It’s been reported that quite a number of SanDisk SSD users have been suffering complete failures with total data losses recently. Between devices bricking themselves, vulnerabilities in their NAS line, and now this, WD’s not having a great time.
The latest major report comes as one of the staff at The Verge lost 3TB of data, something that the reported was already a problem back in May. At the time, WD acknowledged an issue in one capacity of one model, but it looks like there are more affected units.
The Verge isn’t the only high-profile website to see SanDisk SSDs dying during regular use. Ars Technica wrote on the 19th of May that they lost a pair of 2TB SanDisk Extreme/Extreme Pro SSDs. Two units completely failed during the course of normal operation.
At the time, SanDisk admitted there was a problem with the 4TB SSDs, stating:
Western Digital is aware of reports indicating some customers have experienced an issue with 4TB SanDisk Extreme and/or Extreme Pro portable SSDs (SDSSDE61-4T00 and SDSSDE81-4T00 respectively). We have resolved the issue and will publish a firmware update to our website soon. Customers with questions or who are experiencing issues should contact our Customer Support team for assistance.
What’s affected now?
According to Ars Technica’s experience, it’s not just the 4TB units affected. The drives they had issues with were 2TB capacity. Vjeran Pavic, the staffer at The Verge, lost a 4TB SSD containing 3TB worth of video footage that had been shot for The Verge, but many users are reporting issues with 2TB drives.
The 4TB drive that Vjeran lost was actually a replacement drive for another one that had already previously failed. So it wasn’t an old, old drive that had been misused and mishandled over time. It was a virtually new drive that Vjeran had only received at the beginning of June 2023.
The Verge believes that this affects all SanDisk Extreme, SanDisk Extreme Pro and SanDisk MyPassport SSD units of potentially all capacities. PetaPixel also reports that their team members have experienced similar issues with the SanDisk Pro-G40 SSD. There are also many reports on Reddit with similar experiences.
It’s difficult to say exactly which models might potentially bring problems because SanDisk has yet to make an official statement about the wide array of drives that are failing. But if it covers the four models mentioned so far in all capacities, that’s pretty much their whole mainstream SSD lineup.
Slightly worrying is the fact that the Verge also suggests that Western Digital may be trying to quietly cover the whole thing up. The company is still offloading drives at a 66% discount. Are they hoping to just get rid of the stock and that either the majority of drives won’t fail for people who’ll give them little use or they just won’t complain?
I’d like to believe that this isn’t the case. However, the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.
What can we do?
Well, the best advice I can offer right now is to get the data on those drives backed up as soon as possible. Of course, this is always good advice for any storage device, but particularly so with these ones, apparently.
I would suggest, though, that you start looking into other brands of SSD. I don’t use any SanDisk SSDs, so I can’t comment on their failure rates from personal experience. But I’ve been having great success with the OWC Envoy Pro FX (buy here), Crucial X8 (buy here ) and Samsung T5/7 (buy here) SSDs.
With any brand of portable SSD like this, though, you want to make sure that it’s regularly backed up to either the cloud, a NAS or, at the very minimum, to another portable SSD, hard drive or even your camera memory cards.
I make a habit when working on location to copy the memory cards to my SSD and then don’t format the memory cards so that I have two copies of everything until I get home and can back up across the network.
Response from SanDisk
At the time of posting this article, representatives from neither SanDisk nor Western Digital have responded to DIYP’s email about these issues. We’ll update this post when we hear back from them.
As of right now, though, SanDisk has yet to really make a response anywhere. Yes, they did give a response to Ars Technical back in May. But that was already incorrect, given that it didn’t address the drives the AT team had issues with.
Until there is a statement from SanDisk or Western Digital addressing not only the issues but how the company will help people who’ve already experienced drive failure and data loss, DIYP is not recommending the purchase SanDisk SSDs.
We’re also going a step further and suggesting that if you’re using SanDisk SSDs right now, you should probably back them up, find an alternative brand, and then stop using them altogether.
As has been seen by the reports, it doesn’t matter if the drive is a couple of years old or a couple of months old. It can fail at any moment. Is it worth the risk for important data?
Have you had a SanDisk (or any brand) portable SSD fail on you?
[via The Verge]
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