May 23, 2023 sandisk western-digital

The disks auto-erased their contents for months - now comes the fix

Western Digital says it will fix bugs with Sandisk Extreme and Extreme Pro external SSDs. This after four months of problems.

Sandisk Extreme and Extreme Pro owners should back up asap
The reliability issues include the 4TB (most at risk), 2TB Extreme V2, and Extreme Pro V2. The problem is big: the disks deleted data and in certain cases they could no longer be accessed at all. The problems concern devices manufactured at the end of last year.

 

Western Digital is aware of reports indicating that some customers have experienced an issue with 4TB SanDisk Extreme and/or Extreme Pro portable SSDs (SDSSDE61-4T00 and SDSSDE81-4T00, respectively). We have resolved the issue and will soon publish a firmware update on our website. Customers with questions or experiencing problems should contact our customer support team for assistance.

 

Almost half price
We do not know why the price in Norway has dropped (probably due to the introduction of the 2TB model, we look at the prices), but see that the 1TB Extreme model has been cut in price by almost NOK 900 since March this year (we are unsure whether this is V2 model, but it seems that they start with 2TB) and cost just over a thousand. The one with 4TB has actually become more expensive and costs NOK 5,500. The 2TB model, V2 Extreme, costs around NOK 2,000.

It is unknown when the update will arrive after WD informed ArsTechnica on Friday. There is also no confirmation that the 2TB model is also error-corrected, but we see it as strange if not as we expect it to be the same error regardless of the number of TB.