Western Digital was sued on Tuesday on behalf of a California resident who claims the solid state drive he bought from the manufacturer was defective and that the storage slinger shipped kit that didn't live up to its marketing promises.

The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges that the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed.

As such, the case aspires to be certified as a class action that would represent an unspecified number of customers in the US said to have experienced similar device failures or data loss. The complaint says the class potentially consists of "tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals."

The complaint asserts Western Digital customers "have widely reported drive failures and data loss." Krum's filing insists Western Digital is aware of the issue, based on two firmware repair attempts.

Without warning these hard drives have wiped out data stored on them, making the files stored on them unable to be accessed

"For reasons that defendants have yet to fully explain or disclose, without warning these hard drives have wiped out data stored on them, making the files stored on them unable to be accessed and users unable or unwilling to use these drives out of the reasonable concern such data will be lost forever or cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars to recover," the complaint states.

In May, Western Digital issued an update to address "a firmware issue that can cause SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2, SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2, and WD My Passport SSD products to unexpectedly disconnect from a computer."

The update to prevent data from being lost is intended for the following products: SanDisk Extreme Portable 4TB (SDSSDE61-4T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 4TB (SDSSDE81-4T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro 2TB (SDSSDE81-2T00), SanDisk Extreme Pro 1TB (SDSSDE81-1T00), and WD My Passport 4TB (WDBAGF0040BGY).

But evidently that didn't quite fix things, and a second firmware patch - labeled R332G190 - was issued last month, according to the lawsuit. That update, we're told, also caused problems.

"According to SanDisk, one issue is caused by a bug in the firmware version R332G190 that was released in July 2023. This bug affects some SanDisk Extreme and SanDisk Extreme PRO SSDs with capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB," the complaint claimed.

"The bug can cause the drive to enter a read-only mode, which means that the user cannot write any new data to the drive or delete any existing data. The bug can also cause the drive to become undetected by the computer or show an incorrect capacity."

For what it's worth, we couldn't find an R332G190 update on the web, though it may be accessible from this portal, which requires a valid serial number for a buggy device. We're looking into this.

Citing reports from individuals who have installed the fixes, the complaint states the defect remains and continues to haunt certain Western Digital SanDisk and My Passport SSD hard drives.

Chris Cantrell, an attorney at Doyle Lowther LLP who is representing the plaintiffs, told The Register it's not yet clear how many SanDisk SSDs experienced data loss but there are more than a few people who share his client's experience.

"We won’t be able to ascertain that number with any certainty until we get into discovery as only Western Digital will have comprehensive information on the complaint rate and/or failure rates," he said.

"We do know that the number will be substantial. These SSDs were quite popular. We have been inundated with messages from individuals all across the US that have lost data or are no longer able to access the portable hard drive. Some of the lost data can’t be recovered or recreated or can only be recreated at great expense.

"While Western Digital appears to have attempted to fix the issue with a firmware update, it does not appear to have fixed the issue," Cantrell added. "This is what prompted us to file this lawsuit on behalf of affected SanDisk SSD purchasers. We anticipate adding additional named plaintiffs from other states over the next few weeks."

Western Digital did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2023/08/17/western_digital_sandisk_ssd_lawsuit/