The SanDisk Extreme series of portable SSDs have been around for awhile, though it looks like a recent batch of them aren’t doing too well. Specifically, there have been complaints about the SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 portable SSDs experiencing intermittent failures. This ends up with users getting anything stored within the drives wiped, and in more extreme cases, the drives themselves becoming unreadable.
As Ars Technica reports, user complaints primarily centre around the 4TB versions of the SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 portable SSD models. There have been some complaints about the 2TB models of the Extreme Pro V2. Also worth noting is that some of these users have shared that they have bought these portable drives before, and only their most recent purchases are giving them issues. One user claims to be told by a Japanese distributor that this is only an issue with drives made after November of last year.
A SanDisk representative was quoted in the report as acknowledging that the 4TB models of the Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 drives as having issues. Specifically, the problematic drives come with the model numbers of SDSSDE61-4T00 and SDSSDE81-4T00 respectively. Said representative also said that a firmware update will be published soon to fix the issue. Though on the flip side, the company did not acknowledge the 2TB models of the drive also suffering similar issues, what caused them, or when the aforementioned firmware update will be available.
With SanDisk being a subsidiary of Western Digital, it’s been a wild few months for the parent company. The company suffered a data breach relatively recently, with some customer data being compromised, and hackers reportedly asking for an eight-figure ransom for not publishing them all to other hackers. If you’re looking to get a replacement for an aging portable SSDs, it’s probably best to keep looking for now, at least until this whole situation clears up.
(Source: Reddit [1], [2], [3], [4], SanDisk forums via Ars Technica)
