• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Just an FYI on Sandisk.

    They were acquired by Western Digital in 2016.

    So this bullshit falls as much at WD’s feet as it does their wholly owned subsidiary, Sandisk.

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    50% percent off a product that is almost guaranteed to lead to complete data loss?

    By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings!

  • Bell@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Let’s be clear that a failing part is one thing but silently dumping them on the public is the unforgivable failure. I hope shareholders are seeing this and selling.

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I hope shareholders are seeing this and selling.

      Sandisk has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital since 2016.

      WD’s share price is up ~25% this year…

          • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            “401k” is an American term of art. It’s like a pension fund except you’re directly investing into the stock market and not pooling risk with anyone else. Money contributed to a 401k isn’t taxed until you retire, but in exchange you can only contribute direct earnings from the job sponsoring your account.

            As part of a benefits package, some employers also offer contribution “matching”. It’s very similar to the concept of employers matching charitable donations – for every personal dollar you put in, they chip in as well. How much they contribute will also vary. Some places will do dollar-for-dollar matching up to a maximum salary percentage (e.g.: If I earn $50k and get 5% matching, the employer will match the first $2500 I contribute). Other companies will instead contribute pennies on the dollar at a fixed percentage rate (e.g.: If I save the annual maximum of $22,500 and get 5% matching, the employer will contribute $1,125). And yes – it’s never a pleasant surprise when you’re expecting the good matching and instead get the shitty matching.

            In any case, because 401k matching is technically only a job benefit, there aren’t many rules against employers reneging on it. It’s one of the first corners that tend to get cut in workplaces where the boss doesn’t have to look their underlings in the eye on a regular basis.

            • Obinice@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Surely actual pension contributions would be better than having your employer partially fund what is essentially a big financial gamble?

              Or… Is that the idea? Another way for US employers to screw their fellow citizens over and give them as little as possible in return for their lives of labour?

              The world just makes me sadder and sadder. There’s just no real good news any more, only bad :-(

              • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 year ago

                Surely actual pension contributions would be better than having your employer partially fund what is essentially a big financial gamble?

                FWIW: pensions do carry similar risk factors. Most pensions are only financially sustainable because they’re invested into the public market and it’s entirely possible for a pension fund to go belly-up due to mismanagement as a result.

                You are essentially correct in identifying that 401ks are much riskier, however. Most working adults would probably rather have the security of a pension instead of being given a rope to potentially hang themselves by.

                Or… Is that the idea? Another way for US employers to screw their fellow citizens over and give them as little as possible in return for their lives of labour?

                In a sense? I doubt most employers actively scheme to do evil to their employees, but the outcome is fairly sinister nonetheless. Pensions used to be much more common in the U.S. until getting largely replaced by the 401k during the 70s. These days, the only jobs that tend to offer pensions are government/unioned… which I think says all that needs to be said about which option is more pro-worker.

                The one place where 401ks really shine is (legal) tax evasion and high-spend retirement. If you make six figures, you can max out your 401k contributions and thereby avoid paying $1000s in income taxes each year. People who are able to contribute that much also tend to get way more money back in retirement compared to a pension because – when properly funded – a 401k is technically more efficient in the long-term for those who already have the requisite resources to weather a medium-term financial hardship.

                The world just makes me sadder and sadder. There’s just no real good news any more, only bad :-(

                Well, if it’s any consolation… this particular bad idea has been around long enough that it’s no longer newsworthy

                • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The one place where 401ks really shine is (legal) tax evasion and high-spend retirement.

                  One big place where 401ks are better for the modern workforce is portability, because the investments in the 401k are vested property of the worker, so the worker gets to bring that retirement with them even when changing jobs. Under the traditional pension programs, people who left the employer for another job would often be leaving behind a lot of pension benefits, and be behind at the new employer’s pension plan.

              • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I mean even a lot of pension funds are kept in investments rather than some scrooge mcduck money tower. Unless you’re just entirely opposed to managed investments as a whole, a 401k is no less risky than a pension in terms of potential for loss, but it does come with the added benefit of being able to personally direct how it’s invested rather than just sitting back and praying that someone else doesn’t mismanage it. Your 401k is yours, and yours alone.

          • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s a way for companies to act like they’re helping you retire instead of providing a pension.

          • root@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Can’t tell if sarcasm. It’s a retirement plan that employers will match up until a certain point, In lieu of the pension plans previous generations were offered.

            • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              No, I was being genuine. We have compulsory superannuation here in Aus. Employers pay in an amount equal to 11% of your wages, it goes up to 12% in 2025. It applies to every wage earner, full-time, part-time, contract and casuals.

              • root@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Wow, that’s great. We only get like 3-4% on average, and that requires us to put in 6-8%

        • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Good point. I was looking from when this problem was first discovered vs when this news hit as you did.

    • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Yep, and shame on clickbaity tech “news” websites for churning out “awesome deals on SanDisk SSDs!” articles with no mention of the failures.

  • daddyjones@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It took my sleep deprived brain far too long (less than a second, but still) to realise this wasn’t a genuine name change.

    • reason@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      For those unfamiliar, the phrase “one’s name is mud” means that a person, or in this case a brand, is widely unpopular due to disgrace or scandal>

    • HikuNoir@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think if pulling an Elon means something like committing a massive fraud then yer. P.S. I using pulling an Elon from now on.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      So far I only bought Samsung SSDs
      for internal use and expanded that to Crucial as well.

      Only heard good things about Sabrent, Kioxia and Samsung so far and not much bad.

      • vanontom@geddit.social
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        1 year ago

        I’ve bought exclusively WD storage for many years. Mostly because I’ve never had a failure, and hadn’t read anything terrible about reliability. Well, all that changed this year.

        My newest portable drive (Passport Ultra USB-C 2TB) has only 30 hours (40 power cycles) on it, and is clicking/chirping and abnormally slow while writing anything. Probably dying, at least it warned me. It will need to be replaced, at my cost (just out if warranty of course). Combined with SanDisk failures, and complete silence from WD… I’m done with them.

        I’m moving to Samsung. I’ve already bought a replacement (T7 Shield SSD 2TB), and also an M2 NVME (980 Pro with Heatsink) for PC OS refresh later. Hoping to move almost all the things to Samsung SSDs in coming years, outside of 1-2 large Seagate HDDs for NAS.

        Bye WD. I do not tolerate reliability issues when it comes to data storage. Or silence from companies when there are massive public failures. Or buying out and destroying the competition.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          My SanDisk 512GB 3D had a similar behaviour issue.
          Read was okayish but writing was exorbitant slow for a SSD at 10MB/s sequential.
          Backup Asap.

          • vanontom@geddit.social
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            1 year ago

            Interesting. I’ve only had one brand of SS/flash drive actually fail (ADATA UE700, and replacement). But most of mine seem to heat up very quickly, then soon throttle the speeds (probably to mitigate further heat or death). The T7 will be my first portable SSD for larger backups, and I hope it handles heat much better.

            I am/was using mostly WD Passport HDDs for backups, which I disconnect and put in a safe. Shocked that this newest one has only 30 hours usage, very gentle handling (same as others), yet it’s apparently failing. (So tired of worrying about tiny fragile spinning disks and mechanisms!) Will backup, and try deleting some files, hoping maybe it just hates being nearly full (about 70-80%). SMART data says it’s healthy, but maybe would until it’s too late.

            • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              My sandisk ssd also said it’s “healthy”. If it shows abnormal behavior for now reason it’s getting faulty. Expected heat (like a good data transfer) is not abnormal but my problem happened with every data transfer.

              Both CrystalDisk and the Sandisk tool said it was healthy. Took me 2 or 3h to fully transfer about 250gb from my ssd to my new one.

      • discodoubloon@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        For memory Samsung all day. Micro/SD cards etc the big camera manufacturers source solid stuff if you aren’t a fan of Samsung.

        If you’re talking about readers I don’t think anyone does anything particularly well. Anker might be my preferred brand though. Lots of companies rip them off.

  • TheMadnessKing@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    How are Samsung’s SSD?

    I am looking to buy one external drive of 2 TB for Backup of my multi-media collection and 1 M.2 SSD for my laptop upgrades.

    If someone can even specify the model that’s known to be good would really be helpful.

    • Kangie@lemmy.srcfiles.zip
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      1 year ago

      I’ve soured on them a bit recently. The 980 Pro firmware bugs hit me on a bunch of machines.

      Samsung refuse to use the Linux Vendor Firmware Service that enables fwupd to apply firmware updates (even though Dell resold Samsung products receive updates here. Thanks Dell!).

      The official Samsung firmware updater image is/was (for years) broken on modern AMD platforms (guess what I was running all of those 10NVMes in?)

      Finally, I had to do [this bloody hack] (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Samsung_SSD_Firmware) on each machine to get their Firmware updated.

      • anticommon@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        My 980 2tb died due to the firmware and Samsung just refused to reply to any of my warranty requests.

        So I refused to buy their drives, and have since spent about 1k on 16TB of WD drives.

        • vanontom@geddit.social
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          1 year ago

          We’re doing opposites here, ha. (And I’ve basically just happened to buy exactly what TheMadnessKing above is looking for, weird.)

          Bought a 980 Pro for main PC OS (due to reviews of reliability and long warranty, did not see info about firmware problems). Along with T7 Shield 2TB for movie backups. And stopped buying WD after many years (due to my recent Passport failure and public SanDisk failures). Wish us both luck, may we backup all the things thrice.

          • TheMadnessKing@lemdro.id
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for the rec. Given, we are in similar situations, I think they should be great

            Will add them to my comparison list.

    • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yeah Sammy still makes some of the best drives in the industry. However, the company is pretty scummy. So keep that in mind if customer support is important to you. Also bear in mind, they offer no warranty service from Canada, you will be sent to the US centre and from there, it’s all uphill as they will cite region conflicts, etc. RMA will be hit and miss.

      Basically manufacturers now are cutting DRAM from their offerings which means most drives can’t handle large files as that I’ll overflow their paltry buffers and your speeds will plummet to that of a USB drive. WD SN770, Crucial P3, Kingston NV2, all omit DRAM. In fact, most of the cheaper offerings cut the feature on their drives.

      As a general rule, I look at DRAM first, then cell type (try to avoid QLC over TLC), controller type can be important if you have specific needs (I purchased a m.2 to CDEF adapter for my Xbox and it only supports drives with a specific controller), and then warranty and product support.

      In all honesty, this is not a bad list to get you started (not sure I’d put the 990 first, but it’s not crazy either): https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssds,3891.html

      • TheMadnessKing@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for the info and the details.

        I had watched a video some years ago of LTT about DRAM-less SSD and had been actively avoiding them since then. Will surely keep these details in mind.