Halloween remains to be months away, however right here’s a tech horror story for you: Imagine working for a media firm, busting your butt on video manufacturing, solely to lose 3TB of footage as a result of the exterior SSD it was saved on went unhealthy. Now think about the way you’d really feel if this SSD was a vendor-provided substitute for a defective drive that had already spontaneously deleted knowledge.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is a real-world expertise of the wonderful people over at The Verge. The unique unhealthy SSD was a 4TB SanDisk Extreme Pro mannequin that abruptly wiped saved knowledge by itself. And the substitute despatched by Western Digital (which owns SanDisk) apparently has related issues too. The Verge believes the Extreme Pro isn’t the one mannequin affected—a firmware fix additionally implicates the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2 and WD MyPassport SSD as effectively. (So do pissed off stories on Reddit.)

Obviously, in the event you’ve been pondering of buying certainly one of these fashions for extra storage or as a backup drive, you could need to suppose twice. (I’ve to confess, The Verge’s wariness concerning the present deep low cost on these SSDs doesn’t appear unfounded.) But in the event you’ve already purchased one of many affected SSDs, it’s a great time to do two issues: Back up the info on that drive proper now, and choose up a substitute for it, too.

Sadly, as disconcerting as this example is, the unlucky reality is that each storage drive is all the time in danger for failure, regardless if it’s an SSD or a tough disk drive. The odds aren’t excessive (and normally the result isn’t the worst case state of affairs, the place you merely can’t belief the drive), however you’ll be able to’t keep away from the inevitable. Usually it simply occurs a few years down the highway.

Reviews can’t all the time catch issues, both. (We in actual fact gave the SanDisk ExtremeS Pro and WD MyPassport SSD very excessive scores after they first launched again in 2020, as did different publications that use much more sturdy testing.) Situations that may uncover a long-term difficulty might not be included in ordinary benchmarks. In extra uncommon circumstances, later firmware updates can create hiccups. You might argue that reviewers utterly miss the mark, however typically this type of catastrophic end result is sudden and never widespread.

Your solely actual safety is to make use of critiques as a basic information for efficiency and any rapid issues—after which all the time, all the time have a backup of your essential knowledge, utilizing the 3-2-1 rule. You ought to have three copies of the info on completely different gadgets, with two on several types of media and one copy off-site. (There’s a more recent riff on this follow that recommends a fourth copy of information saved on an offline drive, to guard towards ransomware assaults, however the 3-2-1 strategy is a stable begin.) If you automate the process, holding the system going turns into simpler. Your backups shall be common with out a lot effort wanted.

Because sadly, as The Verge’s expertise illustrates, even corporations that previously had rock stable reputations can stumble. Prepared is protected—a minimum of in terms of your knowledge.

Need suggestions for another drive? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best external SSDs obtainable immediately