A data recovery company’s report has revealed design and manufacturing flaws as the root cause of widespread failures in SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs.

In May 2023, reports surfaced of sudden data loss in certain Western Digital SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB SSDs. In response, the company promised a firmware update for affected users. However, the issue persists in the 2TB and 3TB models, for which no firmware updates have been pledged.

Markus Häfele, Managing Director of data recovery firm Attingo, attributes the problem to hardware, not firmware. He explains that the lack of corrective firmware fixes for the 2TB and 3TB models and SanDisk’s silence on the source of the issues point to hardware-related problems.

Western Digital’s handling of the situation has also been criticized, particularly in terms of communication with customers and the media.

The sources for this piece include an article in Tomshardware.