Peter Jason wrote:
I have isolated an SSD because it was very hot to
the touch (others are barely warm) and this has
fixed recurrent "scan/repair disks" flags in the
RHD notifications screen. Is this characteristic
of failing SSDs?

You can see some discussion here about various
kinds of flaws that could happen inside an SSD.
And at least one poster here is suggesting various
checks for shorted caps and the presence of successful
power conversion inside. (For example, a "buck converter"
is one of the power conversion components inside. A buck
converter converts a higher DC voltage to a lower
DC voltage, when such a voltage is not available on
the main power connector.)

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=36439

And "depops" on a circuit board is normal. On some
of the earlier SSDs, there was an option to have
a SuperCap for power during emergency shutdown, and
the SuperCap and associated regulator are removed
for the consumer drive version of the SSD. So those
pads wouldn't have caps or resistors or... whatever.

One thing that's interesting on the drive, is it
has what looks like a Polyfuse. That's a polycrystalline
fuse that opens when the current flow is too high,
and cools off and recrystallizes when the current
flow goes back into spec. So rather than that
particular drive "burning to a crisp", instead
the fuse opens and the drive stops sucking power.
And of course, when the fuse opens, the drive no longer
responds on the SATA data connector.

But if you wanted to open a drive, the very first step is
to find a picture of one of your drives disassembled.
If the drive has thermal tape, then you don't want to
open it "for fun". That is, unless you happen to have
a roll of thermal tape, to put the cooling solution
back in place during reassembly. If the product didn't
use thermal tape, and, you no longer cared about the
warranty, you could remove the screws and look inside.

Thermal tape isn't necessarily destructive, but you
could perhaps bend the cover on the SSD while trying
to disassemble it. Some thermal tapes hold well enough,
to keep a 50 gram aluminum heatsink in place, without screws.

Paul