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The rising failure of SanDisk (Western Digital) SSDs is not exactly a secret. Earlier this year, users took to Reddit, and several news outlets reported drive failures themselves. They often resulted in a complete loss of data and dead drives.
Now, an Austrian data recovery service, Attingo, believes they’ve discovered the cause. They claim that WD is cutting corners, using incorrect components with bad construction. SanDisk is denying these claims.
Western Digital’s been having a bit of a tough time of late with its SanDisk brand. Several of the company’s SanDisk SSDs have been dying without warning. The company seemed to have gone silent on the issue, repeatedly ignoring requests from the media.
Now, though, WD come out from hiding to release new firmware for a number of SanDisk SSD models at the centre of the recent controversy. They don’t actually mention dying drives, though. Just “unexpected disconnects”.
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.
SanDisk has announced their new Pro-G40 SSD. It’s a super fast and super rugged SSD that offers both USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity through its single Type-C USB port. SanDisk, a Western Digital company (because apparently people still don’t know Western Digital acquired SanDisk a few years ago) says that the new SSDs are their most rugged portable SSDs to date.
As well as their high speed, the new Pro-G40 SSDs, available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, feature a durable build quality with an enclosure that’s raged for up to 4,000 pounds crush resistance and up to 3 metres drop resistance. An aluminium core that pulls heat away from the drive to help maintain speeds and prevent thermal throttling and it’s IP68 dust and water resistance rated, so it can handle harsh environments.
Western Digital’s not having a great time lately, huh? After having received reports from users that their Western Digital My Book Live devices were randomly wiping and deleting themselves – which turned out to be a remote exploit – now they’re facing an even bigger issue. Several of WD’s other NAS devices running OS 3 also have a pretty huge remote exploit vulnerability that Western Digital seemingly won’t fix.
The issue stems from the fact that the vulnerability exploits a weakness in My Cloud OS 3. WD actually patched this vulnerability and released OS 5 (there is no OS 4, apparently). The problem is, not all devices are capable of being upgraded from OS 3 to OS 5, so they’re still vulnerable and only Western Digital can resolve the problem.
The Western Digital My Book Live NAS products are extremely popular amongst photographers. External storage devices that you can just whack on your network and access from any machine on your network. I’ve owned a few myself over the years and they were pretty good. It seems, though, that there’s a big issue with them at the moment. They’re deleting files without the owner’s knowledge.
According to a post on the Western Digital Community forums, many users have reported seeing their files missing with some being completely locked out of their devices. According to a statement from WD, it’s caused by an exploit that allows remote command execution. WD’s advice, for now, is to completely unplug them from the Internet.
G-Technology has been a trusted name in portable hard drives for a long time. I’ve been using their ev ATC drives myself as my location backup solution myself. But as storage and speed demands increase, technology has to move forward. G-Technology was at NAB 2019, so DIYP had a chat with them about some of their location backup and editing workflow storage solutions.
Update: If you’ve missed this deal at B&H, then Amazon currently has the 10TB Western Digital Elements for $159.99.
B&H currently has the Western Digital 10TB My Book Desktop USB 3.0 external hard drive on massive discount until the end of today. With $100 off, they’ve been reduced from $279.99 to $179.99. That’s only $10 over the regular price of an 8TB drive.
When Western Digital announced the My Passport Wireless Pro in 2016, it was a nice little improvement over the original. But it still wasn’t quite what people were hoping for. It was still a very handy unit, it was still a little slow and underwhelming. Now, though, its latest iteration, the My Passport Wireless SSD takes things to a whole new level. As well as the obvious addition of the SSD, the Wi-Fi’s been upgraded, as has the built-in SD card reader.
And next up is a new SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD. I knew Western Digital buying up SanDisk would lead to great things. The new Extreme SSD offers the speed and performance you’d expect from an external solid state drive, but with a ton of durability.
I think I’m going to stop listening to anybody who says that hard drives are dead and SSD is the only future of storage. Don’t get me wrong, I love SSDs. They’re fantastic for when you need really rapid access to data. They’re great as a system drive for your operating system and software.
When it comes to pure storage, though, they still can’t really hold a candle to hard drives for capacity. Well, not unless you want to spend an absolute fortune. Western Digital have just announced a new “breakthrough” technology in hard drive storage. Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording. They say that it will allow them to create hard drives 40TB and larger.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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