Three class-action lawsuits were filed against Western Digital last week, all complaining that the company’s SanDisk Extreme and My Passport portable solid-state drives have inexplicably been wiping users’ data.
The issues in each individual complaint have been experienced firsthand by reporters from The Verge and Ars Technica. One of the lawsuits, filed by Matthew Perrin and Brian Bayerl, allege that Perrin purchased “at least” eight SanDisk Extreme series SSDs of varying storage capacities, and “lost all data stored on several SanDisk SSDs.” Bayerl’s experience was similar as well, with the lawsuit stating:
“Plaintiff Bayerl has experienced the failure of two drives within minutes of each other and is now reluctant to use SanDisk Extreme products. Due to the nature of his work and the data on the devices, Plaintiff Bayerl spent nearly $8,000 on only partially successful efforts to retrieve the data from the failed drives through various data recovery third parties. These efforts also determined that the issue was caused by faulty internal firmware on the drives.”
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In a statement to Ars Technica, Ian Sloss, one of the lawyers representing Perrin and Bayerl said:
“We believe the case is strong, that Western Digital’s response to the issue has been delayed, inadequate, and incomplete, and we believe people are continuing to purchase defective SSDs based on misleading information Western Digital has provided.”
The following is a list of the devices Western Digital has confirmed to be affected by the issue, though there are several models that consumers have complained about that have not been confirmed be the company:
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)
Western Digital My Passport 4TB (WDBAGF0040BGY).
