• astraeus@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I wonder how representative the Extreme portable drives are to their SD cards. SanDisk cards have always been extremely reliable. I assume the Extreme drives are fabricated in a different factory or even outsourced to some random Shenzhen plant. Worrying is the idea that they’ve done the same with SD cards.

    • Artemisia@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      All the more reason for them to be transparent, name the problem, remove the affected stock from sale, set up some kind of recovery and/or compensation service, and write off the loss. Otherwise “SanDisk” will mean “you have shit on your shoe” forever. In the storage space a brand has to mean “safe” or its dead.

      Maybe they are still finding the edges of the problem. Maybe.

    • Doombot1@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      These failures don’t have to do with where they’re manufactured - it seems like this is some sort of firmware bug. NAND doesn’t really just choose to wipe itself at random. Actual NAND chip failures are few and far-between, so this is very likely much more than a hardware issue.

      That said, I personally have done a lot of testing with WD-manufactured NAND, compared other companies’ NAND - and the WD NAND is pretty crap. I can’t really go into further details than that, though.

      Source - I’m an SSD firmware engineer.

        • Doombot1@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I’d personally be super surprised if they were outsourcing their firmware engineering - but I do suppose it’s technically possible.

      • astraeus@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I’ve owned SanDisk for years, before 2016 and after. I haven’t seen a quality difference in the products I use but I also haven’t personally owned this Extreme drive. Flash memory used to have abysmal lifespans, like really bad at long-term storage. Makes me wonder if these Extreme drives are using old tech to save WD their bottom dollar.