Disk Utility > Get Info on both my thumb drive and SSD external shows "Solid State: No".
I wonder why it makes a commitment?
You did not say how your external drives are attached, but the type of data required for Disk Utility to determine the drive type is not provided in most of the bus standards, certainly not in USB or Firewire. (That is why SMART values cannot be determined for external drives.) I can only guess at why Disk Utility makes a "
commitment" is this is a situation that is not provided for in the Disk Utility code.
There are two plausible reasons that this situation is not provided for...
- The least likely reason being an oversite in the code design
- The more likely reason, there is no reasonable way to determine the specific situation
In either case the report is erroneous and you might wish to submit
Feedback to Apple.