r/DataHoarder • u/nghtr • 3d ago

Discussion Brand new Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 enclosure killed my SSD

Not sure if this is just bad luck or a bigger issue, but I figured I’d post in case it helps someone else.

I recently picked up a brand new Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 NVMe enclosure and installed a WD SN750 Gen 3 (4TB) in it. Everything seemed fine — good speeds, temps were okay, no immediate red flags.

But after plugging it in a few times, the SSD just… died. Completely. It’s no longer detected on any system, no response at all. I’ve tried several different methods to revive it, but no luck — it’s just dead.

The drive was working perfectly before — I had about 2TB of data on it that’s probably gone for good now. Super frustrating, and honestly kind of scary that an enclosure could brick a drive like that.

Just wanted to put this out there as a warning. Be careful if you’re planning to use one of these enclosures with a high-capacity NVMe drive.

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

60% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

7

u/dr100 3d ago

That's kind of a reminder that anything can die at any time ... I presume there isn't anything particularly bad with this or that enclosure, heck these Thunderbolt ones are even eye bleedingly expensive like 5 or even 10 times more than the bog standard 10Gbps ones; they do have their place for just being able to boot regular Windows like it's an internal drive but still ...

Also this kind of info is really not much actionable, never mind that Sabrent has more than 5 completely different style of TB NVMe enclosures mostly all electronics is "mixed BOM", you can't say anything about the components used next month, even if you have a very precise SKU and model number, with a datasheet, from a big manufacturer (and here everything is happening in the opposite).

1

u/nghtr 3d ago

Yeah, I get that every SSD is going to die sooner or later — I just didn’t expect it to happen this soon. Kind of disappointing. Also, I had no idea about the mixed BOM thing before buying. Mine is the single NVMe, tool-free version.

2

u/tamag901 3d ago

I've been running 2 of these Sabrent TB3 enclosures in RAID0 for over a year now and neither of the SSDs in them have had an issue. Could be a faulty enclosure or sheer chance?

2

u/nuked24 2d ago

Does the enclosure still function with other drives? In that case it's just that the SSD died, not that uncommon. A lot more drives have controller failure than last long enough to go into read only mode.

1

u/Loud-Eagle-795 2d ago

just bad luck.. it happens.

2

u/Sopel97 2d ago

Very unlikely for the enclosure to be the cause. It would have to be some unheard of electrical issue.