You generally can’t use USB drives for that, Kevin. You need Thunderbolt. Backup and extra storage space only.

Given that this is a large 300GB (and growing) installation footprint, but only needed from time to time, it would be great if I could run it off a remote drive, so I wonder if this is truly a local disk extension or just faster external storage.

Except, as mentioned, I personally experienced no issue and WD did release new firmware, etc. It’s a matter of degrees. You can embrace your bitterness, even rightfully so, but you can’t expect everyone to feel the same way. This is a new drive in four years and if you follow a link to any of the previous drives mentioned, you’ll see the note. That’s enough.

I very much did read the article, and was able to speed read the bits I already knew about from the press release I had already seen.
Nevertheless, I think the point still stands, {…}

And there has always been one where appropriate, like here, Geoff. You also lost me since you commented before reading.

I’ve lost all trust having been affected myself and wouldn’t touch another Sandisk drive even if you paid me.