Discussion PNY 1tb horror story and review

[Jwashua]

Buyers be warned. I buy ALOT of ssds for work and play. I have stacks of them I've used for video from all sorts of manufacturers. I use them for workstation productivity. This past year I encountered some MAJOR issues that cost me a good chunk of money - time and the loss of incredibly important office files.

I have 4 PNY ssds two that are 500g and two that are 1 TB. I have used booth for recoding video as well as os drives and productivity drives. I've pushed the 500g drives the hardest.

This past summer... I had an issue where my computer completely failed. I lost a hard drive and two SATA ports within a year of using an ASUS ROG z690 that I paid $330 for - I blamed the motherboard and moved on. Built another system using a MSI pro 790 and had a similar problem where another drive failed except this one was an ssd drive I stored office documents on and not my OS. There was no damage to my motherboard and I didn't think anything of it.

Fast forward a month to when I finally had time to take a look at these ssds and try to save my information... I discovered both of the drives that failed were PNY 1tb drives! Drives that had been lightly used in my workstation unlike the 500gig drives I used both in my workstation and in the field recording devices I use... SO the 500g drives were HEAVILY used.

Both of the 1tb drives are not recognizable by my computer and will not reinitialize. My guess is they burnt out. While trouble shooting them it dawned on me that it wasn't the motherboard that cooked my SATA ports... It was actually one of the 1tb PNY drives! I didn't piece it together until I was staring at both of the drives that failed and both were PNY 1tb Drives with the exact same issue... The first one cost me big time financially - productivity and time wise. The second one held my entire accounting software and all the office files I produced since rebuilding the first since system.

$330 motherboard
2x $100 or so PNY 1 TB drives
Hours of work
Lost files

TERRIBLE!

I reached out to PNY for help and they offered to replace the but I wanted to open them up to see if I can resolder them or do something to get my files back... That was a hard no from them.

Seeing as how much damage and inconvenience their drives have caused... I'm not excited to get new ones.... I just want my filed back. However I'm sure that's a dead end road as well - None of the software I've used works either... PhotoRec and others.

Soooo buyer beware. Avoid the 1tb and up PNY drives. There's a bad batch out there and or it's just a bad drive.

 

[USAFRet]

I just want my filed back.

That is specifically why we harp on backup backup backup.

Drives die.
Eventually, all of them.

The data is your responsibility.

 

[Jwashua]

And I do have backups just not everything considering they were works in progress and I do not backup everyday. I'm not a complete idiot. What would I do without your advice?

I suppose I expected a 1tb drive to last more than a year and not take out my $330 motherboard when it died in the middle of festival production season with 8 video projects to edit that were in progress on said drives - But ya I should be backing up TBs of video data daily obviously or at least a raid setup.. The data I blame myself. I would still rather open up the ssds and see if I can fix them before EVER using a PNY drive ever again.

However the point of the story is PNY drives are junk buyer beware. One is a fluke two with a year? Sorry buddy but that's a costly issue. Lost data not included.

Sounds like you should go get yourself some 1tb PNY drives. I think you're missing the point of why I shared this.

 

[USAFRet]

I get that you are upset over a drive dying in under a year. I would be as well.

Of my last 3 dead drives:
3TB WD HDD - 5 weeks
8TB Toshiba Enterprise HDD - 7 months
1TB SanDisk SSD - 3 years

In each case, 100% of the data recovered from the previous nights backup.

$0 warranty replacement, and recover the data from the backup.

 

[Jwashua]

I get that you are upset over a drive dying in under a year. I would be as well.

Of my last 3 dead drives:
3TB WD HDD - 5 weeks
8TB Toshiba Enterprise HDD - 7 months
1TB SanDisk SSD - 3 years

In each case, 100% of the data recovered from the previous nights backup.

$0 warranty replacement, and recover the data from the backup.

When they went down did they take out your $330 motherboard practically new motherboard? The data is not the issue here. I just want it back more than I want another PNY SSD. For what seems to be a very obvious reason. But thanks for your immense wisdom here.

You're saying people should expect ssds to fail within a year under light use installed in a working station? And you back up 8tb drives daily? What are you doing to those poor drives they're dying in 5 weeks?

"Solid-state drives also have a longer lifespan—about 10 years or more. Hard disk drives have more moving parts and are less durable and more likely to fail than their solid-state counterparts. For this reason, hard disk drives tend to last between 3–5 years."

The problems I had with the PNY drives are nothing I have ever experienced. I have HDDs dating back 15 years and more. I have never had any ssds die like this ever let alone any drive die in less than a year or one severely damage my motherboard.

Again the 500gig versions of the same PNY drives are still going and used way heavier than the 1tb drives that fried my motherboard. I've had them longer too.

I'm a little surprised you read this and your big takeaway was to blame me for not backing up the ssd. When losing the data was not the issue here and I would rather take the ssds apart on the office chance I could salvage my financial data and such then get another one of their crappy ssds.

But based on what you're saying this should be expected and the take away here is that I didn;t back up my ssd in the past week before it crapped out.

tx

 

[USAFRet]

Sigh....
No, they did not also destroy the motherboard.

But your statement of "I just want my files back" is where I was going.

The term "incremental" is your friend.

But now, I'm out.
Good luck.

 

[Ralston18]

@Jwashua

This:

"You're saying people should expect ssds to fail within a year under light use installed in a working station?"

No!

People should expect that an SSD will fail at any time under any use and in any host.

And that concept should be fully expanded to:

People should expect that data can be lost at any time under any circumstances and in any location.

Yet backups are not done and/or not verified, and/or not protected.....

 

[fzabkar]

@Jwashua, I can't believe that a SATA SSD could damage the SATA ports on any motherboard. The SATA Tx/Rx differential pairs are capacitively coupled to the SSD's controller. PNY doesn't make SSD controllers, so if anyone is to blame, it would be the controller's manufacturer. That said, any SSD which uses the same controller would be similarly affected. Moreover, PNY is probably using the same SSD reference design as dozens of other OEMs.

For example, here is a set of SSDs using the same PCB (Phison Q175018HE008402F):

https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?p=23034#p23034

In short, I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions.