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SanDisk Extreme Pro failures result from design flaw, says researcher
- frankjr 3y agoSounds like Western Digital's strategy is to play dead and wait for it to blow over. And it will most likely work.
- baz00 3y agoThey saw Apple get away with it and tried to do the same.
- RCitronsBroker 3y agono matter how bad the idea, there’s always someone waiting to turn Apple’s bad idea into a poorly implemented, even worse idea
- bboygravity 3y agoI've had a Fujitsu (if I remember correctly) drive many many years ago that had a hardware bug that would cause an IC on it to spontaneously flash fire and die. It was a known flaw. They got away with it too.
- ipqk 3y agoThere will probably be a class action lawsuit where everyone that bought one gets a $20 coupon towards a new WD product, and the lawyers make millions.
- wkat4242 3y agoLooks like this particular problem is easy to fix though.
- Zetobal 3y agoBy whom? Your granny who just lost all the pictures of their grandchildren?
- wkat4242 3y agoNo but by me or anyone else who can hold a soldering iron :) It's much much easier than a BGA cracking issue, or something internal in the flash which is basically unfixable. This is just some components tombstoning. It shouldn't cost a lot to get it fixed (of course Sandisk should take care of that)
- croes 3y agoGuess who gets blamed if your soldered SSD fails.
- lambdasquirrel 3y agoYeah, this stuff is harder than it looks. If you need too much time with the soldering iron, the temperature can conduct through the wire and fry other components, those sensitive ICs that are the flash chips in particular.
- mike256 3y agoAre you sure the BGA is soldered correctly? Regarding the soldering, almost every 2nd component looks pretty bad.
- kmbfjr 3y agoBy anyone who can operate a stereo microscope and a surface mount solder station. A Fisher-Price “My First 40 Watt Weller Soldering Pencil” won’t cut it for this type of repair as you’re not just flicking diodes off a board to “unlock” something.
- wkat4242 3y agoIt does for me.. I've soldered 0805 (and 1206 which was most of them fortunately) components with a screwdriver-tipped aldi iron as I didn't have anything else available. It was not a great experience but being very careful with the corner of it it worked. But this is a super capacitor so it'll be a lot biger than that. But a hot air rework station or a really fine temperature-controlled tip is way better of course, which is what I usually use.
- lukevp 3y agoWe have one of these as part of a critical video workflow. Anything we can do to mitigate it? Or do we just hope it’s not impacted / replace it soon?
- ohyes 3y agoReplace it with a different SSD sounds like the only option.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoRAID and a backup strategy? There should not be a single point of failure. Just getting 2 new SSDs with a RAID 1 would be a massive improvement. And, of course, a separate backup for them because RAID is not a backup.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoIf it's a critical workflow on which your business rests, then you immediately replace it with a better model/brand as that's a business tax write-off. Plus you have the usual on-site and off-sie back-ups which you should already have for your business. You do have a back-up set up that you also test, right? Right? </Anakin-Padme meme>
- VHRanger 3y agoIf it's a video workflow it's likely more of a working drive, backups don't always keep up with the changes on the drive fast enough. Unless it's part of a RAID array or something, but by that point you'd shell the money out for a better drive
- rwmj 3y agoThe fact you have one SSD in a critical workflow is an immediate red flag. You should have some kind of redundant solution with backups even if you didn't suspect particular SSDs are prone to failure.
- lazide 3y ago99% of small businesses just flat out ‘nope’ out when it comes to proper backups or redundancies though.
- spandextwins 3y ago3 copies. Always. Spread them out on different companies and technologies.
- iancmceachern 3y agoAnd physical locations
- RDaneel0livaw 3y agoI'm astonished that after WD bought the SanDisk brand they kept it alive. You couldn't pay ME to use anything under that name, it's so negative. Maybe now with this critical failure they'll just slowly start branding things with any of the other myriad of brand names they've bought "hgst" for instance and slowly kill the brand.
- tentacleuno 3y agoWhat's wrong with SanDisk? Out of the loop here -- I had a SanDisk SSD around 5 years ago and it was absolutely great; it's still going today (it's seen quite a bit of use, too.)
- amatecha 3y agoYeah, kinda no clue what the controversy is cuz I've never had any SanDisk drive fail. Only WD :)
- tentacleuno 3y agoI've very rarely had an SSD fail in general, to be honest -- though I do generally stick to reliable brands[0], not "Xykdidlwo" or "Dyewkdlo" off Amazon. Right now I've got 3 SSDs in my server (2 mirrored so 1TB for apps, and a 500GB boot drive), and I'm interested to see which one goes first. [0]: Crucial, Samsung, Kingston, SanDisk (until I hear any information which discourages me) etc.
- stephen_g 3y agoYes, at least in terms of their memory cards for cameras etc. I’ve really only heard them as being quite well regarded, as far as I can remember…
- justinclift 3y agoSanDisk used to have a good reputation, but after being acquired by WD they've turned to shit: * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds... * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-still-wiping-data-after-firmware-fix-users-say/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds... * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/lawsuit-takes-western-digital-to-task-over-sandisk-ssds-allegedly-erasing-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/lawsuit-takes-wester... * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds-are-worthless-multiple-lawsuits-against-wd-say/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/sandisk-extreme-ssds...
- dboreham 3y ago"resistors too big" ... <accompanied by picture of a capacitor>
- layer8 3y agoTom’s Hardware’s fault. The original source only says “components”.
- bastard_op 3y agoI stopped buying WD anything early 2010's, but then they acquired everyone else like Seagate, meaning even decent Hitachi disks would be now tainted to become typical WD garbage. I still won't buy anything WD, but alternatives are hardly attractive with the market limited to like 3-4 players. Good old monopolies in effect, your options are bad or worse.
- vanderZwan 3y agoI hadn't heard about the Seagate acquisition, that sucks. So what are my options now if I want a reliable external hard drive for example?
- justinclift 3y agoJust to be clear, WD has not acquired Seagate. They're still two different, competing, companies. The above post probably typo-d "Seagate" while meaning "SanDisk".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- autoexec 3y agoI wondered if he was confusing the drama that happened with Seagate buying up Maxtor. A lot of people were upset when that happened because they trusted Seagate a lot more than Maxtor or Western Digital and suddenly the same shitty Maxtor drives many went out of their way to avoid were being sold under the Seagate name leaving people stuck with either buying WD or buying Seagate and probably getting Maxtor anyway. Seagate's quality and reputation took a huge hit.
- coldtea 3y agoOr with this April Fools: https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2014/04/01/seagate-acquires-wd-for-16-billion-new-company-named-seawest/#:~:text=announced%20that%20they%20have%20entered,as%20of%20December%2027%2C%202013 https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2014/04/01/seagate-acquire....
- bastard_op 3y agoThe funny thing is since these have been getting news even months ago, there was almost immediate fire sales on all the main deal sites to sell them off. Everyone that bought them now have a waiting time bomb of a disk to use. Thanks Western Digital for your contribution to society.
- hobobaggins 3y agoCostco was selling them (still!): https://www.costco.com/CatalogSearch?dept=All&keyword=ssd https://www.costco.com/CatalogSearch?dept=All&keyword=ssd Is Costco completely unaware of these massive issues?
- bastard_op 3y agoBlissful ignorance imho.
- bastard_op 3y agoCostco is actually a decent org, and if anyone knew they were selling this time-bomb garbage, they would stop it, as they will warranty stuff for YEARS, just to be a somewhat decent company in a time of pirates.
- ben1040 3y agoI own one of these disks and quit using it when the news came out, expecting I should hang onto it to get money back for a recall. Didn't even occur to me I could just have brought it back to Costco all this time because of their extremely generous return policy.
- HankB99 3y agoMaybe Costco caught up with this. I can't find it on their web site (at least in the US.) All I see is the "Extreme Go" which I presume is a different product.
- dryheat3 3y agoNot the same series. "Extreme Go" is not the same product as "Extreme Pro". I have two of these from Costco and they have worked fine for several years.
- bogantech 3y ago> On the one hand, the resistors used in these SSDs are too big for the circuit board, causing weak connections I am an electronics / PCB hobbyist and I can't for the life of me figure out how they came to such a weird conclusion. What does this even mean? Larger components will have more surface area at the joint and should be stronger than a smaller component > On the other hand, the soldering material used to attach these resistors is prone to forming bubbles and breaking easily, according to Häfele. Never heard of solder doing this - it seems more likely to me that the solder wasn't reflowed properly in manufacturing. What's more is that the component pictured is a capacitor. The only conclusion I can draw here is that the guy has no clue what he's talking about
- bravo22 3y agoThe most charitable way I can read their statement is that the resistors are too large for the pad, and along with poor solder material it forms a weak joint which breaks over time. I have a hard time accepting that because there is not a lot of heat on that line nor is there a lot of physical stress, like constant vibration on SSDs.
- nrp 3y agoThese SSDs are tiny. The controllers can easily get up to 80C during sustained writes, so there could be mechanical stress from thermal cycling. (Source: we also make small USB-interfaced high-speed storage devices and do a range of reliability testing for stuff like this)
- bravo22 3y agoOn the SSD chip sure. This looks like a resistor on the data line. The resistor would certainly not get to reflow temp.
- jchw 3y agoDoes seem a bit strange, but the original article[1] in German, translated using Google Translate, reads as follows: > “It's definitely a hardware problem. It is a design and construction weakness . The entire soldering process of the SSD is a problem,” says Häfele. A hard drive has components that need to be soldered to the circuit board. “The soldering material used, i.e. the solder, creates bubbles and therefore breaks more easily.” > “In addition, the components used are far too large for the layout intended on the board,” says Häfele, explaining the technical problems: “As a result, the components are a little higher than the board and the contact with the intended pads is weaker. All it takes is a little something for solder joints to suddenly break.” It sounds like what they're saying is that the solder pads are too small for some of the components. Not sure about what they're saying about the solder though. [1]: https://futurezone.at/produkte/sandisk-ssd-ausfaelle-western-digital-attingo-datenrettung-problem-hardware/402664391 https://futurezone.at/produkte/sandisk-ssd-ausfaelle-western...
- newaccount74 3y agoI told myself I'd never again buy a WD drive when I realised the WD Red NAS drives I bought were completely unsuitable for NAS because they secretely replaced the product line with SMR drives. And now you are telling me that the Sandisk SSD I bought as a replacement also has a fatal design flaw? And apparently Sandisk is a WD subsidiary? I'm feeling slightly less bad about spending a fortune on getting a bigger built-in SSD in my Macbook. Please don't tell me they are flawed as well.
- layer8 3y agoTFA is only about external drives.
- newaccount74 3y agoYeah, I know, I replaced my NAS with external SSDs.
- ToppestOfKeks 3y ago[dead]
- Phostera 3y agoWell they do have the kill your MacBook when they fail problem. ref: rossman on YouTube.
- jeffbee 3y agoIf that's really the issue, it's trivial to fix and you can pick these up for nothing in the secondary markets.
- yetanotherloser 3y agoFor you and, indeed, for me too. But, sadly, not for many people.
- awiesenhofer 3y agoOriginal article (translated via Google): https://futurezone-at.translate.goog/produkte/sandisk-ssd-ausfaelle-western-digital-attingo-datenrettung-problem-hardware/402664391?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://futurezone-at.translate.goog/produkte/sandisk-ssd-au...
- elzbardico 3y agoI always found it somewhat amusing that SanDisk is very similar to to the french Sans Disque. Like the Chevrolet No Vá situation for spanish speakers.
- whoopdedo 3y agoThat's entirely the point as flash or SSD are alternatives to spinning platters of rust. It's storage sans disk. The company was originally SunDisk but switched to avoid being confused with Sun Microsystems.
- elzbardico 3y agoYeah, but when it fails (and dude, it does fail!), you are also Sans Disque.
- CTDOCodebases 3y agoI wonder if these drives were manufactured during the parts shortage? Kind of makes you wonder what other devices are ticking time bombs.
- lazide 3y agoMost of them, near as I can tell. Cars manufactured during that time have been having issues like crazy too.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoOne of the more interesting things to me is that while every storage medium has failures (which is why RAID and backups are a thing :-) there are more failure modes with flash storage that present as abrupt storage failure.
- jbverschoor 3y agoThey "assured" me that mine won't fail. They checked the serial numbers, and they're not affected (3 disks). Now I'm in the dark again
- ToniCipriani 3y agoReminds me of my old Corsair Voyager. "Rugged" USB stick housed inside a fully rubber enclosure, which constantly causes the USB plug to snap off. Forgot how many times I had to RMA that thing.
- deepsquirrelnet 3y agoI used to work in manufacturing test for an SSD supplier. This would normally be covered by an “ongoing reliability test” in quality. But I also witnessed that quality can be a highly politicized arm of manufacturing companies, and finding issues with products is not always well received, while approving products is always well received. In many consumer products, tests like that are often not implemented or curtailed compared to OEM products. When you buy from a company like Dell or Apple, you get the benefit of having a large organization providing accountability. In other words, when a company like Dell represents their interests in receiving quality products to uphold their reputation, they also have a shared interest with the end consumer — but carry a lot more weight since they represent large contracts with the supplier. Suppliers tend to put more effort into testing their OEM products so as not to damage their business relationships. Anyway, this kind of thing happens all the time in consumer storage. Likely nobody was doing reliability testing on these drives in the first place since that costs money and can only expose problems they didn’t really want to know about.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoIn a perfect world this would be true, especially at the large business level where the integrator will get their ass sued by the customer or at least be forced to make good on the situation. In the retail and small/medium business market the reality is that Dell, HP, and the like are under so much pressure to cut margins that they'll go with whoever is cheapest, and customers almost never escalate things to tort. Dell PC power supplies are made for them by someone else, proprietary in size and connector, and gosh, wouldn't you know it - they have a pretty high failure rate. They last just long enough to make it out of the warranty period, and then they make for a really nice revenue stream for Dell via replacement PSUs or pushing the customer to buy a new system entirely. Even failure within the warranty period is acceptable in the consumer market because integrators have it down to a science exhausting people on the customer support side. Long phone queue times, incompetent support agents who have to transfer you to different agents and likely drop the call entirely, silly policies like requiring a reformat/OS reinstall for everything, and so on.
- deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIs there a class action lawsuit yet?
- gruez 3y agoLiterally the first sentence from the article: >A new report from a data recovery company now points the finger at design and manufacturing flaws as the underlying issue with the recent flood of SanDisk Extreme Pro failures that eventually spurred a class action lawsuit
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThank you. I skimmed too fast. My apologies. I am under the weather.
- einpoklum 3y agoExtreme pro pun title phrasing! Those extreme pros working for Sandisk - you can't really trust their designs, there's always some little bit that's off about them.
- lofaszvanitt 3y agoSomehow they forgot after 25 years of expertise what to do... plausible.
- trinsic2 3y agoSSD's, when the fail, they usually fail catastrophically. Use automated backup software to regularly copy data to an HDD for anything you don't want to lose. And don't use SSD's for archiving, or long term backup purposes. Also I stay away from Sandisk. They have always occupied the cheap space of drives and they have always been known to cut corners for profit. Western Digital seems to be heading in that direction as well. I have had a good experience with Samsung since the beginning of SSD storage.
- zinekeller 3y ago> Western Digital seems to be heading in that direction as well. WD SSDs which are SanDisks in a trenchcoat? Or WD HDDs which are their original business? (Or maybe both?)
- trinsic2 3y agoIt seems like both now, but their HDD's we're good before the switched to SMR. Now I use Seagate for my HDD drives.
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoI'm unmoved and unsurprised. Retail parts are unreliable, cheap crap by the nature of the market created to perpetuate the fantasies of something for nothing. Coincidentally, I recently selected Max Endurance with a 15 year warranty for a noncritical application and a non-retail channel Industrial XI for something else. I'm also unsurprised there are no SLC or traditional EEPROM SD cards advertising these facts because of the race-to-the-bottom commodification of garbage by the price point obsession of users who don't know any better. In an ideal world™, all network and computing devices would use ECC memory but no we can't have nice things and would rather have silent corruption and bitsquatting to save a few cents. PS: C. 2001, I intentionally tried to induce errors for failure analysis purposes of industrial Maxim flash EEPROM ICs rated for 10k cell writes by using an environmental cycling chamber with heat, cold, and humidity. The damn parts wouldn't fail beyond 2.5 orders of magnitude beyond that, and I started to question that writes weren't happening. If I had more time, I would've burned it down to the ground until there were many errors to characterize it. At the end of the day, it had to be left at using turbo codes to ensure redundancy of data by cell and across chips.
- mips_r4300i 3y agoMaxim parts were and remain bulletproof, with prices to match . I think eeprom longevity is intentionally understated due to practicalities of testing and possibly wide variations in lifetime beyond the spec. And then you have Chinese domestic SPI NOR flash that kills itself after 3-4 erase cycles...
- CodeWriter23 3y agoI’ll bet one of the purchasing agents found a good deal on resistors and thought they were equivalent and swapped them out.
- l8rlump 3y agoThe firmware “fix” sounds suspiciously similar to their handling of a similar issue on the WD Blue SA510 SSD’s, of which I’m on my third, after the previous two failed in less than 12 months. Didn’t they start using some new 3D NAND chips? I wonder if there’s a flaw in those chips. They would be in use on many different products so may explain the similar failures?