re saying, but this was about the RMA replacement also failing.
It’s not bullshit. The Verge is a consumer website. It’s absolutely relevant to inform consumers of a drive during twice and a company perhaps trying to cover up a defect in this way. The rest of us don’t care about what the verge does with their data, we care if it happens to us if we buy the product. I don’t care if I have a backup, I don’t want to buy an unreliable product.
Properly informing consumers should also involve reminding them that regardless of how “reliable” a drive is, failures can and will happen. And while these drives may be worse, a backup strategy is really the only way to be sure your data is actually safe.
I am not annoyed about the article existing, it absolutely should exist. And you should keep its message in mind when buying a drive. But you should also keep in mind the value of your data, that all drives will fail one way or another, and at least consider some form of backup.
