David,

No idea if SSD MTBF is linked to age or batch. That's interesting. I have seen the same thing with HDDs in servers, and in fact, in large enterprises, we've always had 2-3 vendors for HDDs and made sure to mix RAID items from different batches/brands to limit multiple failures.

SSDs used to be bad in servers, but they've gotten better. Lots of new SAN and server systems go with flash, and I hear no issues from that, so I'm good with using them.

I haven't had issues in laptops, but I'm lucky that I tend to get more expensive ones, so maybe they're using better quality? I've had a few externals fail, but I've learned to carry at least two.