Thursday, August 17th 2023

Western Digital in Trouble Over Failing Portable SSDs

by
TheLostSwede
 Discuss (45 Comments)
Over the past few months there have been reports of issues with SanDisk portable SSDs and Western Digital released a firmware update in May that was meant to prevent the drives from "unexpectedly disconnect from a computer". However, it appears that this firmware update didn't solve the problem and Western Digital is now being taken to court over drives not just having disconnect issues, but also randomly failing. The court case is expected to become a class action suit, as the plaintiff claims that the issue of failing drives affect tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people in the USA.

The models included in the complaint includes the SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable and WD My Passport SSD. A further firmware update was released in July, which is said to have made the issues even worse, with data being lost on drives or being inaccessible to drive owners. In some cases the drives go into read only mode, but sometimes this means that the drives become inaccessible to the OS, which in turn also means dataloss to the user. Time will tell how this plays out, but it's not looking great for Western Digital, but it wouldn't be the first time a storage device maker has been taken to court over failing products.
Sources: Complaint in PDF format, via the Register

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45 Comments on Western Digital in Trouble Over Failing Portable SSDs

#26
Ferrum Master
TheLostSwedeYour own caddy would most likely use the same ASMedia chip as these drives from WD. There are some options from Realtek and JMicron as well though.
Sad to see only few people really understand the sauce of things...

I own RTL and ASM based USB to nvme readers due to my work nature... firmware development for ASM ones pretty much ceased and can have problems with modern drivers, ASM really exhibits some problems with certain controllers. RTL ones do update very often, especially Sabrent does the job well. I have JMicron for SATA only... it does what it does, it has become a rare used item these days.

Other than that... using external OS boot drives... Samsung T7 has proven to be the perf/price king. It is used daily for repair tasks and diagnostics. So far, no problems.
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#27
Tahagomizer
Some companies take planned obsolescence seriously. SanDisk manufactures drives which have an actual "death clock" and brick themselves after 40 000 hours.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but they did it more than once so I'm not inclined to believe it was an honest mistake.
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#28
bug
TahagomizerSome companies take planned obsolescence seriously. SanDisk manufactures drives which have an actual "death clock" and brick themselves after 40 000 hours.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but they did it more than once so I'm not inclined to believe it was an honest mistake.
Any sources for that 40,000 hours claim?
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#29
Tahagomizer
bugAny sources for that 40,000 hours claim?
www.thestack.technology/ssd-death-bug-40000-hours-sandisk/
www.stellarinfo.com/blog/sandisk-ssd-40000-hour-death-bug-2022/

Also, Cisco Field Notice concerning SSDs dying at the 40k hour mark:
www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/field-notices/705/fn70545.html
Many of those, if not most, are built by SanDisk or using their controllers.

I mostly look at enterprise drives but they do exactly the same with consumer hardware:
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-still-wiping-data-after-firmware-fix-users-say/
Posted on Reply
#30
bug
That's a firmware bug, not planned obsolescence. Why would you bug your own controllers in drives you don't actually sell? That will not yield more sales, it will get you kicked from your partner's suppliers list.
Posted on Reply
#31
Tahagomizer
Usually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.
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#32
bug
TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.
Got it.
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#33
R0H1T
TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.
No, they can get sued for this to the tune of billions in US or EU very easily if it were as simple as you're claiming!
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#34
natr0n
I have a 1tb version of that. I use it for storage of games. I never update or even think of updating any drive if it works out the box.
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#35
kapone32
Seagate sell an Expansion series. When it was introduced it came with USB 3.0. The drive would last on average for 3 months. As a result those drives quickly became cheaper than regular internal drives. The thing was the drive is just a regular SATA based HDD and at the time they came with 7200 RPM drives. Unfortunately most of the 2.5 drives especially come with a non standard interface making them unusable. I will say that a friend gave me a 2TB WD Passport drive (he works at Costco) years ago that still works fine.
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#36
tommo1982
Possibly QLC installed in these drives? I own a AData portable SSD and I don't remember it having QLC was advertised on their website. I found it somewhere else.
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#37
MarsM4N
Deja vu, it seems. :wtf: In case you're wondering what I am talking about, let me refresh your grey cells.

In 2020 Western Digital released the WD_Black P50 Game Drive SSD, the (back then) fastest external SSD with a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 connection and transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbit/s. The only issue was that the drive achieved said speeds only in their product sheets. In real life the drive would disconnect when used via the USB 3.2 Gen2x2 connection! ComputerBase did report on it and even contacted Western Digital for a statement as you can see in their follow ups.

TL;DR: after 2,5 years and several firmware updates the issue is still not fixed, instead WD put the blame on the user setups (which is basically debunked by testing on different setups). The cherry on the cake: the drive is still on sale by WD. The later released WD_Black P40 Game Drive SSD doesn't have the issue. Everything is pointing to the controller (ASMedia) being the issue, which can't get fixed with a firmware update.


Consumer protection is apparently insufficient for to-big-to-fail international companies that keep ripping off folks with trash products. QA reduced to increase shareholder revenue. Governments not interested to go after them. The only thing you can do as a consumer: never buy at release! Do your own research. Often user reviews are more insightful than "professional reviews" who quite often don't report or report delayed on issues because of the "Conflict of Interest". :) Don't award them with your hard earned money, spend wisely.
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#38
RJARRRPCGP
TahagomizerUsually planned obsolescence is done to encourage more sales. Maybe they felt that their market position is strong enough to attempt such shenanigans... or their dev team is full of dumb people who can't be arsed to do basic QC and can only blindly copy code known to be defective. Since the same bug is present in products across different segments and for several years, I say it's a deliberate action. No developer is that stupid, so malice on the management level seems more likely in this case.
I did the math and got what would be known as the "4.6-year timebomb".
Posted on Reply
#39
Tahagomizer
R0H1TNo, they can get sued for this to the tune of billions in US or EU very easily if it were as simple as you're claiming!
Fines and litigation are just cost of doing business and this cost is always lower than gains from such activity, thanks to ubiquitous corruption lobbying. The same is true for any company knowingly doing illegal things, from Ford choosing to let people burn alive in Pinto to Facebook manipulating users to keep them riled up.
Posted on Reply
#40
Gmr_Chick
TahagomizerFines and litigation are just cost of doing business and this cost is always lower than gains from such activity, thanks to ubiquitous corruption lobbying. The same is true for any company knowingly doing illegal things, from Ford choosing to let people burn alive in Pinto to Facebook manipulating users to keep them riled up.
Ford didn't CHOOSE to let people burn alive in the Pinto, should they get rear-ended. That was a horrible design flaw - even though I wonder how they agreed on such a troubled design to begin with - that they promptly corrected. But the damage had already been done by the time the updated/corrected design came out. Nobody wanted the ol' Pinto after that clusterfuck.
Posted on Reply
#41
Tahagomizer
Gmr_ChickFord didn't CHOOSE to let people burn alive in the Pinto, should they get rear-ended. That was a horrible design flaw - even though I wonder how they agreed on such a troubled design to begin with - that they promptly corrected. But the damage had already been done by the time the updated/corrected design came out. Nobody wanted the ol' Pinto after that clusterfuck.
Well, "In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation." Pinto was only recalled after NHTSA forced Ford to do it. There were 117 cases resulting from this whole fiasco and it's a well established fact that Ford knew all too well that the car was unsafe, but since making it safe would cost more than potential settlements they just didn't do it. It's generally how corporations work, they're obliged by law to pursue profit before anything else.
Posted on Reply
#42
bug
TahagomizerWell, "In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation." Pinto was only recalled after NHTSA forced Ford to do it. There were 117 cases resulting from this whole fiasco and it's a well established fact that Ford knew all too well that the car was unsafe, but since making it safe would cost more than potential settlements they just didn't do it. It's generally how corporations work, they're obliged by law to pursue profit before anything else.
You didn't read that document, did you?
Posted on Reply
#43
Readlight
SanDisk Extreme pssd flash drive works good, cant say anything good about other sd, usb drives.
Posted on Reply
#44
Chaitanya
TheLostSwedeSome users seem to have gotten replacements, but not all, which makes it ever odder.
Supposedly the drives inside is the WD Black SN750, although this is an older model.
www.thessdreview.com/hardware/portable-ssds/sandisk-extreme-pro-portable-ssd-review-1tb/

The WD My Passport seems to be some kind of a WD Blue drive, which apparently applies to some non Pro Sandisk Extreme drives too.
www.anandtech.com/show/16120/sandisk-extreme-portable-ssd-v2-and-wd-my-passport-ssd-2020-review
Found this recent post on Canonrumours forum, it seems like even replacement drives are failing and the problem is much worse than WD claims it to be.
www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/western-digital-releases-firmware-to-address-sandisk-drive-failure-and-data-loss.42688/#post-969731
Posted on Reply
#45
bug
ChaitanyaFound this recent post on Canonrumours forum, it seems like even replacement drives are failing and the problem is much worse than WD claims it to be.
www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/western-digital-releases-firmware-to-address-sandisk-drive-failure-and-data-loss.42688/#post-969731
Usually, when there's no answer, it means the answer would damage the company more than the rumor mill already does. This is very unfortunate, both WD and SanDisk were always on my shortlist :(
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