TheLostSwedeYour own caddy would most likely use the same ASMedia chip as these drives from WD. There are some options from Realtek and JMicron as well though.

TahagomizerSome companies take planned obsolescence seriously. SanDisk manufactures drives which have an actual "death clock" and brick themselves after 40 000 hours.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but they did it more than once so I'm not inclined to believe it was an honest mistake.

bugAny sources for that 40,000 hours claim?

TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.

TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.

TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.

R0H1TNo, they can get sued for this to the tune of billions in US or EU very easily if it were as simple as you're claiming!

TahagomizerFines and litigation are just cost of doing business and this cost is always lower than gains from such activity, thanks to ubiquitous corruption lobbying. The same is true for any company knowingly doing illegal things, from Ford choosing to let people burn alive in Pinto to Facebook manipulating users to keep them riled up.

Gmr_ChickFord didn't CHOOSE to let people burn alive in the Pinto, should they get rear-ended. That was a horrible design flaw - even though I wonder how they agreed on such a troubled design to begin with - that they promptly corrected. But the damage had already been done by the time the updated/corrected design came out. Nobody wanted the ol' Pinto after that clusterfuck.

TahagomizerWell, "In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation." Pinto was only recalled after NHTSA forced Ford to do it. There were 117 cases resulting from this whole fiasco and it's a well established fact that Ford knew all too well that the car was unsafe, but since making it safe would cost more than potential settlements they just didn't do it. It's generally how corporations work, they're obliged by law to pursue profit before anything else.

TheLostSwedeSome users seem to have gotten replacements, but not all, which makes it ever odder.
Supposedly the drives inside is the WD Black SN750, although this is an older model.
www.thessdreview.com/hardware/portable-ssds/sandisk-extreme-pro-portable-ssd-review-1tb/

The WD My Passport seems to be some kind of a WD Blue drive, which apparently applies to some non Pro Sandisk Extreme drives too.
www.anandtech.com/show/16120/sandisk-extreme-portable-ssd-v2-and-wd-my-passport-ssd-2020-review

ChaitanyaFound this recent post on Canonrumours forum, it seems like even replacement drives are failing and the problem is much worse than WD claims it to be.
www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/western-digital-releases-firmware-to-address-sandisk-drive-failure-and-data-loss.42688/#post-969731