The recent issue of unexpected data loss with SanDisk portable hard drive has attracted more consumer attention. In the United States, some consumers have already contacted lawyers with plans for a class-action lawsuit, demanding compensation of $500,000 from Western Digital. However, the status of the collective lawsuit has not yet been confirmed by the court.
Since the beginning of the year, SanDisk Extreme portable hard drive have been discovered to suddenly malfunction, leading to data loss. Many consumers have encountered similar problems, as shared on social media platforms.
When encountering this failure, the system will display “This computer cannot read the disk you connected” when connecting to a computer. By May, Western Digital and SanDisk acknowledged the problem with their portable SSDs and promised to release firmware to fix the issue soon.
However, Western Digital seems reluctant about this, as they have only included the SanDisk Extreme 4TB version and/or SanDisk Extreme Pro in the fault range and provided firmware updates. These two models are SSDSDE61-4T00 and SSSDSDE81-4T00, yet other versions with similar issues were ignored.
Initially, sporadic consumers faced these problems, but Western Digital ignored them. Only after extensive coverage by tech media did Western Digital admit the problem and express their intention to fix it, but differential treatment still exists.
Western Digital has not specified that consumers encountering this problem can receive a full refund or exchange for a new hard drive, leading some consumers to initiate a class-action lawsuit against Western Digital.
Nathan Krum, the consumer who launched this class-action lawsuit, purchased the SanDisk Extreme Pro 2TB version from Amazon on May 19, 2023, for $179.99. He quickly faced data loss and had to seek professional companies to recover the data, resulting in heavy losses and fear of continuing to use the hard drive.
Nathan Krum contacted SanDisk for a refund but was rejected. He believes that this hard drive is no longer trustworthy and keeping it no longer makes sense. Handling this issue also cost him a lot of time and effort.
According to documents published by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose, the collective members of this class-action lawsuit are all U.S. customers who purchased SanDisk Extreme Pro portable SSDs, specifically including SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD MyPassport SSD, purchased since January 2023. However, Western Digital and SanDisk’s employees/dealers cannot be collective members due to conflicts of interest.