New SanDisk Extreme Pro 4 TB. I reformatted the drive for Mac using APFS with GUID Partition Map. Copied about 400 gigs of data to the drive including a lot of jpeg backups of photos. Everything seemed to go fine.
A day later, I checked the drive and weirdly, a lot of the jpeg photos were corrupted. Most would open but the photo itself was either distorted or part of the photo was just blanked out. Ran disk utility and at first it quit saying that the drive could not be unmounted. I had to force quit the drive because it would not unmount. After force quitting, ran first aid on the drive and it said the drive could not be repaired and recommended that I back up the data. I tried to reformat the drive and got stuck with “waiting for partitions to activate.” Had to force quite after a few hours. Now the drive shows up as uninitialized but disk utility can’t run first aid, and can’t erase and reformat.
Out of curiosity, I tried to repeat my backup process with a second new SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD. I’ve gotten to a similar place. Now I seem to have two new SSD drives that disk first aid can’t mount, run first aid on, or erase/reformat. Is there some problem with the new 4 TB Extreme Pro drives with Ventura? I am at a loss about what to do next. I don’t need to recover the data on the drives since I was trying to do backups, but now neither drive is functioning.
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the SD Technical Support team for best assistance and troubleshooting: https://kb.sandisk.com/app/ask
I seem to be having the exact same problem. 4TB (2000MB/s) drive formatted to APFS worked for a little while, then out of nowhere, nothing was readable and some folders were completely empty. Was able to recover the data through Wondershare Recoverit and transfer to another hard drive. Bought another 4TB drive (1000MB/s) thinking it was a fluke, but I’m having the same problem almost immediately. I figured the problem was the APFS configuration itself, so I tried erasing and reformatting as OSX Journaled, and now it’s stuck on “waiting on partitions to activate.”
FWIW, I started a support case, and SanDisk appears to believe that the drives are bricked. I’ve shipped them back and am awaiting replacement. Since you’re having the same problem, it makes me think that there is an APFS issue, but fixing it was beyond my pay grade. Update your post and let me know what happens.
FYI, SanDisk replaced both of my 4 TB drives after concluding that they were dead. I’m considering formatting one of the replacement drives to APFS and keeping the other exFAT to see if the APFS drive bricks again.
Same problem here with two new Extreme Pro 4 TB V2 purchased directly from WD. We tried APFS one one and Mac OS Extended formatting on the other. Both drives failed. Computers are both M1 Max MacBook Pro laptops with Monterey (12.6.3). I just reformatted and tested one of the SSDs and it came in around 200 MB/s NOT 2,000 as advertised.
I had just purchased this drive last week, SanDisk 4TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD - Up to 2000MB/s - USB-C, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 - External Solid State Drive - SDSSDE81-4T00-G25 and after loading dropbox and out teams dropbox on it and attempting to work with it 2 days later, the drive was corrupted and unreadable. Almost lost my Quickbooks files that I used to store on there to use between several computers.
I have now regained control of Quickbooks again, and now store it on my hard drive, and will only backup to Dropbox since I now have Teamviewer remote access to that computer to work with Quickbooks remotely if I have to for some reason. Huge scare, several years of business data almost lost due to corruption of this drive.
I had formatted it in NTFS using quick format since a long format would have taken forever. Currently reformatted, and will try one more time, but after reading these other comments, it does appear there is a recent problem with these drives.
Hoping that SanDisk does us all right and replaces these faulty drives. Past reviews seem terrific, so it does appear to be a recent problem.
I’ve faced similar problems with external drives before, and it’s always frustrating when you can’t access your files. Fortunately, I was able to recover everything with EaseUS Recovery. However, I’m uncertain about continuing to use Sandisk. SanDisk Extreme SSD Failure: Tips to Prevent from Further Damage
