But sandisk never had these problems until they were a WD brand.

So one time is your maximum for a company blatantly misdirecting you? Or maybe you’ll still be a customer if they do something like that again?

Oh wait: https://petapixel.com/2023/11/14/sandisk-refutes-claim-that-faulty-hardware-is-to-blame-for-ssd-failures/

Western Digital, among other things, has been selling SMR drives using CMR SKUs. So if you’re building something and wanted specific performance, and selected some WD drives based on what the SKU says, you might end up with SMR drives, which are not nearly as performnt. It was a bate and switch tactic and they never really acknowledged it except for making the “red pro” line of drives, which are CMR. Regular “red” drives are SMR now.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/

WD is a shit company doing shit things, so Seagate. They are less shit, for now.