How Do You Safeguard Important Data? 3 Copies, 2 Kinds of Media, 1 Offsite

This is sad, but not surprising. And a good reason to revisit backing up your data. Western Digital, SanDisk Extreme SSDs don’t store data safely, lawsuit says

So you bought the latest bit of technology to keep your important data safe. Photos of your kids, your wedding, your honeymoon. Records for your business, your tax returns, the project you spent the last 3 months working on. Do you think that because you bought the latest bit of technology from a "reputable vendor" that nothing bad will happen to your data. I truly hope you have a lot of luck with that.

Amid ongoing pressure to address claims that its SanDisk Extreme SSDs are still erasing data and becoming unmountable despite a firmware fix, Western Digital is facing a lawsuit over its storage drives. A lawsuit filed on Wednesday accuses the company of knowingly selling defective SSDs.

Western Digital brand SanDisk's series of Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 portable SSDs are often recommended by tech review sites. If you've considered a portable drive, it's likely you've come across the popular series in your search.

However, numerous owners of the drives, including Ars Technica's own Lee Hutchinson, encountered a problem where the drives seemingly erased data and became unreadable.

Now there is a lawsuit. This is America, so of course there is. But my guess says that when you opened the package that the disk came in, there was an agreement that says Western Digital isn't responsible for crap. Maybe to the cost of a replacement drive. You agreed to that agreement without reading it, the same way you click "Accept" on every agreement on every website you visit. Will $100, or whatever, make up for losing the last 4 months of a client's project? For losing your wedding photos? For losing the last photos you had with your grandparents?

So. You keep your data in at least 3 places, on at least 2 different kinds of media, and you keep at least one copy of important data offsite, because fires do happen. Homes do get robbed, and they might just take your computer and anything nearby that looks tech-related. And there are cloud services that might be able to help with some of that, but most of them will not protect you from ransomware.

The last hard drive I lost was when a tree in my neighbors yard got struck by lightning. I actually never checked the drive (it's in a drawer or a box around here somewhere) because the motherboard of the computer in question was fried thru the surge suppressor. When I got the new PC up and running, I downloaded my important files from my offline backup. (It wasn't connected to the PC, so it wasn't scrambled by the lightning strike.)

And the statement that forms the 2nd half of the title to this post is the MINIMUM of what you do with important data. For me it is tax returns, and a few associated things are what I consider important and some digital copies of photos of my parents. What do you consider important? What data do you need to keep by law? What data would you hate to lose. Do you have photos of important times in your life?

Complaints about the drives littered SanDisk's forums and Reddit (examples here, here, here, and here) for at least four months before Western Digital released a firmware fix in late May. The page for the update claims products currently shipping are not affected. But the company never noted customers' lost data claims.

Click thru for a list of impacted drives.

I know that no one will do this. I have been saying stuff like this for a long time. It won't happen to you. Your car won't be broken into and you laptop stolen. You live in a safe neighborhood. You don't have to worry about burglary. Your house won't burn down destroying your PC. Lightning never strikes in your city.