WD to investigate problems with older SMR hard drives
Western Digital is responding to accusations from data recovery specialists. Affected users should contact the manufacturer.
(Image: Aleksandr Grechanyuk / Shutterstock.com)
Western Digital (WD) is investigating potential problems with some older hard drives. The manufacturer is thus responding to reports from data recovery specialists who are drawing attention to unwanted side effects of the HDD firmware. These can lead to complete failure of the hard drives.
"Trust and reliability are the foundation of everything we do at Western Digital. We take the results reported by 030 data recovery seriously and have initiated an investigation by our engineering teams to understand the scope and details of these reports," writes WD.
This is already more than WD's former affiliated company Sandisk managed recently: issues with USB SSDs that can lead to data loss; the manufacturer remains silent to this day.
Production discontinued
WD also confirms our assumption that models from the WD Purple series should not be affected due to a different technical foundation. The manufacturer also emphasizes that the affected models are no longer being manufactured.
However, old stock repeatedly appears on the market, especially with hard drives. Even now, individual shops still list numerous affected HDDs. Anyone buying a WD hard drive with a capacity of 2 to 6 TByte should pay close attention to the model designation.
Customers with problems should contact WD support. However, caution is advised even with the manufacturer's backing: if contact with support is necessary, the data may already be lost.
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Background
The issues concern hard drives with capacities up to 6 TByte that use a technical platform internally called VeniceR. They rely on Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology, in which data tracks overlap.
Due to this overlap, complex firmware is necessary, which constantly logs in translation tables which data is located where. Undesirable side effects can occur here, leading to errors in the translation tables and ultimately to failure.
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