In my experience the drive fails more often than the adapter, but they do fail. Also, there is a good chance to recover data from a failed drive. With a soldered adaptor it’s basically impossible.
The worst part is that the externals are often used for backups.
Why would the USB electronics be particularly likely to fail relative to other electronics on the drive?
In my experience the drive fails more often than the adapter, but they do fail. Also, there is a good chance to recover data from a failed drive. With a soldered adaptor it’s basically impossible. The worst part is that the externals are often used for backups.
Because that’s usually the cheapest part that manufacturers can get away with cheapening iut further.
Solder joints
Not particularly, but it happens.