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Data Storage

Western Digital Sued Over Claims of Data-Trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs (theregister.com) 38

Posted by BeauHD from the anything-but-solid dept.
Western Digital was sued on Tuesday on behalf of a California resident who claims the solid state drive he bought from the manufacturer was defective and that the storage slinger shipped kit that didn't live up to its marketing promises. The Register reports: The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed. The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed.

The complaint asserts Western Digital customers "have widely reported drive failures and data loss." Krum, in his filing, believes Western Digital is aware of the problem and not doing enough about it. "The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD hard drives, which are also sold under the WD My Passport brand, have a firmware issue that causes them to disconnect or become unreadable by computers," he claimed, adding that his drive was among those that stopped working as expected.

It is alleged the drives can break down in various ways, including randomly disconnecting from their host, which could result in information not being saved correctly or file-system corruption. In any case, people find they can no longer access their stored documents, making the SSDs worthless and useless, it is claimed. [...] Chris Cantrell, an attorney at Doyle Lowther LLP who is representing the plaintiffs, told The Register it's not yet clear how many SanDisk SSDs experienced data loss though there are more than a few people who share his client's experience. "While Western Digital appears to have attempted to fix the issue with a firmware update, it does not appear to have fixed the issue," Cantrell added. "This is what prompted us to file this lawsuit on behalf of affected SanDisk SSD purchasers. We anticipate adding additional named plaintiffs from other states over the next few weeks." The complaint alleges breach of contract, violation of consumer protection law, and misleading advertising, among other claims, and seeks damages, legal costs, and other relief.
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Western Digital Sued Over Claims of Data-Trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs More

Western Digital Sued Over Claims of Data-Trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs

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  • For the 512 GB and the 1TB models of the SanDisk Extreme Pro, I've had decent luck with them. They have AES encryption, where you can quickly erase all the data on it [1], UASP support, so I can have Linux be able to trim the mounted filesystems, work well in areas that kill hard disks, and quietly to the job, be it a boot drive for Raspberry Pis, a log drive for my router, a backup drive for my laptop, etc.

    Hopefully they can make a revised model that doesn't need a SSD flashing, and some obvious change in

  • I stopped using SanDisk some time ago because of this issue. They were a brand I trusted for CF and SD cards, but their SSD drives, for me, have always failed horribly and irrevocably leaving my drives unreadable. I think I went through two or three before I just stopped using SanDisk and moved to another brand. I didn't know they were owned by Western Digital - should have looked that up, based on my experience with other WD backup drives over the years that all seemed to have rather high failure rates on

    • The SD cards have gone downhill too. I've had several of them fail in the last few years, and I'm not using that many of them. I now buy Samsung SSDs and SD cards, and HGST HDDs...

      • Hah, this is exactly what I've been doing too, after having 8 WD hard disks fail on me out of 10 in less than a year a while back.

        Western Digital is garbage, and has been for some time. If I'm buying solid state, it's probably Samsung. And if I'm buying rotating rust, it's going to be HGST or Toshiba.

    • Intel did the same thing with their 320 SSDs some years ago, they made a big deal in the advertising out of how super-reliable they were, when they started turning into 8MB storage space bricks they initially denied there was a problem, then rolled out a firmware fix that didn't fix anything, and finally quietly discontinued the model. That stunt was asking for a class action lawsuit but AFAIK nothing ever happened.
  • I've seen SD SSDs fail constantly for the last 10 years. Clients keep having problems with them doing exactly this. But remember the WD MyBook external hard drives with fake encryption? The enclosure is password protected. The hard drive is not. When a company just doesn't care to this level for this long, people really need to stop buying from them.

    • There are precious few alternatives and they aren't better.

      • Alternatives to what? Western Digital? There's loads of alternatives in every single product segment they serve. And most of them, in fact, are better. And by quite a bit.

        See? I can make unsubstantiated claims without any evidence as well. Except mine happen to correlate with easily observable reality with a simple Google search.

    • I haven't purchased a Western Digital hard drive in years. It is not because WD drives fail more than other drives. In fact I have a bunch of Seagate drives fail. It seems that the drives that Seagate made shortly after the big flood that they had in Thailand were bad. However, I still will buy Seagate drives over WD. The reason is because of the way the drives fail. Seagate drives get sick before they die. They will do things like randomly go offline and require a power cycle to bring back to life.

  • There are a variety of warranty claims being made in the filling, but the primary claim is implied warranty of merchantability. This is an important one, that I don't think most people know about.

    It applies to any product being sold, and can only be negated if a product is being sold "as-is," or used. Basically, when you sell somebody something, there is an implied warranty that it will, at the very least, do what it's supposed to do. If you buy a lawnmower and it doesn't cut grass, even if there is no clai

    • Most warranties that I read deny "implied warranty of merchantability." But, they also have language saying some states do not allow that. Which states? How many? No one knows. Well, at least I don't know.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        Most warranties that I read deny "implied warranty of merchantability." But, they also have language saying some states do not allow that. Which states?

        To further complicate things, some states that do not have laws banning such language, still have implied warranties even if the warranty claims it does not, via various court rulings or ancillary contract law.

        It's tricky, but that's the whole point of the "implied" warranty. If you are saying it's a lawn mower, then it should cut lawns. Saying you don't really mean it's a lawn mower in the warranty doesn't negate what's on the box, especially if you otherwise claim it has an explicit warranty anyways. Lawy

  • ... the storage slinger shipped kit...

    What kind of gibberish is this?

  • Marketed as a "professional" and superior product, no less. Does not get more misleading. They probably produce their firmware in China and do not do any real testing.

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