Fraud Cases Pile On in Calif. Court Over Drive Failures in SanDisk Storage Products

Some $1,399 worth of SanDisk solid-state disk drives (SSDs) bought by plaintiff Emilio Pousa are “essentially worthless,” and parent company Western Digital didn't compensate him for his losses, said a Tuesday fraud class action (docket 5:23-cv-04281) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose. Pousa names Western Digital and “Does 1-10,” whose identities and involvement in the wrongdoing at issue will be revealed “if and when they become known,” said the complaint.

Pousa, of Los Angeles County, bought two SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs V2 4TB and two V1 4TB SSDs from authorized retailer B&H Photo in December. The drives failed “and/or Plaintiff can no longer trust using the drives,” said the complaint. Pousa can’t return the drives for a full refund and has spent money to retrieve lost data or to obtain a replacement hard drive, plus sustained other damages, the complaint said.

The class action is brought on behalf of individuals who bought the 500GB, 1TB or 4TB versions of the SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD line of portable SSD drives, including the SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD MyPassport SSD models. Despite Western Digital’s representations to the contrary, “a latent defect in manufacturing and/or design that was not reasonably discoverable” by Pousa and class members at time of purchase caused the hard drives to “not function as reasonably expected,” said the complaint.

SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD hard drives sold under the WD MyPassport brand have either a “a manufacturing defect or firmware issue (or both) that causes them to disconnect or become unreadable by computers,” said the complaint. “Without warning these hard drives have wiped out or lost data stored on them, making the files stored on them unable to be accessed,” it said. Users then are “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 said. Pousa’s action is for breach of contract and express warranties, breach of implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for particular purpose and violation of the California Business and Professional Code.

Pousa’s incident is not an isolated one, said the plaintiff, noting “numerous individuals have publicly complained of data being wiped out” on SanDisk SSDs, of computers not being able to access the hard drives when they’re plugged in and “concerns their businesses will be impacted if the defect manifests, requiring them to spend significant additional time and resources to prevent such a potential from taking place.”

Similar class actions were filed last week in the same court by different law firms. Plaintiff Matthew Perrin, a Florida resident, bought at least eight SanDisk Extreme SSDs from Amazon from 2022-2023. Despite SanDisk’s assertion that the drives were “fast, rugged and dependable,” Perrin experienced drives “arbitrarily ejecting themselves, not being seen as a valid hard drive when plugged back into a computer,” and often displaying the message “this drive is not readable,” said the Aug. 17 complaint (docket 5:23-cv-04201). As a result of the defects in the SSDs, Perrin “lost all data stored on several SanDisk SSDs,” it said.

Co-plaintiff Brian Bayerl’s two drives failed “within minutes of each other,” and the Florida resident spent nearly $8,000 on “only partially successful efforts to retrieve the data from the failed drives through various data recovery third parties,” the complaint said. It cited a “slew of complaints” on Reddit about the SanDisk drives and the willingness of some victims to try to work with SanDisk on a resolution. “Defendants refused to acknowledge the widespread issue for months and mostly referred purchasers of SanDisk SSDs who experienced drive failures to open a support ticket with SanDisk’s technical support team.”

That changed in May, the complaint said, when media outlets The Verge and Ars Technica picked up the story and contacted SanDisk for comment. A May 19 Ars Technica story said complaints about the Extreme and Extreme Pro portable SSDs, going back four months, described the drives “suddenly wiping data, and in some cases, becoming unreadable.” SanDisk responded that it was aware of reports about the 4TB drive and would publish a firmware update to its website “soon.” It didn’t address problems with the 2TB models. Perrin’s complaint said the firmware update “has not fixed the issue.”

Perrin’s 10-claim complaint alleged breach of express and implied warranty; fraudulent misrepresentation; fraud by omission; negligent misrepresentation; unjust enrichment; and violations of California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act, its False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law and Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Also on Aug. 17, plaintiff Saif Jafri of Buena Park, California, a computer system security engineer at Yahoo, filed a complaint (docket 5:23-cv-04206) in the same San Jose court, saying a 2TB SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD he bought on Amazon in April “failed only a few weeks after he purchased it.” He wasn’t aware of the defect and learned of the problem only after his drive “erased a substantial portion of the footage he had taken” on an extended trip. Jafri’s class action charges breach of implied warranty; unjust enrichment; and violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law, Consumer Legal Remedies Act and False Advertising Law.