External SSD as Photoshop Scratch Disk?

I have experienced three (possibly more) harddrive failures, and they have always been silent deaths not accompanied by a death rattle.

One near death experience, accompanied by some clicking, was actually caused by the failure of the supply power/interface electronics wihiin the external USB enclosure (Western Digital MyBook), and by hacksawing the harddrive from the Western Digital enclosure (the only way to extract it fully!) and putting it into a harddrive dock, revealed a perfectly functioning harddrive.

Wilt wrote in post #17949313
I have experienced three (possibly more) harddrive failures, and they have always been silent deaths not accompanied by a death rattle.

One near death experience, accompanied by some clicking, was actually caused by the failure of the supply power/interface electronics wihiin the external USB enclosure (Western Digital MyBook), and by hacksawing the harddrive from the Western Digital enclosure (the only way to extract it fully!) and putting it into a harddrive dock, revealed a perfectly functioning harddrive.

Hacking and surgery can always be an exciting option

A friend of mine recently had a Seagate fullsize external drive go south. We tried the old freezer/Ziploc trick a couple of times but that didn't work. So we cracked open the external plastic case and I plugged some power and interface connectors into it and still no dice. Next I stuck it into a drive dock with zero results, froze it a couple of more times, popped it into the dock, and the drive letter started appearing in Windows Explorer with some squealing from the unit. Then it stopped.

I waited a day, popped it back in, and leaned the drive/dock at a 45 degree angle and it started up. The drive letter reappeared and it ran long enough for me to migrate all the data to a new drive.

Do any of you guys monitor your drive's SMART data?

I used to, but I can't find any good, easy to understand, lightweight software to do it. I also need one that supports drives in a Storage Spaces pair. I occasionally take a look using defraggler.

USB 3 interface will still allow one to benefit from SSD external speed, as it's faster than most spinning platter disks, certainly faster than any compact 2.5 inch external.

RE; SSD external on a laptop, I've run into trouble with self powered USB SSD externals. The same drive will work perfectly on some machines, my (or any) desktop, some laptops, but on my Lenova Yoga, the USB post does not appear to be up to the task, and the drive disconnects regularly. The reason appears to be USB power from the laptop. If the same drive is powered elsewhere, the disconnects do not happen.

Samsung is selling a complete external SSD now, which might help prevent the possibility of an under powered external do to problems with generic external enclosure power supply, but that's just a theory of mine.

Jake,
What is the power demand of the SSD you have tried? USB as a power source on PC, if it follows spec, is under 1A...USB 2.0 is only 0.5A, and USB 3.0 is only 0.9A

The Samsung consumes 2.4W, which means 0.48A at 5v (and what added overhead does teh external enclosure itself need?!), yet there are other brand SSD which consume only 60% of that.

I use stablebit scanner to monitor my drives. Pops up a notification when there's a problem. Can also configure it to send an email. Also if you use Drivepool it can automatically evacuate a drive when it detects problems.

Wilt wrote in post #17949528
Jake,
What is the power demand of the SSD you have tried? USB as a power source on PC, if it follows spec, is under 1A...USB 2.0 is only 0.5A, and USB 3.0 is only 0.9A

The Samsung consumes 2.4W, which means 0.48A at 5v (and what added overhead does teh external enclosure itself need?!), yet there are other brand SSD which consume only 60% of that.

The one that gave me trouble was a Samsung 840 250GB. I do not think it was the SSD, but the external case I used that created the power demand issue, but I could be wrong.

The case is an "Insignia" I got from Best Buy for $29.00 or so.

I seem to have similar fortune as sapearl with storage. I've never had an HDD crash on me. I've just had one that sounds like what happened to sapearl with an external HDD that was a good 5+ years old. Powers up, no unusual noises, just can't access the data. I mounted it on a Linux, and I was able to retrieve everything no problem.

And in case this SSD kills over on me, I actually have no plans to store an data that I want to keep. That's happening on a totally different external SSD (hopefully a Samsung T3 will be entering my life soon). This one is going to be nothing but a dedicated scratch disk.

I just wanted to report in on results. And it's been working pretty well.

I have a budget SSD in an external enclosure that I plug in when ever I open up Photoshop. When I'm working on something with a high resolution (especially panos) I can see Photoshop constantly writing to the SSD when RAM usage goes up. I don't see the situations when you wonder if Photoshop is just hanging anymore. What didn't realize was going to happen is it seems some of the plugins I use don't seem to want to make use of the scratch disk at all. So those are still very slow on larger images.

But over all, I'm glad I did it.

Thanks for everyone's input!