I’ve had an RMA from WD to have it replaced (again. . .). I’ve asked if they can replace it with a WD Red, as they offered the previous time. They have agreed. The only difference is that last time I was given a label to print to post it FOC to their lab in the USA. This time I have to pay for the delivery myself, although at least it’s to a UK address this time.
I was just giving it one last test before I shipped it (I was going to wipe any surviving partitions and the RAW partition) and now the drive is COMPLETELY dead. I can’t do anything with it. So I was right to seek a replacement under warranty!
I hope the WD Red replacement is better than this, otherwise I will never buy a WD or Sandisk SSD again. WD needs to step up and manage this situation, or risk losing customers like me who have been with them for decades.
“NVMe SSD cannot be left in a drawer for long as they need power or the data rots away”
I’d never heard of this before - apart from when an SSD is faulty. If true, then it means the modern drift towards SSDs is very bad. People are going to lose archive data that they thought was safe with “tougher” SSDs.
I’ve just read up on this on some web sites and while it does seem to be the case for certain generations of flash memory devices, this analysis of a presentation at a JEDEC conference suggests that SSDs should realistically keep their data, when unpowered, for well over a year.
The old WD Red SN700 are still a good SSD for booting Windows or storing games.
Copying a mass number of games in Steam will show a slowing of the data transfer but it eventually does complete.
Update:
I had complained to WD about having to pay the shipping costs, and they had immediately replied with a pre-paid UPS shipping label. But I hadn’t spotted that message in the plethora of other messages in the thread until I checked again today (sorry about that, WD Support).
So today I packed my WD Blue up (carefully following the instructions so they would not refuse to honour the warranty) and took it to the local UPS drop-off point.
10 minutes after I got home from doing this, a UPS van turned up with my replacement WD Red! Amazing timing!
So I’m very happy with WD Support for arranging this. I hope the WD Red (an SA500, made in Malaysia in April 2024) survives longer than the two Blues. . .
So far the SN350s and a SN580 SSD I am using at present are still working fine. I use 2TB models mostly so that I can have room galore in case I need space
Apprantly this particular SSD from WD is abyssmal. I bought a new one that died just after installation. Fortunately it was within amazon’s 30 days return hence able to send it back without hassle.
I have an older WDS200T2BAO-00SM50 which still works after several years in use. The SSD in installed in my Lenovo P52 beside a pair of M.2 NVMe SSDs.
I have no reason to expect any issues. The blue series have been more common to fail and it is eye opening as SSD technology is mature.
