Lifespan of an SSD - total failure after 1.5 years

[watercooled]

I know it's not what you're trying to protect against in this case, but also try to have an offline backup of some sort - having your only backup permanently connected to your PC won't necessarily protect against e.g. Malware or catastrophic PSU failures.

[peterb]

I'm now keeping my Time Machine external HDD connected at all times to my Mac mini. It's providing hourly backups and can detect no noticeable impact although all I ever do is surf the web, emails and Skype on the Mac.

Yesterday I connected the failed SanDisk Ultra II 480GB SSD to my Windows PC via a data cable but it's not detected by the PC. However, when using a SATA to USB cable, the BIOS sees a drive and Logical Disk Manager in Windows 10 detects a drive too and wants me to initialise it.

So, later this evening I will remove it from inside the PC and connect it via an adapter cable to a USB port on the Windows PC and initialise it to see what happens.

That sounds like a duff SATA cable or connector.

[watercooled]

It might be worth mentioning (again - sorry if you've heard this before) one time I had a HDD playing up, would randomly disconnect then reconnect causing windows to make its ber-ding sounds, and often in the middle of a file transfer. Even its SMART stats started raising, things like error rate that you'd normally only expect to see on a failing drive.

The short version is, it turned out to be a cheap, rubbish molex>SATA Y power cable I'd bought from ebay, not sure if it was the hair-thin conductors causing excessive voltage drop or rubbish contacts making intermittent connection, but either way, having replaced it with IIRC a Startech one, not a single problem with that drive afterwards, with several years of use. Even the SSD I had on the same connector ended up with some bizarre SMART stats thought I don't think I actually noticed that causing any problems (maybe due to lower power consumption putting less demand on the cable).

[peterb]

It might be worth mentioning (again - sorry if you've heard this before) one time I had a HDD playing up, would randomly disconnect then reconnect causing windows to make its ber-ding sounds, and often in the middle of a file transfer. Even its SMART stats started raising, things like error rate that you'd normally only expect to see on a failing drive.

The short version is, it turned out to be a cheap, rubbish molex>SATA Y power cable I'd bought from ebay, not sure if it was the hair-thin conductors causing excessive voltage drop or rubbish contacts making intermittent connection, but either way, having replaced it with IIRC a Startech one, not a single problem with that drive afterwards, with several years of use. Even the SSD I had on the same connector ended up with some bizarre SMART stats thought I don't think I actually noticed that causing any problems (maybe due to lower power consumption putting less demand on the cable).

Ive had the same thing - caused by a hairline crack along one edge of a data cable connector. Caused a bit of a panic when the errors caused an LVM volume group to go inactive (for self-preservation).

[Taz]

I know it's not what you're trying to protect against in this case, but also try to have an offline backup of some sort - having your only backup permanently connected to your PC won't necessarily protect against e.g. Malware or catastrophic PSU failures.

Yeah - I've just found a spare 2TB external hard drive. I'll use that for the offline copies once a week.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hmm, I also have this exact SSD. I got it at the end of 2015 so it's a bit older than yours, but it's not used that much either, only as a secondary game drive. Due to that it's not holding anything really valuable (not even game saves) at least. I just checked to see if there are any firmware updates, but there aren't any.

I wouldn't necessarily let it tarnish the brand though, I can't think of many major SSD manufacturers that haven't had any major firmware bugs, and this is just the one drive AFAIK. Come to think of it Sandisk haven't released any new SATA SSDs in ages - maybe they'll just be WD branded now? It's a shame because they've produced some of the highest performance drives available, e.g. the Sandisk Extreme Pro is still amongst the fastest SATA drives.

WRT being a 'just' a memory card manufacturer - together with Toshiba (much like IMFT being a joint venture between Micron and Intel) they're one of the handful of major NAND manufacturers in the world, the others being Samsung and SK Hynix.

Also I've just checked and the Ultra II has a 3 year warranty so it should still be covered if you want to get it replaced.

Not when out of 5 people I know(including me) who have the ultra ii four have failed and they did exactly the same thing. Not detectable in any pc,or even under Linux.

All of them are enthusiasts too,so the drives have been looked after.

It's backed up by it mentioned by reviews of the drive.

People are trying their best to bury it but I know plenty if people with crucial and other ssds too - and in comparison Sandisk seem even worse than the ocz ones by comparison.

I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. By extension if you look at the Samsung 850 it has far more reviews online and a significantly lower reports of failures.

It is the same with their SD cards - the only failures I ever had in 14 years were a pair a of Sandisk professional ones bought at different times. I don't honestly trust their QC/QA at all - it's even more dubious that two years into the ultra 2 design they did that Hexus giveaway especially when they were still the cheapest 480gb drives around.

They are just doing what Corsair was doing - quietly trading on their name and pushing out products which are meh.

I picked up a crucial drive and it's shocking how much better it was built - wish I had waited for a deal on one of those.

I won't be recommending any Sandisk drives for people since I won't be held responsible if they crack out more faulty batches.

[Taz]

@watercooled and @peterb - just ordered two packs of new better quality SATA cables so I'll be able to test them tomorrow.

The motherboard came with two SATA cables: one with straight connectors and one with a right angle connector. The straight one was already connected to the 1TB drive in my PC and that has been working fine. I connected my 'dud' SanDisk Ultra II SSD using the SATA cable with right-angle connector at one end. At first I couldn't fit the right-angle connector on the SSD so I reversed the cable and used the straight connector on the SSD and the right-angle connector on the motherboard - I'm assuming that SATA cables are not directional!

During the process there was a LOT of flexing and tension on the connector and I may have damaged the cable. Unfortunately I don't have a spare SATA cable right (one with straight ends) so have to wait for my delivery tomorrow.

The ones I've ordered are 'Cable Matters' SATA cables. There were a touch more expensive as the most popular cables on Amazon and the reviews are quite good. It's these ones here so if anyone has used these before, I'd be interested in opinions:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KCS8Z...740111_TE_item

[watercooled]

Not when out of 5 people I know(including me) who have the ultra ii four have failed and they did exactly the same thing. Not detectable in any pc,or even under Linux.

People are trying their best to bury it but I know plenty if people with crucial and other ssds too - and in comparison Sandisk seem even worse than the ocz ones by comparison.

Not sure if you include me in that but that's not the case, I'm just saying one bad experience (or bad product) doesn't necessarily mean you should never touch the company again. People don't stop buying Intel because of those self-destructing chipsets or those Atom C2000 processors.

It is the same with their SD cards - the only failures I ever had in 14 years were a pair a of Sandisk professional ones bought at different times. I don't honestly trust their QC/QA at all - it's even more dubious that two years into the ultra 2 design they did that Hexus giveaway especially when they were still the cheapest 480gb drives around.

I think I've mentioned this before but I've had a string of bad luck with Kingston - a USB flash drive lasted about 2 months before outright dying (luckily I had it backed up), a set of DDR3 was causing BSODs and failed memtest, then two identical CompactFlash cards (tried getting it replaced) were corrupting their contents on my DSLR. I still regard that as just being unlucky and don't set out to avoid the brand because of it, as I know it's just anecdotal at the end of the day.

I'm assuming that SATA cables are not directional!

Nope, both ends are the same, just you'll possible block access to some adjacent ports on the motherboard if you use an angled one.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not sure if you include me in that but that's not the case, I'm just saying one bad experience (or bad product) doesn't necessarily mean you should never touch the company again. People don't stop buying Intel because of those self-destructing chipsets or those Atom C2000 processors.

Its 4 different sets of people with the same product range and its backed up by all the negative reviews saying the same. The fact is I am not going to bury the fact these drives have an issue - remember the same thing when OCZ had issues,or Hyper with their PSUs?? When Crucial and Samsung had problems they did try and sort them out. Sandisk just shut up,and then quietly seeded drives as freebies TWO YEARS into its lifespan.

I thought it was weird that despite them being the cheapest 480GB drives at the time(late last year) they would trying to give a few away.

In the end we can't be irresponsible with people's money when they ask for advice. If you want to take a risk then fine,but when 80% of people I know have had the drive fail,then Sandisk can go to hell. Bagnaj97 has loads of SSDs,and this is the only brand which had a failure.

I won't be recommending them,so that some other poor person can have a failing drive - I will be sticking to companies like Samsung who also tend to have much longer warranties too.

I mean look at the drives themselves,I actually thought all the newer drives would full plastic. The MX300 I got is slim too and has a die-cast body and comes with proper software too(Acronis).

It seems they are doing a Corsair here - start off making solid products,then penny pinch and then hope nobody notices it.

Even their "monitoring software" is a POS - it said 100% fine and the next day the drive would not even be detected in two different PCs,with three different types of new SATA cables,two of which are ones which are the same company which Supermicro uses,and two different USB cadies.

Its the same thing the other people I knew - not a single warning. I mean I even make sure I wasn't overdoing any writes to the drives. That old Kingston SSD has lasted 5 years with 13TB of writes - after getting the Sandisk I decided to use it as
a scratch drive for Lightroom/PS - I used to allocate any kind of scratch to my HDDs before that. Kingston are not even the best brand by far too.

If it was just me it would be one thing,but when the only SSD failures in RL in the last 18 months have been Sandisk something is not working very well with them!

The sad thing is that the old ones seemed quite decent,yet it makes me wonder whether in trying to compete pricewise they have lowered their QC/QA standards to do so,or at least need people who can write reliable firmware and software.

Edit!!

The only Sandisk product I will still trust is my old Cruzer Titanium MK1 which seems to be nearly indestructible. Their USB sticks so far have been OK,but I only buy the expensive models.

[watercooled]

I did say "(or bad product)" too - like I say even Intel have their lemons. AFAICT this is a single drive? On the flip side, myself and three friends (maybe four, not sure if he ended up getting one) bought this drive during that black friday sale on Amazon when they were like 80 quid. Not a single problem so far amongst us, but I understand that's anecdotal.

The closest we're likely to get to real-world statistics is something like this from hardware.fr: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/954-7/ssd.html
The Ultra II isn't amongst the best, there are worse (the Neutron XT in particular is concerning), but the Extreme Pro is amongst those with apparently zero returns.

I will bear it in mind though! And I agree, if they're experiencing high return rates, they should be doing more to figure it out, fix it, and push the update to customers.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Remember this people still don't trust OCZ SSDs despite them being a totally different company now,and its OCZ only in name. So why should I think Sandisk won't do the same with their newer drives?? How can I act in good confidence if some non-techy person asks me for a new SSD recommendation - unless they can prove in the next 18 months their new generation of SSDs actually shows better reliability,I don't honestly care if everybody else thinks they should be given a "second chance".

Once Corsair decided to cost cut on their PSUs,I avoided them too despite them being a "trusted brand",and we can see how many "refurb ones" they started selling(since they were either returned or were repaired) and only once when I was sure they went back to the company of old,I started to recommend them again.

In the end with other competing products not being significantly more expensive per GB,and coming with longer warranties and migration software too(and probably with better enclosure construction),I see little or no reason to recommend the latest one they have released either(or the WD branded ones if they are exact clones too),which is $165 and actually not any different to the competition.

I did say "(or bad product)" too - like I say even Intel have their lemons. AFAICT this is a single drive? On the flip side, myself and three friends (maybe four, not sure if he ended up getting one) bought this drive during that black friday sale on Amazon when they were like 80 quid. Not a single problem so far amongst us, but I understand that's anecdotal.

The closest we're likely to get to real-world statistics is something like this from hardware.fr: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/954-7/ssd.html
The Ultra II isn't amongst the best, there are worse (the Neutron XT in particular is concerning), but the Extreme Pro is amongst those with apparently zero returns.

I will bear it in mind though! And I agree, if they're experiencing high return rates, they should be doing more to figure it out, fix it, and push the update to customers.

So far from a tally of 6 of them in the last 18 months or so,and a single Plus,5 have failed so far and to put in context(and the Plus was doing some utter weird crap so was replaced),of all the other SSDs mates and family have got maybe ONE has gone dicky in the last 5 years. That includes someone with a pair of 960GB ones(I think it was a pair)and like I said the one whose drive was fine,never switches the PC off. The rest of the failures are boot failures where the drives suddenly decide they are fedup of life and want to go and hide permanently.

Every negative review states the same - all fine,even the reporting utility says fine and "bang" it just goes on reboot. This amongst so many different platforms too.

This points to either some simple part literally burning out on the board(it can't be the controller or the NAND itself),or more likely some firmware weirdness which is bricking the drives.

Edit!!

Remembered now two mates have some older Sandisk ones from well over two years ago(but smaller ones) and they seem OK,but the recent ones seem rather temperamental.

Its why I kind of thought they might be OK but apparently not.

So if their current range by the end of next year seems more solid,I will consider them again,but I don't want to take a chance sadly!!

[watercooled]

I'm... not actually disagreeing with any of that, and like I said I'd bear it in mind - that includes when making recommendations. Remember, we all got ours around the same time, possibly from the same batch, and for 80 quid. Perhaps the failing ones are from different batches? I'll have a look for version information in a bit, see how it compares to the failed drives?

WRT OCZ - I'd be perfectly happy to try one of their current drives, not least because of the Toshiba takeover.

Edit: Firmware version is X31200RL on mine, but I can't seem to find any version details about the drive itself. Let me know if you find it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The issue is now Samsung and Crucial are not massively more expensive per GB now,and at least looking at the 850 reviews much lower noises about drive failures despite more apparent reviews. Once you add the warranty and migration software into the mix the competition does look better,and TBF the part-plastic build of the Sandisk was not really that inspiring too,and more importantly it makes me wonder whether its acting more like a heat trap.