Uh... is one broken drive such a big issue? Hardware will fail, usually when it is very new or very old (Bathtub curve). Or are there more such events the article didn't mention?
If you read the article, the first paragraph explains that this was the replacement drive that WD sent him when his previous one failed.
So it’s at least 2 drives in a row in a short period of time. Statistically that will happen, but it’s like gambling - if you win too much you get shot.
Yes I bought a new WD 1TB a year ago and one day it was damaged beyond repair. I did not do anything with it. Shop technician's diagnosis was "several tiny scratches on the disk". Not sure what that meant, I assume the whole build of the drive is just bad?
I just lost a 4 years worth of my kid's videos. I will never forgive WD.
Edit: I just forgot to add that my old WD HD (bought around 2009-ish) is still working. But reading the contents will take hours. But the point is the quality of WD has gone downhill.
>I just lost a 4 years worth of my kid's videos. I will never forgive WD.
I'm sorry, but your fate was sealed the moment you decided that one copy was sufficient. Drives can fail randomly, so keeping valuable data on one without redundancy will virtually guarantee that you will lose data at some point in time. Just be thankful that you learned your lesson and it only cost 4 years worth of videos. If it happened 3 years down the line it could easily have been 7 years worth of videos.
You should never trust valuable data to a single HD; always make backups.
Personally, I use a portable HD (spinning rust kind, not SSD) to do regular backups of my PC, but the portable HD itself is also backed up onto another portable HD.
This exact SSD failed on me in a similar way. They also recently had a firmware issue that borked a bunch of drives, and they only released a fix tool for Windows users (I guess macOS/Linux users can pound sand?)
I will say that the warranty service was quite good, but given the below-zero level of trust I have in SanDisk post WD acquisition, the replacement drive is going to be basically fulfilling the role of “paperweight and very oversized temporary USB drive for ephemeral sneakernet transfers”.
Bought a pair of Samsung T7’s to replace it, no issues with them so far.
>I still use spinning rust as my primary back up --- arranged in a redundant array with offset manufacture dates.
You will still need to set up either BTRFS or ZFS to avoid silent Data corruption which is happening more often than most people know. And you have to set it up to scrub it from time to time. It isn't automatic.
Arguably the cheapest solution that hit the above bar would be Synology DS223J at $180, their newest entry model with BTRFS support ( on a fairly old Linux Kernel, I think it is 5.10 that will never get updated again in the life time of the product ). You will still need to buy 2 HDD in redundant RAID and set it up yourself. And it is quite bulky as well.
Hardly consumer friendly. And that is before 99.9999% on HN jumping on you, telling you need another backup for this NAS, or another off line, third location devices....
It is sad, not only just consumer. Judging by the number of comment here plenty in the tech industry simply uses an additional copy, or external SSD devices as backup. And I can understand why, but there simply isn't a simple, easy to use consumer solution that offer enough security for a reasonable price.
And I have been stating this for more than a decade already. Your Kids's video are worth a lot more than you can imagine. Tried explaining it to your wife some of those video are gone.
Heh, me too, but just a reminder raid is not a backup. raid can keep your data online in the face of some types of hardware failure. It won't protect against mistakes, malice, or disaster. backups will.
What I do is build one good drive array then each machine gets a cheap local drive and can access the good drive via network and I don't have to spend too much putting redundancy in each machine. Now... "looks around embarrassedly" time to work on that backup system.
I have this exact drive; when plugged into my desktop PC it instantly wedges the USB root hub, causing USB to not work until I power cycle the entire machine. (Intel, W10)
Yet the same drive works flawlessly in an Intel laptop. I think the m.2 to USB bridge chip inside might be the issue.
Make sure to read the full article on this one, not just the beginning. I was initially rolling my eyes--yes, loosing data sucks, but all drives can die and there's such a thing as bad luck--but the issue really does appear to be larger than that.
Even with backups, drive failure rate matters! If you keep n backups, and a drive dies, then you will at least temporarily have n - 1 backups, which is presumably one less than you wanted.
I blame tech journalism like the verge for this failure.
SSD manufacturers are well aware of what their drives should do. But they are also aware that to get sales they need to win benchmarks, and that to do that they cut corners with data integrity.
A benchmark of a drive should involve a heavy workload with a random drive hard and unplanned poweroff every 30 seconds. The drive should never lose a single fsync'ed byte.
The drive should also be put in hot/cold cycling chambers. And in radiation chambers. And journalists should publish which drives meet their obligations despite all the adverse (yet still in spec) conditions they're put through.
I bet no ssd for sale today could survive all 3 tests above for a month and still get okayish performance without data loss.
…right. Don’t blame the manufacturer for making shitty drives, blame tech review sites for testing those drives with the tools available and reporting the results of those tests. This is some 4D level victim blaming shit. I’m almost impressed at the absurdity of this argument.
Journalists could go even further. Have robustness tests where they drop the drive in salt water, shoot it with a gun, chuck it in a fire etc., And then see how much data can be recovered with data recovery tools.
[+] [-] bad_alloc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gochi|2 years ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/22/23733267/sandisk-extreme-...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds...
[+] [-] MR4D|2 years ago|reply
So it’s at least 2 drives in a row in a short period of time. Statistically that will happen, but it’s like gambling - if you win too much you get shot.
[+] [-] momirlan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RadixDLT|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawgimenez|2 years ago|reply
I just lost a 4 years worth of my kid's videos. I will never forgive WD.
Edit: I just forgot to add that my old WD HD (bought around 2009-ish) is still working. But reading the contents will take hours. But the point is the quality of WD has gone downhill.
[+] [-] gruez|2 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, but your fate was sealed the moment you decided that one copy was sufficient. Drives can fail randomly, so keeping valuable data on one without redundancy will virtually guarantee that you will lose data at some point in time. Just be thankful that you learned your lesson and it only cost 4 years worth of videos. If it happened 3 years down the line it could easily have been 7 years worth of videos.
[+] [-] midoridensha|2 years ago|reply
Personally, I use a portable HD (spinning rust kind, not SSD) to do regular backups of my PC, but the portable HD itself is also backed up onto another portable HD.
[+] [-] qrohlf|2 years ago|reply
I will say that the warranty service was quite good, but given the below-zero level of trust I have in SanDisk post WD acquisition, the replacement drive is going to be basically fulfilling the role of “paperweight and very oversized temporary USB drive for ephemeral sneakernet transfers”.
Bought a pair of Samsung T7’s to replace it, no issues with them so far.
[+] [-] jqpabc123|2 years ago|reply
I still use spinning rust as my primary back up --- arranged in a redundant array with offset manufacture dates.
[+] [-] ksec|2 years ago|reply
You will still need to set up either BTRFS or ZFS to avoid silent Data corruption which is happening more often than most people know. And you have to set it up to scrub it from time to time. It isn't automatic.
Arguably the cheapest solution that hit the above bar would be Synology DS223J at $180, their newest entry model with BTRFS support ( on a fairly old Linux Kernel, I think it is 5.10 that will never get updated again in the life time of the product ). You will still need to buy 2 HDD in redundant RAID and set it up yourself. And it is quite bulky as well.
Hardly consumer friendly. And that is before 99.9999% on HN jumping on you, telling you need another backup for this NAS, or another off line, third location devices....
It is sad, not only just consumer. Judging by the number of comment here plenty in the tech industry simply uses an additional copy, or external SSD devices as backup. And I can understand why, but there simply isn't a simple, easy to use consumer solution that offer enough security for a reasonable price.
And I have been stating this for more than a decade already. Your Kids's video are worth a lot more than you can imagine. Tried explaining it to your wife some of those video are gone.
[+] [-] somat|2 years ago|reply
What I do is build one good drive array then each machine gets a cheap local drive and can access the good drive via network and I don't have to spend too much putting redundancy in each machine. Now... "looks around embarrassedly" time to work on that backup system.
[+] [-] valianteffort|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mips_r4300i|2 years ago|reply
Yet the same drive works flawlessly in an Intel laptop. I think the m.2 to USB bridge chip inside might be the issue.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] momirlan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BirAdam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happytiger|2 years ago|reply
Bad drive runs happen. They’ve been happing a LOOONG time. If it’s important, dupe or raid.
Otherwise, expect to lose the data. It’s just a matter of time.
Lots of film and audio gear has a double recording option for just this reason.
I’m sorry the author has to relearn this lesson the hard way!
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
SSD manufacturers are well aware of what their drives should do. But they are also aware that to get sales they need to win benchmarks, and that to do that they cut corners with data integrity.
A benchmark of a drive should involve a heavy workload with a random drive hard and unplanned poweroff every 30 seconds. The drive should never lose a single fsync'ed byte.
The drive should also be put in hot/cold cycling chambers. And in radiation chambers. And journalists should publish which drives meet their obligations despite all the adverse (yet still in spec) conditions they're put through.
I bet no ssd for sale today could survive all 3 tests above for a month and still get okayish performance without data loss.
[+] [-] SemioticStandrd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j-bos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rockemsockem|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shawnj2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helf|2 years ago|reply
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