August 21, 2023
Western Digital is facing three class-action lawsuits over its SanDisk Extreme series and My Passport portable SSDs. The lawsuits allege that the drives are defective and can abruptly wipe data, rendering them worthless.
The lawsuits are based on customer complaints that have been reported online and to Ars Technica. In May, Ars reported that several people had experienced data loss after using SanDisk Extreme SSDs. Western Digital released a firmware update in late May, but the lawsuits allege that the update did not fix the problem.
The drives affected include SanDisk Extreme Portable 4TB (SDSSDE61-4T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 4TB (SDSSDE81-4T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 2TB (SDSSDE81-2T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 1TB (SDSSDE81-1T00), and Western Digital My Passport 4TB (WDBAGF0040BGY).
One of the lawsuits, filed on behalf of Matthew Perrin and Brian Bayerl, alleges that Perrin lost all data stored on several SanDisk SSDs. Bayerl reportedly spent nearly $8,000 on data recovery efforts, but was only partially successful.
Another lawsuit, filed on behalf of Saif Jafri, alleges that Jafri lost precious personal data after his SanDisk Extreme Pro drive failed.
The lawsuits seek restitution, including damages, and for Western Digital to stop selling the affected drives until they are fixed or the problems are fully disclosed.
Western Digital has not commented on the lawsuits.
The sources for this piece include an article in ArsTechnica.
