I just returned 3 SSD MVNE drives to Teamgroup for warranty exchange. These are so-called 5 year warranty drives. They were around 3 years old.
My $0.02 on this is if you look at the old hardline mainline drive makers, 30 years ago when those companies burst on the scene they were offering long 5 year Warranties on almost all their products. But over time they fine tuned their manufacturing and warranty terms until today, most "consumer" drives will fail just right after the warranty period if they see heavy use. I see this with the 3.5 Western Digital Black drives we buy for backup targets. Within 2 years of warranty expiration they fail. The storage market is huge and worth enormous amounts and it is hard to get a foothold into a market where you have 2 behemoths who have figured out how to precisely manufacture just enough so their products last through warranty and fail right after thus guaranteeing a new sale. But with SSD it's new and a lot of memory makers who were eyeing the storage market saw an opportunity during the transition to flash from mag media. But now I think there will be a falling out. For example I bought around 300 machines all refurbs and almost all with teamgroup ssds in them - because the original HP ssd's failed after the 3 year mark and teamgroup was the cheapest maker out there the refurb houses could buy from. I do expect most of those SSD's to be shot within another 2 years. And even though I am buying brand new SSDs I'm still going to warranty return just about every one of the teamgroup SSDs that fail if they haven't failed outside of warranty. That is not sustainable for teamgroup - and for many other NVME makers - when I and others do this. Those makers will either go out of business or adjust warranty terms in which case other makers will try to offer longer warranty terms - either way, those makers are headed for bankruptcy. In another couple decades most SD and flash makers will have exited the business and it will be down to a few large ones who, like WD and Seagate, will have figured out the secret sauce to manufacture/warranty. As the general public gets more experience with failing SSDs and how to identify the telltales when they fail this will happen more and more. Russel I immediately thought your SSD cards had failed when you first posted. The reason I didn't post that is because you threw me off when you said you had 2 of them. But what you saw is perfectly consistent with the NVME SSD failures I'm seeing. You can read them fine, writing starts getting dodgy, and if you force write them enough they become unformattable. It would be interesting to find out if either of your cards are still under warranty. Maybe the SD card makers are further along on the manufacture/warranty secret sauce calculation than the SSD makers? Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of wes Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2026 11:54 PM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] writing to micro SD card and not writing to micro SD cards AT THE SAME TIME??? too late to be helpful now, but at least as an additional data point, I found the exact same behavior on an SSD once. drove me nutty trying to figure it out til I finally decided to give up on that drive and use a different one. it wasn't old, or cheap. it was a samsung evo. anything can fail. -wes On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 9:23 PM Russell Senior <[email protected]> wrote: > I git clone'd f3, a tool for testing sd cards, and it f3probe reports > both of the micro SD cards I was trying to write as damaged. I found a > third micro SD card that is not damaged, which implies the problem is > with the cards, not the computer or reader. Just unlucky, I guess. The > fact that the first two cards I found were on the table next to me > might have been a clue that they'd come out of something and maybe > they came out of them FOR A REASON. I put a big Sharpie X on the two > bad ones to give me more of a clue for next time. It is interesting > that I can still read from them, just not write. > > On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 8:45 PM Russell Senior > <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 3:56 PM Ted Mittelstaedt > > <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > Have you tried a different card reader in a different computer? > > > > I think I literally said that in the second paragraph, but yes. On > > plugging via a USB dongle, dmesg says it is writable: > > > > [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] usb 3-2: new high-speed USB device number > > 18 using xhci_hcd > > [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] usb 3-2: New USB device found, > > idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0751, bcdDevice=14.04 [Sat May 9 20:06:58 > > 2026] usb 3-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=4, > > SerialNumber=0 [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] usb 3-2: Product: USB > > Storage [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] usb 3-2: Manufacturer: USB > > Storage [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] usb-storage 3-2:1.0: USB Mass > > Storage device > detected > > [Sat May 9 20:06:58 2026] scsi host0: usb-storage 3-2:1.0 > > [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic > > STORAGE DEVICE 1404 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 > > [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 > > type 0 [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31116288 > > 512-byte logical > > blocks: (15.9 GB/14.8 GiB) > > [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off > > [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 21 00 00 00 > > [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, > > read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [Sat May 9 20:06:59 > > 2026] sda: sda1 [Sat May 9 20:06:59 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] > > Attached SCSI removable disk [Sat May 9 20:07:00 2026] EXT4-fs > > (sda1): recovery complete [Sat May 9 20:07:00 2026] EXT4-fs (sda1): > > mounted filesystem > > 40af6f66-8d84-45b4-b056-9a2ee4c5a7b5 r/w with ordered data mode. > > Quota > > mode: none. > > > > umount /dev/sda1 > > > > [Sat May 9 20:08:02 2026] EXT4-fs (sda1): unmounting filesystem > > 40af6f66-8d84-45b4-b056-9a2ee4c5a7b5. > > > > # time dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=128k status=progress > > oflag=sync > > 15921446912 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 863 s, 18.4 MB/s > > dd: error writing '/dev/sda': No space left on device > > 121549+0 records in > > 121548+0 records out > > 15931539456 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 863.936 s, 18.4 MB/s > > > > real 14m23.938s > > user 0m0.749s > > sys 2m5.471s > > > > [Sat May 9 20:23:31 2026] sda: sda1 > > > > like, why is there still a partition? > > > > # time dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=128k status=progress > > oflag=sync > > 15915155456 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 751 s, 21.2 MB/s > > dd: error writing '/dev/sda': No space left on device > > 121549+0 records in > > 121548+0 records out > > 15931539456 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 752.161 s, 21.2 MB/s > > > > real 12m32.163s > > user 0m0.634s > > sys 0m19.809s > > > > [Sat May 9 20:36:49 2026] sda: sda1 > > > > Unplug and replug, dmesg says: > > > > [Sat May 9 20:39:21 2026] usb 3-2: USB disconnect, device number 18 > > [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] usb 3-2: new high-speed USB device number > > 19 using xhci_hcd > > [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] usb 3-2: New USB device found, > > idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0751, bcdDevice=14.04 [Sat May 9 20:39:25 > > 2026] usb 3-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=4, > > SerialNumber=0 [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] usb 3-2: Product: USB > > Storage [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] usb 3-2: Manufacturer: USB > > Storage [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] usb-storage 3-2:1.0: USB Mass > > Storage device > detected > > [Sat May 9 20:39:25 2026] scsi host0: usb-storage 3-2:1.0 > > [Sat May 9 20:39:26 2026] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic > > STORAGE DEVICE 1404 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 > > [Sat May 9 20:39:26 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 > > type 0 [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 31116288 > > 512-byte logical > > blocks: (15.9 GB/14.8 GiB) > > [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off > > [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 21 00 00 00 > > [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, > > read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [Sat May 9 20:39:27 > > 2026] sda: sda1 [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] > > Attached SCSI removable disk [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] EXT4-fs > > (sda1): recovery complete [Sat May 9 20:39:27 2026] EXT4-fs (sda1): > > mounted filesystem > > 40af6f66-8d84-45b4-b056-9a2ee4c5a7b5 r/w with ordered data mode. > > Quota > > mode: none. > > > > wtf? > > > > Same thing seems to be happening on another micro SD card on an > > mmcblk interface on a different computer. > > > > > > Sent: Saturday, May 9, 2026 2:15 PM > > > To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> > > > Subject: [PLUG] writing to micro SD card and not writing to micro > > > SD > cards AT THE SAME TIME??? > > > > > > I was trying to reformat some microSD cards last night. They are > apparently writable, mount rw. I umount them, use (CAREFULLY) dd to > write /dev/zero or /dev/urandom on to them and dd seems to happily do > it. I can even hexdump back out the zeros or whatever back out, for a > short time. But moments later, all the original content is still there. > > > > > > I have tried multiple computers, two different microSD cards, > > > multiple > distribution versions, interface adapters, including your usual USB > adapters and mmcblk adapters, same result. It isn't a write protect > slide switch, because there aren't any in some of those adapters and > anyway, in the case where there was one, it was in the correct position. > > > > > > Anyone know what's going on? > > > > > > -- > > > Russell Senior > > > [email protected] > > > >
