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FYI:

Had another WD Blue SSD go bad this morning. This is the 4th to go out with a lifespan of 2-3 years. It was a backup drive and did it loose anything important. So I am done with WD for good. Fortunately I am the kind of guy who keeps 2-3 backups. If I need to use a backup drive, I use a USB docking station. I have a Crucial SSD in my laptop that has lasted me over 4 years and it is built like a tank.

Also, I never throw away any working mechanical HDD's and have 13 of them sitting the shelf. Since I have done SSD upgrades for friends, I always ask if I can have the old mechanical drive and those I add to the collection. Those I also use for backups, especially my installed, up to date, version of BIAB and all the downloaded install files from my account.

Thoughts on Western Digital Blue SSD's?

What do you normally use and how is your success rate and longevity.


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Here is my current Music Machine, almost 2 year old system. I have a two Blues (one which is SSD and one HDD) and one Black SSD

Drive C Windows 1TB WD Black SN750 SE NVMe SSD
Drive D VI Libraries 2TB WDC Blue WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0 SSD
Drive E Data 1TB WDC Blue WD 10EACS-00D6B1
Drive F Library 2 2 TB SK hynix Gold P31 2TB PCIe NVMe SHGP31-2000GM SSD
Drive G - My book 6 TB 25ED USB Device, External Hard Drive

No recent history of problems with any of the SSDs. I have in the past lost a conventional HDD and a portable SSD. I back up yearly as needed. But yes, I worry about longevity and health of all my drives. Thanks for asking.


BIAB – 2025, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, 1TB WD Black NVMe SSD, 2TB WDC Blue SSD, 1TB WD Blue, 2 TB SK NVMe, 6 TB External, Motu Audio Express 6x6

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Glad to hear you lost no data.

FYIW, I'm a Dell desktop guy and never had a hardware failure over the many years I've been with Dell. And I'm very carefull with my equipment; no large dogs or small children knocking my equipment over. However, I did have a massive software failure involving non-necessary "crapware" they installed on my latest machine.

I mention "desktop" because it's my understanding that in return for the smaller footprint of a laptop, you give something up in reliability. That said, when I was jetsetting around the country during my career, laptops were common, necessary and useful.

My current Win 11/i9 Dell has a 1TB NVMe Kioxia SSD boot drive and I use a 1TB SSD Crucial external drive for back up. Both are a little over a year old with no problems so far.

I wouldn't be happy with 4 drive failures within 3 years either.


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In the period I used Western Digital, I had their Black series. I’ve had some Toshiba SSDs fail, the portable type. I use only Samsung drives now.

Like you I have a ton of old hard drives, and one of those adapters that you can plug in any drive and connect it by USB. My caution about hard drives is that the magnetism can degrade, so I would not want my only backup to be on a spinning drive.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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maybe i've been lucky. but...

over the years doing songs ive never had any drive whatever fail me.
whether spinner or ssd or usb whatever. weird huh ?

happiness.

om


my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..)
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No problems thus far with my WD SSDs. However all of my backups on HDs. I have at least three backups, two here and one in my bank's safe deposit. I say at least as I have added some new HDs just in case.


Unclear if the pianist is a total beginner or a professional jazz player?

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Originally Posted by Matt Finley
In the period I used Western Digital, I had their Black series. I’ve had some Toshiba SSDs fail, the portable type. I use only Samsung drives now.

Like you I have a ton of old hard drives, and one of those adapters that you can plug in any drive and connect it by USB. My caution about hard drives is that the magnetism can degrade, so I would not want my only backup to be on a spinning drive.

One thing I do on a periodic basis with any spare SSD's I use for backups, are to plug them into the docking station at lest once every couple of months. SSD's, from what I understand, keeps the 0's and 1's in place because of a small charge. Without a periodic refresh charge, there is a chance you could loose some important data that makes the file readable.


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There are different grades of SSDs depending on the technology, density, redundancy.

Generally it's the usual story of you get what you pay for.
There are clues in the expected use (workstation or server) and in the guarantee.

So far I've used mostly Samsung EVOs and had no problems. Their PROs are, I think, their best and their QVOs are a higher density, lower life.
I do have a WD USB-SSD that I use for recording on my mixer. Recent purchase, lowish cost, still too early to say.


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Like Matt Finley, I use Samsung drives. One thing not mentioned yet it the SSD interface. I don't know what brand Lenovo used for my internal 1 TB SSD on my i9 P17 laptop, but I've had zero problems with it for the 3.5 years I've owned/used it. I also have 3 external SSDs: one Samsung X5 2 TB Thunderbolt 3 drive that is my main samples drive (read speed is rated at 40x faster than a 7500 RPM spinner), and two Samsung T7 2 TB USB3.2 drives (one for project files and seldom used samples, and one for backups; the USB3.2 read speed is rated at 9x faster than a 7500 RPM spinner). They are all 3.5 years old like my laptop. I've had zero problems with any of them The X5 Thunderbolt drive is several times the size of the T7 thick credit-card sized drives, was 2-3x more expensive and it runs noticeably warm, but it screams!

Last edited by TheMaartian; 08/11/24 10:19 PM.

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Redundant backup is the only real answer.

All hard drives will fail. It's just a matter of when. And that's usually when you need something from that drive in a hurry.

In military and search... there's an expression... One is none and two is one. Simply put, always have a backup and preferrably, have a back up to your backup.

For my business needs.... I have 2 programs.... Billing and banking. Both backup automatically. Those are backed up to 2 additional locations. Both backup locations are "off" the computer on a removable drive and a USB stick.

I've used a number of brands. I don't really keep records on how long they run till fail.... but I have several in a box collecting dust.

I've seen a few gizmos that claim to be able to access "dead" drives to reclaim the data on the drive. I've not used those things but I did take a C drive that would not boot and configured it as a data drive and successfully got the data I needed copied to a good drive.


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Your experienced rate of hard drive failure is absurdly high.

Beyond reasonable expectations.
Even spinning drives don’t fail like that.
Especially multiple drives.


I believe you may have another problem.

Power perhaps?


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Originally Posted by mrgeeze
Your experienced rate of hard drive failure is absurdly high.

Beyond reasonable expectations.
Even spinning drives don’t fail like that.
Especially multiple drives.


I believe you may have another problem.

Power perhaps?

Power is OK. I checked it out. I even looked at the electrical sine wave on an oscilloscope I have and it looked clean. Nice clean 60hz sine wave. The SSD's in my laptop and desktop all have been working just fine. If they were different brands, I would suspect power problems. They were all WD Blue drives. That is the common denominator.

Last edited by Joseph Land; 08/12/24 06:18 AM.

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The SSD's in my laptop and desktop all have been working just fine. If they were different brands, I would suspect power problems. They were all WD Blue drives

That confuses me, or is unclear on what you are trying to say.
Is it that other brands in the same computer(s) are fine? If not it doesn't make a point.

FWIW it sounds like your 60hZ experiment checked the power to the computer.
What about the power to the actual drives after running through the Internal Power Supply .. how steady and correct is that?
I think that may be what the previous poster meant to question.

/many times going into the BIOS will reveal a basic test.

Last edited by rharv; 08/12/24 02:12 PM.

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I was also confused by the statement about the mains power. It's what is being delivered by the switch-mode power supply inside the computer that matters. Disk Drives don't run on AC crazy


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Originally Posted by AudioTrack
I was also confused by the statement about the mains power. It's what is being delivered by the switch-mode power supply inside the computer that matters. Disk Drives don't run on AC crazy

That's true and I think I might have just had a run of bad luck. The last one that failed 3 days ago was one I put in a Inateck docking station which is powered off the mains and data connected via USB. Went into Windows DiskManagement and it would not even show up as a drive. Did not loose anything as I keep multiple backups. I could try the old freezer trick from days gone where they say the cold temp can sometimes bring a flash drive back. Never seen it happen and probably not worth the time to do it unless I get bored.


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I just had my second lightning strike at the house in ten years. This one fried two APC uninterruptible power supplies (and my dishwasher) but caused no harm to my computers and audio equipment.

Even if it had, my data is backed up elsewhere, including one copy off-site.


BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I personally have 5 or 6 WD Blue SSD's, plus a ton of Blue HDD's. No issues. Actually the only SSD I've ever had die on me was a Corsair, but that was a VERY old 180gb drive that I think I picked up 13-14 years ago.

Originally Posted by Joseph Land
I even looked at the electrical sine wave on an oscilloscope I have and it looked clean
Oscilloscopes aren't the correct tool to determine how clean a sine wave is, you'd need to use some sort of FFT analyzer - not to mention that SSD's are powered by DC, meaning that noise on the mains shouldn't be reaching them anyway. What you can do with it is scope the DC output rails to look for ripple.


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Originally Posted by Joseph Land
...
I could try the old freezer trick from days gone where they say the cold temp can sometimes bring a flash drive back. Never seen it happen and probably not worth the time to do it unless I get bored.
I am pretty sure that the freezer trick is for hard disk drives only. The head(s) are parked against a rubber buffer and they can sometimes stick in place. Freezing hardens the rubber and allows the head to become 'unstuck'.


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Originally Posted by Simon - PG Music
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What you can do with it is scope the DC output rails to look for ripple.
Set the scope to AC with the lowest voltage resolution, then adjust the vertical position so that the trace is visible. That way, you will only be seeing the ripple voltages, less the DC offset.

Bear in mind that most drive supplies provide a +5V and a +12V supply rail, and also that the computer PSU will have multiple DC outputs.


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Originally Posted by Joseph Land
Originally Posted by mrgeeze
Power perhaps?

Power is OK. I checked it out. I even looked at the electrical sine wave on an oscilloscope I have and it looked clean. Nice clean 60hz sine wave.
This appears be a misunderstanding as the power that's most important is the 5Vdc and possibly the 12Vdc inside the PC, rather that the mains power. I suspect few, if any, SSDs use the 12V.
The DC should be stable and pretty clean, possibly with a few mV of a high-frequency ripple from the switcher.


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