Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought the drive just over a year ago and until recently, I was happy with it and would have given it a 5 star review. However, I powered on my system (about two weeks ago now) and got greeted with a SMART error saying the drive was about to fail and I should backup the data. After hours of troubleshooting I was able to backup my data... only to then realize I could not delete my data off the failed drive. The drive is designed to put itself into a low-level Read-Only state to "protect" data, which is great... but there's no way to remove that Read-Only state to securely erase your data before sending it in for an RMA. I work in IT and have tried everything from removing the read-only state with diskpart and writing /dev/zero across the drive to using tools like Nwipe, nothing works. There is a lot of sensitive information on my drive (finances, taxes, SSNs, etc. of mine and other peoples) that I am responsible for. Samsung has been 0 help in this matter, the only suggestion they made was to use the "Secure Erase" tool in Samsung Magician, which fails with an Error 29. They are adamant that I send the drive in to proceed with the RMA but won't help me remove this write lock that they've implemented. Until now, I've always recommended Samsung's SSDs or M.2s to everyone I've spoken to (in person and online), despite them typically being a bit more pricey than competitors. That will not happen again... I have Samsung TVs, phones, drives, etc... I won't be buying or recommending another Samsung product. Nobody should ever be forced to choose between the privacy/security of their data and being eligible for a warranty claim. Locking the drive like this is no different than how Apple throttled the performance of older iPhones. They both claim to have good motives ("to protect your data" or "to preserve battery"), but in reality it's not what the consumer wants. Yes, protecting the data is good... but there needs to be a consumer level tool to unlock the device... and since there isn't currently, drives that have sensitive data should not need to be returned to be replaced if they fail. Because I am unable to securely wipe the data, I can't send it in... and I'm therefore left with a ~$550 paperweight that doesn't weigh enough to hold papers down. Best case scenario, I make it into a $550 keychain. And no, your canned message response isn't going to make it better. I've already dealt with your "customer service" department, they weren't helpful. 👎🏼 Samsung... Step 👏🏼 it 👏🏼 up👏🏼.