> Not the newest tech but I've also never had a problem with an Intel SSD.

I used to run Intel (enterprise) SSDs in servers. I didn't run enough other SSDs to have a sense for whether the failure rate was abnormally high, but it was definitely not zero (it was significantly less than the enterprise hard drives we were running). And the failure mechanism was sudden disappearance from the bus.

My message to you is not to avoid Intel SSDs, just to make sure you have a backup in place, because when they fail, my experience is there's no warning, they just disappear. This seems to be the common failure mode for all/most SSDs, even though they're supposed to fail read-only. Hard drives usually give warnings as they fail, but not always enough warning to rescue data.

It's the Koreans - SK Hynix bought it and is using it as their consumer drive division. The P44 Pro is supposed to be a more reliable and cheaper competitor to the Samsung 990 pro...but that unit is also not doing so hot w/ the memory downturn/post-covid correction