On 17/01/2021 14:19, John Rumm wrote:
On 17/01/2021 09:50, Robert wrote:
Â*Â*Though always back them up as
they tend to fail catastrophically without notice.

+1 When they fail they just stop working, unlike normal HDD which
often start giving errors which allows you to panic do a repair and
back up before total failure.

That's not been my typical experience. Most of them I have been able to
recover at least most of the data.

It is definitely the luck of the draw. The only one I have ever had fail
so completely bricked itself that nothing could see it or any data at
all. It wasn't so much a failing drive as no longer really there.

I have had some where access to particular files becomes very slow, and
some where you lose access to some files, but most of the disk seems to
work normally.

I have had one that would randomly lock up its SATA bus (and the machine
it was connected to) every few minutes. (I was able to recover the stuff
from that in several attempts with it mounted in a USB enclosure).

I have had a couple that simply "vanished" and stopped being
identifiable as a drive. One I was able to fix by applying some flux to
the main controller chip, and reflowing it with hot air. Got it working
long enough to recover the data.

That is more like the fault I have seen. One morning it basically isn't
there any more and nothing by way of software can alter that.

Unfortunately I don't have any reflow solder kit.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown