Question WD My Passport 261B Disconnects

[AnthonyJAttard]

I have had a WD My Passport 261B SCSI (San Disk SSD Plus) for a while connected to USB 3 hub. Every so often the disk fails to appear in Explorer or Directory Opus and this can cause Windows 11 to temporarily freeze. If I disconnect the device physically and reconnect it, it reappears and I can access it. I have stopped using the device for storage, transferred my Steam games to another device and reformatted as exFAT to see if that fixes the problem. It did not.

Is this a sign the device is at the end of it's life? No other devices seem to have this issue. I have begun to favour Samsung devices but I do have a WD Elements SE 2623 external HD which is working fine.

What is the life span of external SSD's?

 

[evermorex76]

External SSDs don't inherently have a shorter life than internal but the components will get a lot hotter a lot faster with heavy use, even if the enclosure is designed as a heatsink, which could shorten the lifespan. They're just not intended to be continuously run at maximum speed. Why would you use an external drive to store Steam games? It's more expensive than just getting an internal drive, slower, more of a hassle.

Use a tool like CrystalDiskInfo or others to look at the drive health and SMART stats for the drive.

Weird/stupid that My Passport 261B is apparently used for both mechanical SATA models and NVMe SSD models. You're sure you have an SSD model? The problems you're seeing ARE very common with a failing mechanical drive.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

What is the life span of external SSD's?
That varies from drive to drive, manufacturer to manufacturer. They also have a MTBF mentioned in their datasheet. If the drive is yet under warranty, then I'd advise on backing up any mission critical data off of said drive and then applying for an RMA.

As for your predicament, do you see any change when using the drive without the USB hub you've mentioned above?

 

[evermorex76]

MTBF

Yeah, those are useless to a consumer, other than comparing one drive to another to see which one the manufacturer expects to last longer. Like 1,500,000 hours or 171 years isn't going to help a user figure out how long they can expect a single drive to last. Mechanical drives really don't have anything for a consumer to use to estimate the lifespan other than reading about others' experiences (which does you no good on a new model). The warranty period could be considered somewhat useful, since you know the warranty is going to be less time than when the manufacturer expects a large number of them to start failing, but they can basically make that any number they want and just price the drive to make up for having to cover more RMAs. TBW ratings on SSDs are the closest thing to a number that can give you a lifespan expectation, and the time it takes to hit that will depend on how it's used.

 

[Misgar]

Every so often the disk fails to appear in Explorer

1). Disable 'USB Power Management' for all instances of USB3 Hub found in Device Manager under USB Serial Bus controllers.

2). Set 'USB Selective Suspend setting' in Power Options to Disabled.

3). Do not use a USB hub.

4). Use rear panel USB3 ports (for desktop PCs) not front panel ports, to reduce cable length.

5). Use good quality short (30cm/1ft) USB3 cable between PC and USB housing.


USB drives disappearing are a symptom of Windows power management killing USB +5V when the drive is idle for some time. USB drives don't always "wake up" properly when power is restored.

Hubs don't help either. One more link in the chain to confuse matters.

Short USB3 leads reduce the chance of data corruption. Front panel USB ports are often at the end of a 50 to 60cm internal cable. Add another 60cm external cable and you may increase crosstalk/attentuation to the point where data drop out occurs. Have you noticed that fast USB-C portable SSDs (1,000MB/s) come with very short leads 15 to 20cm long?

What is the life span of external SSD's?

Like any disk drive, life span could be years, or they could drop dead tomorrow. I've got portable USB-C SSDs that are at least 7 years old. These days I buy Crucial X6, X9. Not the fastest, but 4TB isn't too expensive during Black Friday.

 

[mentose]

It actually looks like a sign of SSD fatigue. I had a WD do the same thing before I completely let go. In general, an external SSD can last for several years, but it depends on the use. Personally, I also switched to Samsung and zero worries since then.

 

[BFG-9000]

MTBF is not lifespan.

Take a sample population of 1,000,000 20-year old humans.
Over a year, 1000 of them die.
The failure rate is 1000 failures/1,000,000 human years or 0.1% a year
MTBF is the inverse of the failure rate so 1/0.001 = 1000 years
However the life expectancy (service life) of 20 year old humans is not 1000 more years.

 

[AnthonyJAttard]

External SSDs don't inherently have a shorter life than internal but the components will get a lot hotter a lot faster with heavy use, even if the enclosure is designed as a heatsink, which could shorten the lifespan. They're just not intended to be continuously run at maximum speed. Why would you use an external drive to store Steam games? It's more expensive than just getting an internal drive, slower, more of a hassle.

Use a tool like CrystalDiskInfo or others to look at the drive health and SMART stats for the drive.

Weird/stupid that My Passport 261B is apparently used for both mechanical SATA models and NVMe SSD models. You're sure you have an SSD model? The problems you're seeing ARE very common with a failing mechanical drive.

This is the CrystalDiskInfo for this device:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskInfo 9.6.3 (C) 2008-2024 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

OS : Windows 11 Pro 24H2 [10.0 Build 26100] (x64)
Date : 2025/06/04 7:22:39

-- Controller Map ----------------------------------------------------------
+ USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Mass Storage Device [SCSI]
- WD My Passport 261B SCSI Disk Device
- WD SCSI Enclosure Device

-- Disk List ---------------------------------------------------------------
(07) SanDisk SSD PLUS 1000GB : 1000.2 GB [7/4/0, sa1] - sd

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(07) SanDisk SSD PLUS 1000GB
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : SanDisk SSD PLUS 1000GB
Firmware : IN1000RL
Serial Number : 19397E441108
Disk Size : 1000.2 GB (8.4/137.4/1000.2/1000.2)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 1953529856
Rotation Rate : ---- (SSD)
Interface : UASP (Serial ATA)
Major Version : ACS-2
Minor Version : ACS-2 Revision 3
Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 17606 hours
Power On Count : 281 count
Host Reads : 18033 GB
Host Writes : 11113 GB
NAND Writes : 10155 GB
Temperature : 37 C (98 F)
Health Status : Good (96 %)
Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ, TRIM, DevSleep, GPL
APM Level : 0000h [OFF]
AAM Level : ----
Drive Letter : L:

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
05 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reassigned Block Count
09 100 100 __0 0000000044C6 Power On Hours
0C 100 100 __0 000000000119 Power Cycle Count
A5 100 100 __0 00000000060E Block Erase Count (SLC)
A6 100 100 __0 00000000000A Minimum P/E Cycles
A7 100 100 __0 000000000000 Maximum Bad Blocks per die
A8 100 100 __0 000000000010 Maximum P/E Cycles
A9 100 100 __0 000000000298 Total Bad Block
AA 100 100 __0 000000000000 Grown Bad Blocks
AB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Program Fail Count
AC 100 100 __0 000000000000 Erase Fail Count
AD 100 100 __0 00000000000A Average P/E Cycles
AE 100 100 __0 000000000085 Unexpected Power Loss Count
B8 100 100 __0 000000000000 End-to-End Error Detection/Correction Count
BB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reported Uncorrectable Errors
BC 100 100 __0 000000000000 Command Timeout Count
C2 _63 _49 __0 003100090025 Temperature
C7 100 100 __0 000000000000 CRC Error Count
E6 100 100 __0 042A0200042A Media Wearout Indicator
E8 100 100 __5 000000000064 Available Reserve Space
E9 100 100 __0 0000000027AB NAND GB Written
EA 100 100 __0 000000005EA1 NAND GB Written (SLC)
F1 100 100 __0 000000002B69 Total GB Written
F2 100 100 __0 000000004671 Total GB Read
F4 __0 100 __0 000000000000 Temperature Throttle Status

The other devices are similar except some are newer than this one. I suppose my problem is I have too many games installed, if I cut back that may help alleviate some problems. It might also be a good idea to replace the older internal SATA HDD's with internal SSD's like Samsung SSD CT1000MX500SSD1.

I am definitely a game addict!

 

[AnthonyJAttard]

1). Disable 'USB Power Management' for all instances of USB3 Hub found in Device Manager under USB Serial Bus controllers.

2). Set 'USB Selective Suspend setting' in Power Options to Disabled.

3). Do not use a USB hub.

4). Use rear panel USB3 ports (for desktop PCs) not front panel ports, to reduce cable length.

5). Use good quality short (30cm/1ft) USB3 cable between PC and USB housing.


USB drives disappearing are a symptom of Windows power management killing USB +5V when the drive is idle for some time. USB drives don't always "wake up" properly when power is restored.

Hubs don't help either. One more link in the chain to confuse matters.

Short USB3 leads reduce the chance of data corruption. Front panel USB ports are often at the end of a 50 to 60cm internal cable. Add another 60cm external cable and you may increase crosstalk/attentuation to the point where data drop out occurs. Have you noticed that fast USB-C portable SSDs (1,000MB/s) come with very short leads 15 to 20cm long?


Like any disk drive, life span could be years, or they could drop dead tomorrow. I've got portable USB-C SSDs that are at least 7 years old. These days I buy Crucial X6, X9. Not the fastest, but 4TB isn't too expensive during Black Friday.

Thanks for the advice, I changed the power settings as described, but I am using too many USB A hubs and the new SSD's are USB C. The WD device is USB A. Cables are a bit like spaghetti - even wireless mice and keyboards need them!

 

[evermorex76]

Other than the SMART data showing a 3 billion degree temperature (kidding but that is a weird raw value) it all looks fine. I can't even see a reason that the health is shown as 96% instead of 100, given how little data has been written to the drive and there being no negative indicators. Some of the raw values look "weird" given that DiskInfo says they are zero. The "Bad blocks" value looks to be the known bad blocks from the factory (which is normal), but there are no "grown bad blocks" so no new ones have developed, and nothing has been reallocated. I don't know what "Available Reserve Space" being interpreted as 5 means, unless it's an inverse number and is related to the known bad blocks having used some of it. (I think that's kind of like buying a new car and finding that the tires have 5% of the tread worn off and the maker saying that was because they had to drive it around a bit to work out some issues.)

Install the SanDisk Dashboard software and check for firmware updates. There was another user that posted recently about a drive that disconnected after 5 minutes of being idle, and it was a known issue with the firmware version on their drive. (It was a Verbatim drive.) WD and SanDisk don't provide information about their firmware updates, unfortunately. And SanDisk took the Samsung track 2 years ago of ignoring and refuting evidence of major problems with several models of their SSDs (data suddenly being completely wiped, but not this model) and taking months to acknowledge it and release a "fixed" firmware that wasn't even a reliable fix.

Have you tried the most obvious test and just plugged it directly into a port on the PC for a while? Surely you could move things around long enough to test it out. (I can't imagine why you'd need to have so many hubs and drives plugged in at once anyway, but you don't have to explain yourself. Maybe it's a laptop?) Are your hubs bus-powered or self-powered (using external power bricks)?

The CT1000MX500SSD1 is a Crucial drive, not Samsung, and it seems like you need to buy as large a drive as you can possibly afford so you can reduce the number of devices you're running and not have to move things around. The MX500 is a very well-regarded drive but it's also a very old model and has been discontinued so the price is high and availability is low, and its TBW (terabytes written) rating is VERY low so the lifespan could be short. A Samsung 870 EVO is a newer and faster model for basically the same price, with a much higher endurance rating (and there are larger capacities available). Or you can get lower-tier 2TB SATA SSDs for the same price or less that will perform nearly as well, since SATA hit its limits many years ago. Sacrificing a small amount of throughput for double the storage seems like a good trade-off for your case. Just stick with a model using TLC instead of QLC.

If you do have some M.2 NVMe slots in your computer, there is basically no price difference between NVMe and SATA, so you should go ahead and get NVMe, which also avoids having to connect power and data cables. If you're using a 5Gbps USB connection, an internal SATA drive can beat it out easily, and even a 10Gbps USB drive based on NVMe won't be as good in gaming as the higher pure throughput isn't highly beneficial, and USB has other downsides.

If you decide you don't want to use the WD/SanDisk drive via USB anymore, you could also open it up and see if you can pull out the drive. If it's just a SanDisk SSD Plus, it may have standard SATA connectors so you could try it out plugged in internally.

 

[Misgar]

Power On Hours : 17606 hours
Power On Count : 281 count

17606 hours works out at just over 2 years, but I've just checked an ex-server pull (120GB SanDisk Z410) an it's still at 100% Performance/Health in Hard Disk Sentinel with 2001 days and 9 hours on-time, which is 5 years 6 months. Admittedly it might be an enterprise class drive used as cache.

How full do your SSDs get? I've seen recommendations about not filling TLC drives past 80% capacity and QLC drives past 75%. The idea is to leave room for TRIM and drive housekeeping to take place. If you fill an SSD past 90%, performance will probably suffer.

 

[evermorex76]

17606 hours works out at just over 2 years

I didn't even see the power-on hours. 2 years and it only had 10TB of data written to it, so I assume games were basically just installed to it and then left in place with virtually no further modifications. In that case, performance wouldn't be an issue even if it got very full, since performance on an SSD only degrades for write activity when full (and primarily only when writing large amounts at once). Other maintenance tasks like TRIM and wear-leveling would still be fine with only a few percent free given the lack of write activity, and if cells degraded and needed reallocation that would be to spares that weren't user-accessible in the first place.

 

[AnthonyJAttard]

My C: NVME SSD drive is now at 78% and I won't be installing games without uninstalling some. The largest game is Baldur's Gate 3 followed by Total War PHARAOH DYNASTIES. The next is the internal SSD with around 74%, the others are less than 50%.

I'll admit this is a good example of game addiction! I have too many games but I am trying to focus on playing a few to the end. At 63 years this June I have been playing games since MS-DOS - those were the days of floppy disks and batch files, emm386, himem and 4Mb RAM . We have come a long way 😉

 

[Misgar]

4Mb RAM

4MB RAM and floppy discs. Sheer luxury.

My first home computer had 32kB RAM and storage was on cassette tape. I went online using a 1200/75 modem, but sometimes at 300/300bps. I upgraded with a pair of 5.25" floppy disk drives in a console, which after taking inflation into account, cost the equivalent of US $2,108 in today's money. I must have been stark staring mad (or tired of using a cassette recorder).

The next PC was an 8086 with 512MB RAM but I upgraded to 640KB using DIL chips. The 80286 PC came with Windows 2 and 2MB RAM in SIPP format.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

 

[AnthonyJAttard]

4MB RAM and floppy discs. Sheer luxury.

My first home computer had 32kB RAM and storage was on cassette tape. I went online using a 1200/75 modem, but sometimes at 300/300bps. I upgraded with a pair of 5.25" floppy disk drives in a console, which after taking inflation into account, cost the equivalent of US $2,108 in today's money. I must have been stark staring mad (or tired of using a cassette recorder).

The next PC was an 8086 with 512MB RAM but I upgraded to 640KB using DIL chips. The 80286 PC came with Windows 2 and 2MB RAM in SIPP format.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

If I go back to 1985/86 I was at a primary school with a room of 8 Commodore 64 PC's with cassette recorders. I was teaching 7 year olds a program called Turtle Graphics, you would move a cursor in (X,Y) and Z (distance) coordinates and it would draw a line to the new position (the kids thought that Snail Graphics was a better name). You could also run a repeat loop and include a degrees rotation to create interesting patters on the screen - you could say they were learning to program!

Schools started to move to the older Apple IIe computers. I was in a school in 1990-92 where we had a room full of them and we also bought a Mac+. But we lacked funding for software and had to resort to copying/sharing from other schools. If the Ministry of Education made an audit we used to pack the disk into a box and a parent would "look" after them until after the audit.

Unfortunately I was forced to "upgrade" my role from computer teacher to classroom teacher and was the only teacher ready to use the systems in the classroom. The lack of training of teachers to teach computer education was an example of the types of budget cuts we had to make. It was then that I was able to buy a Mac SE30 and my father was using a 286 -> 386 for his university research and programming in Quick Basic. His work in prestressed concrete was greatly aided by the software and systems the university could offer, he published a text book with graphs and formulas that would twist the mind.

 

[Misgar]

A friend who was a school teacher unofficially "loaned" me the school 'Model B' over Easter but I nearly hurled the dratted thing out of the window. It had a disc interface ROM and I didn't know you had to type *Tape to revert to cassette recorder. Acorn amended the manual on the first page to include this info.

A year later at work, I got so annoyed writing test specs by hand, I bought a second 'Model B' and plonked it on my desk. Cost me £900. Talking to one of the directors I met on a ferry coming back from Norway, I discovered I'd caused a lot of red faces at the next board meeting. After that, the company bought a few computers for the office.

Getting back on subject, have you tested the Passport 261B connected directly to the back of your PC? Each USB-A plug/socket/hub connection adds more unreliability to the system.

I prefer to keep most of my hard disks physically installed inside computers (more secure). I went through 11 external USB3 3.5" desktop drives yesterday hunting for files, but I plugged the drives in one at a time to the rear panel, using a short USB lead.

The only time I've been tempted to use USB hubs is on holiday, when I run out of USB ports on my laptop if I'm copying image files from memory cards to portable SSDs. It's tempting to use a hub to add a second card reader and a second portable SSD, but the spaghetti mess on the bed becomes unstable and connections stop working. I find it better to keep things simple and make do with fewer devices, then eject and replace with another drive.

I'm not sure if you're using a desktop or a laptop, but as @evermorex76 says, it might be a good idea to buy a new 2TB or 4TB SSD (and install it inside your computer). If a 4TB SATA or M.2 NVMe SSD seems too expensive, consider a cheaper internal 4TB hard disk. Games will load slower, but you'll avoid dodgy USB connections. The hard disk will also run cooler.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-BarraCuda-internal-Silver-ST4000DM004/dp/B0713R3Y6F/ref=sr_1_2

 

[cruisetung]

https://github.com/stsrki/KeepAliveHD

It's for HDD, but see if it works for SSD too.

It worked for me for my mobile 2.5" HDD a few years ago.

 

[evermorex76]

the spaghetti mess on the bed becomes unstable

Using hubs or even just straight external drives if you're moving around a lot or on an unstable surface like a bed a lot is probably one of the least advisable environments for those. Too much movement and strain if they're dangling or being pulled on, which could eventually damage the connectors. But a single self-powered hub per port (no daisy-chaining) in a stable location should be perfectly fine for reliability and performance in general, if they're quality devices. Super-cheapo models might have dodgy chipsets and other components, and obviously trying to connect multiple high-performance devices on a single hub would be bottlenecked if they were being accessed at the same time. I also don't think even a few feet of cabling, including the cables inside a PC case, is likely to cause any issues unless they're the cheapest thinnest cables that could be found, so having a cable running from the top of a desk down to a PC case on the floor shouldn't be a problem. The spec for 3.2 Gen 2 is 3 meters, so a good cable should be able to reach full speeds at that length and likely a little over it, assuming it's not being routed alongside a bunch of stuff producing interference.

 

[SkyNetRising]

the disk fails to appear in Explorer or Directory Opus and this can cause Windows 11 to temporarily freeze.
If I disconnect the device physically and reconnect it, it reappears and I can access it.
Is this a sign the device is at the end of it's life?

That probably is external enclosure problem (not drive itself).
I'd suspect solder joints to have become loose on external drive USB port.

 

[Misgar]

I also don't think even a few feet of cabling, including the cables inside a PC case, is likely to cause any issues unless they're the cheapest thinnest cables that could be found, so having a cable running from the top of a desk down to a PC case on the floor shouldn't be a problem.

I have indeed found problems with cable length on USB3 file transfers into USB-A ports.

This happened when transferring RAW + JPG files from 64GB CF and 128GB UHS-II SD cards in Kingston FCR-HS4 readers. When I switched from long thin USB3 cables to short thick 30cm (1ft) Startech cables on the readers, Free-File-Sync stopped reporting file corruption errors when perfoming bit-by-bit comparisons. The CF cards read back at 130MB/s and the UHS-II cards read back at 180MB/s when copying to M.2 NVMe. Long USB-A cables caused file corruption on my laptops.

I've had similar problems with fast portable SSDs at home when using long USB-A cables connected to the front panels of several desktop machines. For more consistent transfers, I use the short 20cm or 15cm USB-C cables supplied with some portable SSDs (e.g. Crucial X6 or X9) and connect the drives directly to the rear panel (not the USB-C port on the front panel).

Admittedly there's no way a spinning hard disk will reach the nominal 1,000MB/s sustained transfer rate of a Crucial X9, but I do have some 8TB Toshiba hard disk drives which start off at 250MB/s on the outermost tracks, dropping to 120MB/s on the innermost. I'd be wary of using such drives in a USB3 caddy with a long USB-A cable. Just me being cautious.

The file corruption when transferring photos from reader to laptop was insidious and only noticeable after checking the image files visually at a later date. On festival days when I shoot more than 1,000 photos, I don't have the time to check every pair of RAW + JPG files thoroughly. Instead I make three copies on different drives and run bit-by-bit file comparisons, before wiping the CF and SD cards for the next days shoot. After formatting the cards and re-using them, there's no chance to recover any files corrupted during transfer.

If file corruption during transfer occurs at home and I still have the original data, failed copies are little more than an annoyance. All I can say is "once bitten, twice shy". Paranoid maybe, but I stick to short cables.

Using hubs or even just straight external drives if you're moving around a lot or on an unstable surface like a bed a lot is probably one of the least advisable environments for those.

The only reason for using unstable lashups on a bed is because some guest houses in remote areas do not come with a desk or a table. In some rooms you don't even get a chair and the bed is the only flat surface. You learn to make do.

 

[evermorex76]

When I switched from long thin USB3 cables to short thick 30cm (1ft) Startech cables on the readers

You didn't compare to long THICK cables from a good brand, so you can't say length had anything to do with it. A thin cable probably means lower quality conductors, maybe aluminum instead of copper, maybe just low-quality construction. That was my whole point.

 

[Misgar]

You didn't compare to long THICK cables from a good brand, so you can't say length had anything to do with it. A thin cable probably means lower quality conductors, maybe aluminum instead of copper, maybe just low-quality construction. That was my whole point.

Very true, but long thick cables often cost more than short thick cables, plus all my fast portable SSDs come with very short cables, especially the ones with USB-C leads 15 or 20cm long.

I fixed my USB3 card reader problem using a short 30cm micro-B to A cable. If this solution helps someone else, so much the better. If not, they may have wasted less money buying a shorter cable that failed to work.

As an electronics design engineer working on Milspec and Aerospace projects I'm aware of crosstalk, attenuation, effect of single vs multiple screening, twisted vs untwisted pairs, PTFE vs PVC insulation, Ag vs Cu vs Al conductors, etc. My natural preference is to keep cables short when designing systems. It can also make life easier during EMC compliance testing.

Standard commercial USB leads are a different matter. You don't know what's inside until you cut them open. Without access to a lab, it's more difficult to check cable quality with basic equipment.

By all means consider USB leads up to the maximum length in the design standards, or exceed them. I use Cat5e for short 10GbE links instead of Cat6 or 7, but SFP+ OM3 fibre for longer runs at home. My choice.

 

[evermorex76]

Very true, but long thick cables often cost more than short thick cables, plus all my fast portable SSDs come with very short cables, especially the ones with USB-C leads 15 or 20cm long.

I'd bet 90+% of the usage of longer USB cables is just people wanting to charge their devices in bed, rather than actual data transfer, and a 5 or 6 foot moderate quality cable would perform well enough for most people just wanting to have a device like a dock/hub sitting on the desk connected to a PC under it. The length of a cable from a case's front panel to the motherboard wouldn't in itself be significant, although a super-cheap case might use super-cheap wires. If you really need to go longer, a little higher cost is just the trade-off that's required to maintain the functionality and performance of the device. (Like buying a car that needs expensive "premium" gasoline to allow the design of the engine to work properly, but the gas itself isn't more powerful.) Short leads that come on external devices is both a cost consideration for the maker and just that it effectively serves the vast majority of users. I try to avoid those that have permanently attached cables. And the newer "SSD sticks" with just a USB connector on the end that are long enough to stick out dangerously far are right out.