This isn’t a drive he purchased many months or years ago — it’s the supposedly safe replacement that Western Digital recently sent after his original wiped his data all by itself.

SanDisk issued a firmware fix for a variety of drives in late May, shortly after our story.

But data recovery services can be expensive, and Western Digital never offered Vjeran any the first time it left him out to dry.

Honestly, it feels like WD has been trying to sweep this under the rug while it tries to offload its remaining inventory at a deep discount — they’re still 66 percent off at Amazon, for example.

Unfortunately, the broken state of the internet means Western Digital doesn’t have to work very hard to keep selling these drives.

I’d also like to say shame on CNET, Cult of Mac and G/O Media’s The Inventory for writing deal posts about this drive that don’t warn their readers at all.