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DIY External (USB) SSD - pitfalls of power loss?
A while ago at Micro Center I noticed a bucket of these SSD's at a very cheap price and tossed one into my basket:
https://www.amazon.com/Inland-Profes.../dp/B076XMH2JT
Inland Professional 120GB SSD 3D TLC NAND - Micro Center
Afterwards I read some reviews which indicated that it was a decent, if not spectacular drive. It sat on the shelf for a while until I decided to play with it inside an external enclosure, which uses an Asmedia chipset:
https://www.amazon.com/Nippon-Labs-N.../dp/B01C7YKC1S
I had been happily using it for some weeks as as temporary storage, for downloads and the like. One day, I plugged it in and found it unrecognized; Disk Management saw it as unpartitioned/unformatted. Thinking back to its last use, I remembered having done something different: I powered down the computer with the drive plugged in, instead of using "safely remove" as usual. This has never been a "gotcha" with any other USB equipment, including factory-made USB SSD drives from Sandisk, etc; suggesting that the power loss was responsible for wiping the drive. Device manager had this drive listed as "optimize for quick removal".
In further reading on this line of SSD's I so see comments that they are rather unforgiving of unexpected power loss; but still, my understanding is that 1) Windows should flush buffers prior to a power-down, 2) all SSD's have supercaps and controller firmware measures to prevent data loss. Nope. Is this a generic issue with self-made external SSD's? Would definitely influence later purchase decisions.