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The rising failure of SanDisk (Western Digital) SSDs is not exactly a secret. Earlier this year, users took to Reddit, and several news outlets reported drive failures themselves. They often resulted in a complete loss of data and dead drives.
Now, an Austrian data recovery service, Attingo, believes they’ve discovered the cause. They claim that WD is cutting corners, using incorrect components with bad construction. SanDisk is denying these claims.
It’s been a couple of months since Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 (buy here), and they’ve not stopped boasting about its video capabilities. Last month, Blackmagic also announced their new camera app for the iPhone, the imaginatively titled Blackmagic Camera.
It’s becoming clear the iPhone 15 is intended for shooting serious video. It even supports USB-C SSDs (finally!). But are yours fast enough? OWC’s new free OWC Drive Speed app will tell you.
Western Digital’s been having a bit of a tough time of late with its SanDisk brand. Several of the company’s SanDisk SSDs have been dying without warning. The company seemed to have gone silent on the issue, repeatedly ignoring requests from the media.
Now, though, WD come out from hiding to release new firmware for a number of SanDisk SSD models at the centre of the recent controversy. They don’t actually mention dying drives, though. Just “unexpected disconnects”.
It’s been reported that quite a number of SanDisk SSD users have been suffering complete failures with total data losses recently. Between devices bricking themselves, vulnerabilities in their NAS line, and now this, WD’s not having a great time.
The latest major report comes as one of the staff at The Verge lost 3TB of data, something that the reported was already a problem back in May. At the time, WD acknowledged an issue in one capacity of one model, but it looks like there are more affected units.
M.2 NVMe SSDs have been out for long enough now that they’re starting to be replaced. Smaller 512GB and 1TB SSDs are being replaced by 2TB and 4TB SSDs, and then your old SSDs often end up sitting in a drawer for the rest of their lives. What else can we do with them? Well, we can turn them into portable SSDs using some form of enclosure.
There are plenty of SSD enclosures on the market, but Sharge (back here) seems to be targeted squarely at location shooting and those who need to access data on the go. Sharge is launching on Kickstarter, where it’s currently available with pledges starting at only $39. There are optional extras to add M.2 SSD storage up to 2TB, but you can just roll your own with a bare enclosure.
If there’s one constant as a photographer or filmmaker, you can never have enough storage space. No matter how much storage we already have, we need to constantly keep increasing our capacity. Sometimes that means shoving more drives inside our computers, but sometimes, the solution is portable external drives.
We’ll get to the SSD vs HDD debate in a minute, but we’ve been testing out the Toshiba Canvio Slim 2TB HDD (buy here) for the last few weeks in various scenarios to see how it stands up in 2023 with the onslaught of fast – but not necessarily inexpensive – solid-state storage.
SanDisk has announced their new Pro-G40 SSD. It’s a super fast and super rugged SSD that offers both USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity through its single Type-C USB port. SanDisk, a Western Digital company (because apparently people still don’t know Western Digital acquired SanDisk a few years ago) says that the new SSDs are their most rugged portable SSDs to date.
As well as their high speed, the new Pro-G40 SSDs, available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, feature a durable build quality with an enclosure that’s raged for up to 4,000 pounds crush resistance and up to 3 metres drop resistance. An aluminium core that pulls heat away from the drive to help maintain speeds and prevent thermal throttling and it’s IP68 dust and water resistance rated, so it can handle harsh environments.
Well, this is one that’ll make a lot of Panasonic GH6 users very happy. Every day in the Panasonic groups over the last few months since the camera’s initial release, I’ve been seeing people asking “When will the GH6 be able to record directly to SSD?!?!?”. Well, the answer is now. Wait, no, it’s not. Today is not the actual release. Today is the announcement that a release is imminent. The answer is September 27th, so you’ll have to wait another week.
The new Version 2.2 firmware supports direct recording and playback of videos and photos using an external SSD connected via USB. You can record onto drives of up to 2TB in capacity using Apple ProRes 422 HQ (Max 1.9Gbps) or high bitrate, 4:2:2 10-bit All-Intra. There are some caveats, though!
It’s probably not that much of a surprise to most of us who actually use large storage drives but there seems to be a big trend lately, a whole flurry of drives popping up on sites like AliExpress and even Walmart claiming some pretty insane capacities at an even more insane price. We’ve seen this before with microSD cards from generic brands that claim to be 1TB when they’re not even close, but I haven’t seen it quite this blatant before.
The 1TB microSD card scam is kind of believable because 1TB microSD cards do actually exist and we’ve reviewed samples from SanDisk and Silicon Power here on DIYP. But a 30TB portable SSD? This capacity doesn’t even exist from the big brands yet. How about 60TB? Yeah, I’ve seen those for sale, too. And if the capacity alone wasn’t enough to stick a honking big red flag right in front of your face, what if I told you some of those “60TB” ones were less than $15?
Western Digital has today announced the new SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE modular SSD ecosystem targeted toward creatives. It comprises the PRO-BLADE SSD Mag, available in 1-4TB capacities that offer speeds of up to 3,000MB/sec, the PRO-BLADE Transport USB 3.2 Gen 2 (20Gbps) reader for speeds up to 2,000MB/sec, and a PRO-BLADE Station desktop SSD enclosure that holds four SSD Mags at once with Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) speeds.
Western Digital says that the new versatile NVMe SSD mag allows users to quickly scale storage on location or in the studio, with up to 3m of drop protection and 4,000lbs of crush resistance for durability in those random location environments in which we often find ourselves. They’re designed to ease the high speed and capacity demands of cameras that can record straight to USB-C.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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