A new report from a data recovery company now points the finger at manufacturing flaws as the underlying issue with the recent flood of SanDisk Extreme Pro failures. It transpired back in May that some of Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB SSDs suffer from sudden data loss, at which point the company promised a firmware update to owners of 4TB drives. Meanwhile, 2TB and 3TB SSDs suffer from the same issue and Western Digital did not promise any firmware updates for these drives. In fact, Markus Häfele, Managing Director of Attingo, a data recovery company, told FutureZone that the problem lies in hardware, not firmware.
A Hardware Problem
Attingo, which has been in the data recovery business for over 25 years, regularly sees these failed SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs, at least one a week, according to Häfele. The problem appears to be rather complex. On the one hand, the resistors used in these SSDs are too big for the circuit board, causing weak connections (i.e., high impendence and high temperatures) and making them prone to breaking. On the other hand, the soldering material used to attach these resistors is prone to forming bubbles and breaking easily, according to Häfele.
It remains somewhat unknown whether the cause is cheap solder, the resistors, or both contribute to the issues observed. Yet, there are also newer revisions of these SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs that seem to have been modified with extra epoxy resin to secure the oversized components. This suggests that Western Digital might know about the hardware problems. Nevertheless, these newer models are still failing and are the source of data recovery service customers for Attingo.
According to the head of Attingo, the issue seems to be affecting multiple product lineups, including both SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD as well as SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD.
A Strange Attitude?
Western Digital's way of handling this situation, especially in communicating with customers and the media can easily be criticized. Our colleagues from The Verge first reported that Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme 3TB SSDs can suddenly lose data, requiring expensive data recovery services to be used to recoup precious files, back on August 8. As it turns out, one of The Verge's editors lost a video stored on one of these drives and after a quick investigation discovered that he is by far from alone with this problem. He noted that people continued losing data on 2TB SSDs after May, which is when Western Digital promised a firmware update to owners of 4TB drives.
To follow up on its investigation, the Verge naturally quizzed Western Digital about the recurring issue with its Extreme Pro SSDs but did not receive a response as of August 19, 2023 . The website asked WD why storage that can potentially lose data was on sale and whether the company plans to offer free data recovery services to owners of these SSDs. The editors also wondered whether Western Digital proactively warned users about the possible issue.
NAND memory-based drives can lose data due to multiple factors. Sometimes, the flash drive itself might have manufacturing defects that can cause data loss. This is more common with low-quality or counterfeit drives, but this is certainly not the case with the SanDisk Extreme Pro products bought from prominent retailers like Amazon . Sometimes USB flash drives lose data when they run out of capacity, but we are talking about an external SSD aimed at professionals here. Again, the poor choice of resistors surely has nothing to do with this kind of failure.
While one of the issues is that some of Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme Pro suddenly lose data, another one is that the company does not seem to comment on the matter. We have reached out to Western Digital once again, and awaiting a response.
