7 ms·

Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt data

138 points by bundie 1y ago

dboreham 1y ago
Reading the article, the headline is inaccurate/wrong: the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates. This Windows update happens to include an application that can generate such a workload.
- fifteen1506 1y ago
  Sometimes people have limited amount of money available and buying a new SSD for the sake of buying them is not on top of their priority list. Sure, we can always contract a divinacy specialist to guess which hardware may fail next, but I thought the (paid) Windows testers had that job.
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    Windows has paid QA these days? I thought insiders do that for free.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    Apparently it's not wise to replace your QA testers with vibe coders, specially when your models are mediocre at best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763389
- oncallthrow 1y ago
  Please explain to me in precise terms how the headline is "wrong".
  - dkiebd 1y ago
    SSDs bricking themselves when you write to them is not a Windows issue.
- lexlambda 1y ago
  Reading the article further, they do note that "A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem.", although I concede that no source is provided for that.
- rikafurude21 1y ago
  Why blame the crappy SSDs when the issue seems to be that Microsoft doesnt care about their low end users and happily deploys apps which creates work loads that can literally break hardware? Even if it doesnt break your hardware, why deploy something so bloated?
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > that Microsoft doesnt care about their low end users and happily deploys apps which creates work loads that can literally break hardware? Damn, i hate to defend Mickey$oft here but, if your hardware breaks under work loads, better buy a better one. Windows is not able to use all cores on a CPU properly, so if you have a workload problem, it is your hardware.
  - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
    If your software can break your hardware on a normal PC (not talking industrial robots or something), your hardware is flawed.
    - wiseowise 1y ago
      Your finger can also be easily cut off by a wood cutter, doesn't mean that it has to be.
    - gchamonlive 1y ago
      While this is largely true, that's no excuse for a system such as Windows to brick SSDs like that. It's still by far the most popular operating system despite Microsoft's best efforts into enshitifying it. Windows is therefore going to be used by a wide variety of systems, including those with low grade hardware parts. So it either has to be part of windows quality control to test these low end systems or it should make it very clear about the system requirements. Either way, the problem was patched, which makes it a problem on windows side.
      - ghosty141 1y ago
        What? If your SSD is old and close to failure, you can’t blame the software pushing it over the edge. If a company sells parts that can’t handle writes that are within spec then I’m sorry you bought junk…
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  I'll keep using Linux then, if my crappy SSD is an excuse to use an actually functional OS, all the better. It's a win-win.
  - jlokier 1y ago
    That's up to you. But if you have one of the SSD models the article is about, Linux probably won't help. It might make it worse. Linux is beautifully optimised for performance. Linux is more likely to write the same data more quickly than Windows, when an application has a large amount of data to write. So if the problem is the SSD fails when a large amount of data is written quickly but within specs, then it's likely to fail on Linux too. Unless it's a bug in the Windows driver. But it sounds from descriptions that it isn't a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the SSD that went unnoticed because not many people wrote large amounts of data quickly on systems with those SSDs. So it sounds like there may be a model-specific blacklist required in the driver, to detect particular SSDs and reduce the speed they are written to, because they fail when run at the speed they advertise to the OS. Or, alternatively, it sounds like those models may require a firmware upgrade from the SSD vendor. If either of those are required, a similar workaround will be required in the Linux driver too, to avoid the same problem as soon as someone runs a similar application on Linux. Unfortunately, even with a speed-limiting blacklist in the driver, whether in Window or Linux, those SSD models probably still corrupt data from time to time, because speed alone is unlikely to be the underlying cause of corruption. A vendor firmware update, or vendor confirmation that a specific change in the driver avoids the SSD bug, are what's required.
    - gchamonlive 1y ago
      You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts? Why did it started happening after a windows update then? And why did it need a patch?
      - gruez 1y ago
        >You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts? The linux install base is orders of magnitude smaller than windows, so there's less of a chance that it gets picked up by tech media. Moreover if it's really an issue with the underlying hardware itself, a more technical user base would be able to trace the issue to the actual hardware, rather than going straight to social media with "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!" >Why did it started happening after a windows update then? Some sort of code change that changes the behavior of the drive, but is technically within spec. >And why did it need a patch? Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault. The linux kernel is filled with workarounds for crappy hardware as well. The existence of those workarounds don't imply linux was somehow at fault for those bugs.
- cm2187 1y ago
  The article also mentions enterprise SSDs.
- wildpeaks 1y ago
  The result is the same from the point of view of the end user, the hardware would have continued working without the software update.
  - notanewbie 1y ago
    End user here. 4 year old laptop with original storage drive (already replaced original SSD system drive with a new one) updated and corrupted the 1TB HDD. Pulled it out of the machine (HP laptop, turns out it was a Seagate HDD) and replaced it with another SSD. Yes, this laptop was originally a Windows 10. Yes, it was upgraded to Win11 last year. Blaming the end user for the update corrupting an existing drive that has had NO ISSUES for over 4 years is about the dumbest and most condescending thing I've seen. Thanks for being absolutely no help at all, everyone but wildpeaks. The very first reply is someone who apparently went over to the FB post and spammed every comment with "CLickbait (sic) doesn't apply to anyone blah blah". Considering the giant SHOVE that Microsoft has subjected us to in the last few years to upgrade to the latest and greatest OS, you would THINK that SOMEONE would remember that a lot of those older machines that are now running Win11 should be considered. Also, anyone replying to a Windows problem with "well, you should be using Linux, too bad so sad" needs to check their attitude at the door. What an entitled life you must lead. Going back to wrestling with trying to access the now external HDD. Do I sound bitter? You're d**ed straight.
- icehawk 1y ago
  > the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates which part of the article leads you to believe this?
- dundarious 1y ago
  What is the basis for this statement that "the problem is crappy SSDs"? From TFA: > The report speculates that this could be due to a malfunction in the drive cache subsystem. Symptoms are said to recur predictably after a system reboot, which temporarily restores drive visibility but does not address the underlying fault. Affected users are said to be consistently experiencing failure under similar workload patterns within minutes. > Further analysis has suggested that SSDs built on Phison NAND controllers especially DRAM-less models exhibit failures at lower write volumes. Reports suggest that select enterprise-grade HDDs also display comparable symptoms under intensive writes. > The issue definitely bears high similarity to the WD SN770 host memory buffer (HMB) flaw, and in this case, too, restricting or disabling HMB yields no improvement. A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem. Speculation almost entirely revolves around the Windows disk cache subsystem. That being said, I completely disagree with most of the replies you are getting. If Intel/AMD released a CPU that exhibited faults at high instruction throughput (making good use of all execution ports, etc.) but within the advertised power limits, I would in no way blame whatever software exhibited the problem, I would blame the chip.
ksec 1y ago
Neowin. My old account is from 2001. Although I stopped reading around 2010 when I found them too Anti-Apple and extremely Pro Microsoft. But there seems to be a surge in submission and I am not sure if it is good enough for HN.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>The issue purportedly surfaces during heavy write operations to certain NVMe SSDs as well as HDDs, especially when continuous sustained writes approach 50 GB on drives and exceed 60 per cent controller usage.
- bobmcnamara 1y ago
  Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    Well. Ballmer said it back when MS needed them to train the LLMs after all. it was a different time!
5350-uiop-1130 1y ago
yep bricked my beelink SER9 which I had for 8 months only and i see the same error under windows update on my backup pc now: 2025-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 24H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5063878) (26100.4946) Failed to install on ‎17/‎08/‎2025 - 0x80073712 articles says August but I had this update stuck on failed for 2 months. bricked last pc now waiting for it to brick my current one. how long does it take MS to fix something..
- tempodox 1y ago
  Until hell freezes over?
  - lazide 1y ago
    Honestly, I’ve seen a concerning behavior where the failures seem to escalate and get worse over time. Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now. Weird stuff like nearly impossible to find/configure network connections? Worse over time. It’s like whatever criteria the MS PM’s are using is prioritizing ‘engagement’ (aka how frustrated and angry someone gets at the OS) over anything else.
    - kotaKat 1y ago
      > Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now. I'm finding it super concerning that it seems like Microsoft isn't even pushing driver updates properly nowadays. Everything just sits as an 'optional update' hidden away buried under a couple more menus, and the latest drivers are jumbled in the list, and you can't tell which driver is for which device. And that's how I discovered my WiFi was breaking out of the box because Microsoft had newer drivers they didn't push down...
      - jonbiggums22 1y ago
        In my case I turned driver updates off since they kept installing a broken video driver that left me with black screens on boot.
    - 1y ago
qwertytyyuu 1y ago
Again? I swear this has happened before
wistleblowanon 1y ago
Another real reason not to move to 11. Thank you Microsoft.
- lucb1e 1y ago
  This was being downvoted, but there is actually research showing a link between code age and security bugs: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s... "Code matures and gets safer with time, exponentially, making the returns on investments like rewrites diminish over time as code gets older." Not an argument for staying on an unsupported OS, but an argument for staying on a stable release as long as possible if you prefer stability over features
  - diggan 1y ago
    > but there is actually research showing a link I think most software developer gets to understand this once they're working with production environments sooner rather than later. Most of the times stuff breaks is when someone changed something and failed to consider something else, not a lot of times things break by themselves. Sometimes, things break by themselves because someone in the past forgot to account for something that will happen far in the future though.
elorant 1y ago
Just a reminder to switch to Linux in October when win10 reaches EOL.
- 1over137 1y ago
  Or a BSD :)
- theandrewbailey 1y ago
  Don't wait until October to switch. Do it now. The water is fine.
igtztorrero 1y ago
The most basic thing an operating system should do is keep your files and information safe. Microsoft Windows has been steadily declining in that direction. It's time to punish them and let them see the consequences. It's time to switch to Linux Debian or Ubuntu.
- exe34 1y ago
  I grew up with Windows 95. I don't think this is a new trend! To this day I would never trust any computer with my only copy of anything whatsoever that I care about. Three copies on different machines is the minimum if I intend to keep it.
swinglock 1y ago
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793
- mananaysiempre 1y ago
  So... WD/SanDisk only tested the SN770’s firmware with then-contemporary Windows, different behaviour from Linux/ZoL led to breakage, and now Windows too has changed its behaviour enough to expose the breakage? (I’m still wondering if the successor, SN7100, is affected, as it’s not mentioned in that thread either way. The upmarket DRAMful SN850X seems not to be affected.) Or not? The bug here looks different from that one, which the same outlet reported on[1] earlier. [1] https://www.neowin.net/news/wd-ssds-still-block-windows-11-24h2-download-and-installs-microsoft-may-be-guilty-too/ https://www.neowin.net/news/wd-ssds-still-block-windows-11-2...
  - swinglock 1y ago
    Who can say until the dust has settled? My bet is on defective hardware. Maybe they can patch the firmware, or Microsoft (and Linux!) add workarounds in the kernel. But just because a kernel might do such a thing does not make it at fault when it didn't. At least not before the problem makes itself known. This could just as well as a bug, be the Windows kernel now being better optimized to take advantage of fast storage media. Perhaps the software cache, scheduling, and what not became a bottleneck, and they fixed that. Unless it's part of the NVMe standard or what have you that the OS IO scheduler should not attempt writing "too fast", it's hard to blame it in good faith.
- ComputerGuru 1y ago
  I'm not entirely sure it's the same issue; all the users there seem to have reflashed the SSDs to use 4k sectors and there are many reports of problems going away or never happening if 512b sector size is used. I'm doubtful Windows users are flashing their drives to 4k sectors at the same rate as ZFS-heads.
  - swinglock 1y ago
nine_k 1y ago
Un-clickbaiting the title: an update to Windows 11 exposes a flaw in poorly built firmware of certain mass storage devices.
- riedel 1y ago
  Poison has a led the problem: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-issues-statement-on-SSD-failures-tied-to-new-Windows-11-update.1091001.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-issues-statement-on-SSD...
- throwaway290 1y ago
  Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly. The best they can do to save their ass is say "actually you know what these SSD and HDD are all incompatible with W11" and start a new hardware certification program.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly. They were talking about Microsoft. QA ? Testing ? That's why they have users. /s
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) "enterprise" doesn't imply reliability, eg. https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hpe-ssd-bricked-firmware-flaw.html https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hpe-ssd-bricked-firmware...
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) The article is light in the details of which are those enterprise grade SSDs
  - smileybarry 1y ago
    I can't find mentions of any enterprise SSDs in the linked Twitter thread, just consumer SSDs ranging from "budget" to "pro" from various brands. The Twitter author later did some basic testing on a list of SSDs and it looks like it's mostly to do with very budget QLC models: https://twitter.com/Necoru_cat/status/1956949132066898080 https://twitter.com/Necoru_cat/status/1956949132066898080 This feels like an extrapolation by the article author based on the fact Phison microcontrollers are also used in enterprise models.
diggan 1y ago
Is this actually breaking the drives or just making particular files on that particular partition un-readable by Windows? Stated another way: Could a system that dual-boots Linux and Windows actually brick the drives system-wide by what Windows is doing?
- gruez 1y ago
  Nobody really knows. The entire article hinges on a random post from twitter. It doesn't even try to corroborate it with third party accounts.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jrs235 1y ago
Great. So this might be the cause of ally problems. I just happen to cloning drives to swap out with a larger one and Windows 11 is so slow. Also seems there were issues found that needing fixing after cloning.
dataflow 1y ago
What actions can we take here? Is there a list of the particular drives that would be affected by this?
- diggan 1y ago
  Yeah, be great with some sort of conclusive information from Microsoft/manufacturers themselves, if they dare to publish something like that. Sincerely, person who hours ago ordered a couple of SN850Xs...
  - dataflow 1y ago
    That model seems to not be affected according to https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/51469 https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/51...
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
2024: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/western-digital-releases-fix-for-windows-11-24h2-bsods-users-are-strongly-advised-to-update-their-ssd-firmware https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/western-digi... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-24h2-kb5044384-update-fixes-sfc-scannow-corrupt-file-errors/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-2... https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-11-24h2-update-plagued-by-file-scanner-bug-over-and-over-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-11-24h2-update-plagued...
AlexanderYamanu 1y ago
Apparantly a WD_BLACK SN770 1TB, fw 731100WD, drive is affected by this update. I can confirm that the update to 24H2 was started and that the SSD has gotten a corrupted partition table. Diskpart shows nothing, TestDisk shows double entries and not markers and the log says check_part_gpt failed for partition. With the corresponding line No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs, or XFS marker in the console. I am currently rebuilding the partition table from gpt backup, but I don't know if the 24H2 update has a repartitioning action in it. Also the boot partition is Bitlocker enabled. It is a nice challenge to try and recover it fully. But, if the update hasn't been completed and the hammering continues, then I think chances are it might happen again. My guess is that the firmware of the ssd needs to be updated first to account for the HMD bug? Oh well...
Fairburn 1y ago
If your rig is stable and dont care about features, block all updates and turn the service off. If you have a prod. rig that is stable, leave it to MS to frack it up. /s

138 points by bundie 1y ago

Reading the article, the headline is inaccurate/wrong: the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates. This Windows update happens to include an application that can generate such a workload.

fifteen1506 1y ago
Sometimes people have limited amount of money available and buying a new SSD for the sake of buying them is not on top of their priority list. Sure, we can always contract a divinacy specialist to guess which hardware may fail next, but I thought the (paid) Windows testers had that job.
- whatevaa 1y ago
  Windows has paid QA these days? I thought insiders do that for free.
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  Apparently it's not wise to replace your QA testers with vibe coders, specially when your models are mediocre at best https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763389
oncallthrow 1y ago
Please explain to me in precise terms how the headline is "wrong".
- dkiebd 1y ago
  SSDs bricking themselves when you write to them is not a Windows issue.
lexlambda 1y ago
Reading the article further, they do note that "A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem.", although I concede that no source is provided for that.
rikafurude21 1y ago
Why blame the crappy SSDs when the issue seems to be that Microsoft doesnt care about their low end users and happily deploys apps which creates work loads that can literally break hardware? Even if it doesnt break your hardware, why deploy something so bloated?
- hulitu 1y ago
  > that Microsoft doesnt care about their low end users and happily deploys apps which creates work loads that can literally break hardware? Damn, i hate to defend Mickey$oft here but, if your hardware breaks under work loads, better buy a better one. Windows is not able to use all cores on a CPU properly, so if you have a workload problem, it is your hardware.
- BenjiWiebe 1y ago
  If your software can break your hardware on a normal PC (not talking industrial robots or something), your hardware is flawed.
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    Your finger can also be easily cut off by a wood cutter, doesn't mean that it has to be.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    While this is largely true, that's no excuse for a system such as Windows to brick SSDs like that. It's still by far the most popular operating system despite Microsoft's best efforts into enshitifying it. Windows is therefore going to be used by a wide variety of systems, including those with low grade hardware parts. So it either has to be part of windows quality control to test these low end systems or it should make it very clear about the system requirements. Either way, the problem was patched, which makes it a problem on windows side.
    - ghosty141 1y ago
      What? If your SSD is old and close to failure, you can’t blame the software pushing it over the edge. If a company sells parts that can’t handle writes that are within spec then I’m sorry you bought junk…
gchamonlive 1y ago
I'll keep using Linux then, if my crappy SSD is an excuse to use an actually functional OS, all the better. It's a win-win.
- jlokier 1y ago
  That's up to you. But if you have one of the SSD models the article is about, Linux probably won't help. It might make it worse. Linux is beautifully optimised for performance. Linux is more likely to write the same data more quickly than Windows, when an application has a large amount of data to write. So if the problem is the SSD fails when a large amount of data is written quickly but within specs, then it's likely to fail on Linux too. Unless it's a bug in the Windows driver. But it sounds from descriptions that it isn't a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the SSD that went unnoticed because not many people wrote large amounts of data quickly on systems with those SSDs. So it sounds like there may be a model-specific blacklist required in the driver, to detect particular SSDs and reduce the speed they are written to, because they fail when run at the speed they advertise to the OS. Or, alternatively, it sounds like those models may require a firmware upgrade from the SSD vendor. If either of those are required, a similar workaround will be required in the Linux driver too, to avoid the same problem as soon as someone runs a similar application on Linux. Unfortunately, even with a speed-limiting blacklist in the driver, whether in Window or Linux, those SSD models probably still corrupt data from time to time, because speed alone is unlikely to be the underlying cause of corruption. A vendor firmware update, or vendor confirmation that a specific change in the driver avoids the SSD bug, are what's required.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts? Why did it started happening after a windows update then? And why did it need a patch?
    - gruez 1y ago
      >You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts? The linux install base is orders of magnitude smaller than windows, so there's less of a chance that it gets picked up by tech media. Moreover if it's really an issue with the underlying hardware itself, a more technical user base would be able to trace the issue to the actual hardware, rather than going straight to social media with "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!" >Why did it started happening after a windows update then? Some sort of code change that changes the behavior of the drive, but is technically within spec. >And why did it need a patch? Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault. The linux kernel is filled with workarounds for crappy hardware as well. The existence of those workarounds don't imply linux was somehow at fault for those bugs.
cm2187 1y ago
The article also mentions enterprise SSDs.
wildpeaks 1y ago
The result is the same from the point of view of the end user, the hardware would have continued working without the software update.
- notanewbie 1y ago
  End user here. 4 year old laptop with original storage drive (already replaced original SSD system drive with a new one) updated and corrupted the 1TB HDD. Pulled it out of the machine (HP laptop, turns out it was a Seagate HDD) and replaced it with another SSD. Yes, this laptop was originally a Windows 10. Yes, it was upgraded to Win11 last year. Blaming the end user for the update corrupting an existing drive that has had NO ISSUES for over 4 years is about the dumbest and most condescending thing I've seen. Thanks for being absolutely no help at all, everyone but wildpeaks. The very first reply is someone who apparently went over to the FB post and spammed every comment with "CLickbait (sic) doesn't apply to anyone blah blah". Considering the giant SHOVE that Microsoft has subjected us to in the last few years to upgrade to the latest and greatest OS, you would THINK that SOMEONE would remember that a lot of those older machines that are now running Win11 should be considered. Also, anyone replying to a Windows problem with "well, you should be using Linux, too bad so sad" needs to check their attitude at the door. What an entitled life you must lead. Going back to wrestling with trying to access the now external HDD. Do I sound bitter? You're d**ed straight.
icehawk 1y ago
> the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates which part of the article leads you to believe this?
dundarious 1y ago
What is the basis for this statement that "the problem is crappy SSDs"? From TFA: > The report speculates that this could be due to a malfunction in the drive cache subsystem. Symptoms are said to recur predictably after a system reboot, which temporarily restores drive visibility but does not address the underlying fault. Affected users are said to be consistently experiencing failure under similar workload patterns within minutes. > Further analysis has suggested that SSDs built on Phison NAND controllers especially DRAM-less models exhibit failures at lower write volumes. Reports suggest that select enterprise-grade HDDs also display comparable symptoms under intensive writes. > The issue definitely bears high similarity to the WD SN770 host memory buffer (HMB) flaw, and in this case, too, restricting or disabling HMB yields no improvement. A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem. Speculation almost entirely revolves around the Windows disk cache subsystem. That being said, I completely disagree with most of the replies you are getting. If Intel/AMD released a CPU that exhibited faults at high instruction throughput (making good use of all execution ports, etc.) but within the advertised power limits, I would in no way blame whatever software exhibited the problem, I would blame the chip.

ksec 1y ago

Neowin. My old account is from 2001. Although I stopped reading around 2010 when I found them too Anti-Apple and extremely Pro Microsoft. But there seems to be a surge in submission and I am not sure if it is good enough for HN.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

>The issue purportedly surfaces during heavy write operations to certain NVMe SSDs as well as HDDs, especially when continuous sustained writes approach 50 GB on drives and exceed 60 per cent controller usage.

bobmcnamara 1y ago
Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  Well. Ballmer said it back when MS needed them to train the LLMs after all. it was a different time!

5350-uiop-1130 1y ago

yep bricked my beelink SER9 which I had for 8 months only and i see the same error under windows update on my backup pc now: 2025-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 24H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5063878) (26100.4946) Failed to install on ‎17/‎08/‎2025 - 0x80073712 articles says August but I had this update stuck on failed for 2 months. bricked last pc now waiting for it to brick my current one. how long does it take MS to fix something..

tempodox 1y ago
Until hell freezes over?
- lazide 1y ago
  Honestly, I’ve seen a concerning behavior where the failures seem to escalate and get worse over time. Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now. Weird stuff like nearly impossible to find/configure network connections? Worse over time. It’s like whatever criteria the MS PM’s are using is prioritizing ‘engagement’ (aka how frustrated and angry someone gets at the OS) over anything else.
  - kotaKat 1y ago
    > Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now. I'm finding it super concerning that it seems like Microsoft isn't even pushing driver updates properly nowadays. Everything just sits as an 'optional update' hidden away buried under a couple more menus, and the latest drivers are jumbled in the list, and you can't tell which driver is for which device. And that's how I discovered my WiFi was breaking out of the box because Microsoft had newer drivers they didn't push down...
    - jonbiggums22 1y ago
      In my case I turned driver updates off since they kept installing a broken video driver that left me with black screens on boot.
  - 1y ago

qwertytyyuu 1y ago

Again? I swear this has happened before

wistleblowanon 1y ago

Another real reason not to move to 11. Thank you Microsoft.

lucb1e 1y ago
This was being downvoted, but there is actually research showing a link between code age and security bugs: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s... "Code matures and gets safer with time, exponentially, making the returns on investments like rewrites diminish over time as code gets older." Not an argument for staying on an unsupported OS, but an argument for staying on a stable release as long as possible if you prefer stability over features
- diggan 1y ago
  > but there is actually research showing a link I think most software developer gets to understand this once they're working with production environments sooner rather than later. Most of the times stuff breaks is when someone changed something and failed to consider something else, not a lot of times things break by themselves. Sometimes, things break by themselves because someone in the past forgot to account for something that will happen far in the future though.

elorant 1y ago

Just a reminder to switch to Linux in October when win10 reaches EOL.

1over137 1y ago
Or a BSD :)
theandrewbailey 1y ago
Don't wait until October to switch. Do it now. The water is fine.

igtztorrero 1y ago

The most basic thing an operating system should do is keep your files and information safe. Microsoft Windows has been steadily declining in that direction. It's time to punish them and let them see the consequences. It's time to switch to Linux Debian or Ubuntu.

exe34 1y ago
I grew up with Windows 95. I don't think this is a new trend! To this day I would never trust any computer with my only copy of anything whatsoever that I care about. Three copies on different machines is the minimum if I intend to keep it.

swinglock 1y ago

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793

mananaysiempre 1y ago
So... WD/SanDisk only tested the SN770’s firmware with then-contemporary Windows, different behaviour from Linux/ZoL led to breakage, and now Windows too has changed its behaviour enough to expose the breakage? (I’m still wondering if the successor, SN7100, is affected, as it’s not mentioned in that thread either way. The upmarket DRAMful SN850X seems not to be affected.) Or not? The bug here looks different from that one, which the same outlet reported on[1] earlier. [1] https://www.neowin.net/news/wd-ssds-still-block-windows-11-24h2-download-and-installs-microsoft-may-be-guilty-too/ https://www.neowin.net/news/wd-ssds-still-block-windows-11-2...
- swinglock 1y ago
  Who can say until the dust has settled? My bet is on defective hardware. Maybe they can patch the firmware, or Microsoft (and Linux!) add workarounds in the kernel. But just because a kernel might do such a thing does not make it at fault when it didn't. At least not before the problem makes itself known. This could just as well as a bug, be the Windows kernel now being better optimized to take advantage of fast storage media. Perhaps the software cache, scheduling, and what not became a bottleneck, and they fixed that. Unless it's part of the NVMe standard or what have you that the OS IO scheduler should not attempt writing "too fast", it's hard to blame it in good faith.
ComputerGuru 1y ago
I'm not entirely sure it's the same issue; all the users there seem to have reflashed the SSDs to use 4k sectors and there are many reports of problems going away or never happening if 512b sector size is used. I'm doubtful Windows users are flashing their drives to 4k sectors at the same rate as ZFS-heads.
- swinglock 1y ago

nine_k 1y ago

Un-clickbaiting the title: an update to Windows 11 exposes a flaw in poorly built firmware of certain mass storage devices.

riedel 1y ago
Poison has a led the problem: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-issues-statement-on-SSD-failures-tied-to-new-Windows-11-update.1091001.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-issues-statement-on-SSD...
throwaway290 1y ago
Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly. The best they can do to save their ass is say "actually you know what these SSD and HDD are all incompatible with W11" and start a new hardware certification program.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly. They were talking about Microsoft. QA ? Testing ? That's why they have users. /s
- gruez 1y ago
  >Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) "enterprise" doesn't imply reliability, eg. https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hpe-ssd-bricked-firmware-flaw.html https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hpe-ssd-bricked-firmware...
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;) The article is light in the details of which are those enterprise grade SSDs
- smileybarry 1y ago
  I can't find mentions of any enterprise SSDs in the linked Twitter thread, just consumer SSDs ranging from "budget" to "pro" from various brands. The Twitter author later did some basic testing on a list of SSDs and it looks like it's mostly to do with very budget QLC models: https://twitter.com/Necoru_cat/status/1956949132066898080 https://twitter.com/Necoru_cat/status/1956949132066898080 This feels like an extrapolation by the article author based on the fact Phison microcontrollers are also used in enterprise models.

diggan 1y ago

Is this actually breaking the drives or just making particular files on that particular partition un-readable by Windows? Stated another way: Could a system that dual-boots Linux and Windows actually brick the drives system-wide by what Windows is doing?

gruez 1y ago
Nobody really knows. The entire article hinges on a random post from twitter. It doesn't even try to corroborate it with third party accounts.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jrs235 1y ago

Great. So this might be the cause of ally problems. I just happen to cloning drives to swap out with a larger one and Windows 11 is so slow. Also seems there were issues found that needing fixing after cloning.

dataflow 1y ago

What actions can we take here? Is there a list of the particular drives that would be affected by this?

diggan 1y ago
Yeah, be great with some sort of conclusive information from Microsoft/manufacturers themselves, if they dare to publish something like that. Sincerely, person who hours ago ordered a couple of SN850Xs...
- dataflow 1y ago
  That model seems to not be affected according to https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/51469 https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/51...

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

2024: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/western-digital-releases-fix-for-windows-11-24h2-bsods-users-are-strongly-advised-to-update-their-ssd-firmware https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/western-digi... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-24h2-kb5044384-update-fixes-sfc-scannow-corrupt-file-errors/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-11-2... https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-11-24h2-update-plagued-by-file-scanner-bug-over-and-over-again/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-11-24h2-update-plagued...

AlexanderYamanu 1y ago

Apparantly a WD_BLACK SN770 1TB, fw 731100WD, drive is affected by this update. I can confirm that the update to 24H2 was started and that the SSD has gotten a corrupted partition table. Diskpart shows nothing, TestDisk shows double entries and not markers and the log says check_part_gpt failed for partition. With the corresponding line No FAT, NTFS, ext2, JFS, Reiser, cramfs, or XFS marker in the console. I am currently rebuilding the partition table from gpt backup, but I don't know if the 24H2 update has a repartitioning action in it. Also the boot partition is Bitlocker enabled. It is a nice challenge to try and recover it fully. But, if the update hasn't been completed and the hammering continues, then I think chances are it might happen again. My guess is that the firmware of the ssd needs to be updated first to account for the HMD bug? Oh well...

Fairburn 1y ago

If your rig is stable and dont care about features, block all updates and turn the service off. If you have a prod. rig that is stable, leave it to MS to frack it up. /s