Austrian data recovery specialist discovers hardware defects on SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDs, Western Digital denies claims.

Recently, Markus Häfele, an Austrian data recovery specialist from Attingo, told FutureZone that the reason behind the SanDisk Extreme SSD failures is due to soldering problems, not firmware problems,

Image from Attingo

In a document released last week, Attingo and FutureZone revealed some information about the defective SanDisk Extreme SSDs, explaining that the components are too big to fit on the SSD circuit board, however, it is believed that Western Digital is aware of the issue due to the inclusion of extra epoxy resin on newer SanDisk Extreme SSDs, but despite this, they still defect and become unusable.

Western Digital then told PetaPixel that the defective SSDs are not caused by hardware defects, but did say they will investigate the SanDisk Extreme SSDs that were defective.

As of publishing this post, my SanDisk Extreme Go SSD has not gone defective.

Update on Western Digital

In a post on August 23rd and a YouTube video on August 25th, I mentioned that I was ditching SanDisk and Western Digital after two bad experiences. 

One of my cousins followed up, saying he had ditched Western Digital after two other bad experiences, both of which I have been given permission to share on this website. Both of them also relate to the Western Digital Red lineup of hard drives, which are oriented towards NAS (Network attached storage) usage. 

A few years ago, Western Digital was caught sneaking SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives into their Western Digital Red lineup. Compared to CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), SMR drives are better for some use cases but have slower I/O performance in others such as NAS systems, which is what the Western Digital Red lineup is oriented for. Western Digital admitted to it, then was hit with a class-action lawsuit and lost.

That wasn't the only problem my cousin had with Western Digital Red drives. This past May, users using Synology NAS solutions began reporting that their drives would warn you when the drives hit three years' worth of power on hours, even though there was nothing wrong with the drives.

Now, I never had any issues like these, but this makes my cousin think it's worth ditching Western Digital altogether.

Why I am ditching SanDisk and Western Digital

If you've used a SanDisk Extreme Portable or SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD, you should switch to a different SSD as soon as possible.

Recently, SanDisk and it's parent company Western Digital were hit with multiple class action lawsuits over the SanDisk Extreme lineup of SSD drives failing quickly despite supposedly fixing them.

The symptoms are this: the drives will erase and become unreadable, meaning you have to buy a whole new SSD. Western Digital did say that these five drives are affected by this issue:

• SanDisk Extreme Portable 4TB (Model SDSSDE61-4T00)
• SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 4TB (Model SDSSDE81-4T00)
• SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 2TB (Model SDSSDE81-2T00)
• SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 1TB (Model SDSSDE81-1T00)
• Western Digital My Passport 4TB (Model WDBAGF0040BGY)

Western Digital had released a firmware update for the five drives that supposedly fixed the issue, but there are still drives that failed after the firmware update was installed. Additionally, some drives were reportedly having this issue despite not being on the list of affected drives.

Following hearing of these stories, I went to online storefronts selling SanDisk Extreme SSD drives and looked at the 1-star reviews. Many of them were describing this exact same thing.

I do have a SanDisk Extreme SSD not listed above, the SanDisk Extreme Go Portable 1TB, (Model SDSSDE50-1T00), and although I have had no problems with it since I got it back in July, I am no longer confident in using it.

This isn't the first time I've been disappointed in Western Digital though. On April 3, 2023, Western Digital's My Cloud went down after a hacking attack on March 26, taking down my and other people's My Cloud systems.

Given this situation and the March 26, 2023 hack, I am no longer willing to purchase a SanDisk or Western Digital product in the future, and am planning to phase out all my SanDisk and Western Digital products. This is unfortunate, as I have been relying on SanDisk and Western Digital products as my main products since I was little, but this is the sad truth about the direction I am going. Moving forward, Seagate and Samsung are the brands I will be using in place of SanDisk and Western Digital.

As the phasing out process will be difficult, I will not be providing posts for any time I move away from a SanDisk or Western Digital product, but I will provide a post once I have fully moved away from SanDisk and Western Digital products.

As I'm sure some people may be wondering if I will be giving my SanDisk and Western Digital drives to people in need. I probably will not be giving my SanDisk Extreme Go SSD to anyone, but there is a possibility I will be giving all my other drives to people in need, however I have not made that decision as of publishing this post