[Discuss] SanDisk Extreme SSDs keep abruptly failing—firmware fix for only some promised | Ars Technica

[Bill Bogstad]

On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 7:23 PM Edward <epp at null.net> wrote:
>
> Looks like SanDisk's Extreme SSD's are having issues.
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

Personally, I would just stay away from purpose-built external SSDs.
The prices of 2.5 or even m.2 SSDs have come down so much
that I would suggest doing a reverse "drive shucking".   Buy an
internal drive with known good capabilities and pair it with a cheap
($10-$15)
dollar external case.   You can even get m.2 NVME to USB external
cases pretty cheaply.   I upgraded the 512GB NVME drive in my laptop
recently
and put it in an external case.   My minimal testing is that it can
pretty much saturate the USB-C connection.   512GB isn't really enough
for a good external backup drive, but it is probably going to be a
crazy fast/big Ventoy based boot anything that I want device.

If I still had anything that had a rust based internal boot drive, it
might be interesting to see if booting from the external SSD would be
faster.
Bandwidth over USB 3.0+ vs. real world SATA is probably comparable.
The lack of seeking in the SSD, would probably make the
external drive faster even when "slowed down" by USB.

Bill Bogstad