Western Digital

In 2023, Western Digital's SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro portable SSDs experienced widespread firmware failures causing sudden data loss with no recovery possible. A class action lawsuit was filed. The failures affected both the 2TB and 4TB models. WD released firmware updates but many users reported irreversible data loss before the fix was available.

In March 2023, Western Digital disclosed a network security breach where unauthorized parties accessed internal systems and obtained data. The My Cloud service was taken offline for nearly two weeks. Hackers claimed to have stolen approximately 10TB of data. Customer names, billing/shipping addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers were exposed. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility.

In 2020, it was discovered that Western Digital had secretly transitioned its WD Red NAS-rated hard drives from Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) to the slower Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology without informing customers. SMR drives perform poorly in NAS RAID arrays, the exact use case WD Red drives were marketed for. This led to a class action lawsuit and widespread industry criticism. WD eventually created a separate WD Red Plus line with CMR technology.