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Windows 11 Update KB5063878 Causing SSD Failures
- RedShift1 1y agoIs it actually killing the SSD (SSD can no longer be used) or just corrupting the data on the SSD? It's hard to make out from all the comments and news articles.
- crest 1y ago"Just" corrupting your filesystem...
- dspillett 1y agoRelative seriousness, both drive damage and filesystem damage are both bad but by slightly different degrees. There is more chance of being able to fix data corruption, than being able to fix a bricked drive or one with unbearable blocks.
- dspillett 1y agoSelf rely as I'm too late to edit out a slide-keyboard error: unbearable -> unreadable
- asimovfan 1y agosome data might be worth way more than any SSD.
- X0Refraction 1y agoIf it is then storing it without backups sounds like a bad idea
- toast0 1y agoI've seen lots of SSDs die suddenly (no longer visible on the bus), so I would assume that is what is happening based on the words people are using. I've yet to see an SSD fail to read only mode like they're supposed to... and there's rarely any warning, just working or dead (although I did have a couple that went from working to terribly slow while doing a large reallocation, and we replaced those rather than find out what would happen over a longer term) That said, people use words with a different meaning all the time, and data corruption could fit as a failure.
- RedShift1 1y agoFailing to read-only is only an Intel thing, I've not seen any other SSD do that...
- toast0 1y agoI've not seen an Intel SSD do it either, although I've seen many of them escape their earthly existence :P There was a firmware bug, but updating the firmware was inconvenient, and the specific interaction that caused the failure wasn't stated, so I couldn't avoid whatever it was; seemed connected to being pretty idle... we had a second data center as an untested "warm" failover target, and disks would tend to die over there where nothing significant was happening.
- kimixa 1y agoI had a Crucial drive fail to read-only. I got the data off, but most of the data wasn't really that important so there might have been dead regions. I feel that many consumers won't really know if it's still readable, I'd suggest that 90% of people just have a single drive, and windows doesn't cope with a non-writable root drive particularly well.
- jacquesm 1y agoI wonder what the commercial effect is of such a thing on MS. Because assuming that the SSDs are unrecoverable it might lead to sales of new machines or new Windows licenses. There is a fair chance that bugs like these end up making good money, the numbers are large enough that even a small fraction of the users being affected can translate into a serious windfall.
- hosteur 1y agoThey should be held liable if their software bricks hardware.
- p_ing 1y agoCan you get Linus Bucks by replacing your efivars with Doom?
- hosteur 1y agoYou seem to be implying that Linus Thorvalds should also be liable for damage caused by Linux kernel. I don't think the analogy is good. You might be better off replacing Linus with Apple and Linux with macOS. In that case, I would definitely think Apple should be held liable if an update to macOS bricks some hardware in a Mac. But with Linux, it is different: You do not have a business relationship with Linus. Sure, if you bought your Linux distribution from, say Red Hat, and it bricks your server, I think you might have a good case against Red Hat(IBM).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dale_glass 1y agoBut what's actually happening? There seems to be a lack of technical information. And why does the SSD allow this to happen? A SSD has its own onboard computer, it's not just allowing the OS to do whatever it wants. Obviously the OS can write way too much and reach the endurance limit but that should have been figured out almost instantly, with OS write stats and SMART stats.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>But what's actually happening? There seems to be a lack of technical information. That's also what I want to know. All the information on this topic seems to be just circular anecdotes like a snake eating its own tail: a bunch of anecdotal reddit posts, quoting a Tom's hardware article, that's quoting more anecdotal reddit posts, that's quoting one Japanese tweet of someone's speculation. Like how many of these SSD deaths can actually be pinned on this update, and how much of this is just "Havana syndrome" of people's SSDs dying for whatever other reason, then they hear about this hubbub in the news and then they go on reddit and say "OMG mine too", then clickbait journalists pick up on it, and round and round we go, further reinforcing the FUD, but without any actual technical analysis to verify.
- firesteelrain 1y agoAgree; any truth to the fact that this is push back for Windows 10 EOL?
- uyzstvqs 1y agoRight. It could just be the usual suspects of misinformation (Reddit, click-hungry "journalists", certain YouTube/Tiktok creators) amplifying each other in a circle. Just like that "16 billion passwords data leak" earlier this year. There is probably something going on. It could very well just be a bad batch of SSD controllers from one manufacturer failing.
- firesteelrain 1y agoOr some weird conspiracy
- mrcsharp 1y agoThe latest as far as I know is that Phison couldn't replicate the issue. [1] [1] https://wccftech.com/phison-dismisses-reports-of-windows-11-updates-bricking-ssds-runs-rigorous-testing-unable-to-reproduce-errors/ https://wccftech.com/phison-dismisses-reports-of-windows-11-...
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- lxgr 1y ago"I installed a Windows update and my SSD died afterwards" doesn't seem like news, given that almost all Windows users periodically install Windows updates and SSDs sometimes fail.
- bayindirh 1y agoRunaway processes are big problems for SSD life. A runaway file indexer, or a tool which re-writes large chunks of data can consume the TBW limit of an SSD pretty fast if it's left unchecked for long.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoI seem to remember Spotify causing big problems because of this
- mrkramer 1y agoAny word from Microsoft?
- 5350-uiop-1130 1y agothis issue has been going for 2 months
- matja 1y agoHow are you defining "bricked"? The SSD device can no longer be enumerated on the PCIe/SATA bus, or it doesn't respond to ATA/NVMe commands, or it doesn't respond as expected, or it does but the data is always wrong? Does the same SSD work in another machine? edit: The author of the comment I replied to has changed their comment to remove all details of their testing.
- whatsupdog 1y ago[flagged]
- majkinetor 1y agoNah, I used various Linux distros for years and the update problems happen there all the time, I think even more TBH, and require substantial technical expertise to fix them. IMO, the only good way is "if it works, don't fix it", which means, no updates. People are seriously overhyping updates. I stopped updating all the stuff - OSes, smart locks, android apps, TVs, BP monitors - I honestly had multiple update problems on ALL mentioned devices, multiple times. I only update the thing when I have an actual problem and there is changelog stating that the bug is fixed, or when I want a new feature. You can handle security in other ways in almost all the cases. I think this IT update burden has gotten out of hand - I don't recall any other domain is like that - my car, my house, my bicycle, my glasses DO NOT UPDATE and its glorious - apart from physical damage, they work the same as yesterday.
- jamesnorden 1y agoI've also been using Linux for years (Arch, btw) and never had an update break my install or cause issues, I've only had to fix the Linux bootloader when Windows overwrote it after a major update, multiple times...
- majkinetor 1y agoReally? I love Arch, but even my hard core Linux friends warn me about update problems.
- dijit 1y agoI've had plenty of issues with Arch updates. In fact; I have a laptop right now that hasn't received updates because there's a shared object that has been removed that `yay` depends on. (this was from a long time ago). I generally think that updates of the mainstream distro's like Debian will definitely *NOT* brick your system in almost any circumstance, and arch tends to be somewhat solid, but every once in a while something dire happens with arch which would make me not agree with the fact that updates are always seamless.
- JdeBP 1y agoThis is doing the rounds on YouTube, too. But with pretty much the same information as everywhere else that tracks back to the same original sources. * https://youtube.com/watch?v=mlY2QjP_-9s https://youtube.com/watch?v=mlY2QjP_-9s (JayzTwoCents) * https://youtube.com/watch?v=sU_WepeHUd8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=sU_WepeHUd8 (ThioJoe) * https://youtube.com/watch?v=7xS-CE-hy6Q https://youtube.com/watch?v=7xS-CE-hy6Q (Dave's Attic) * https://youtube.com/watch?v=zoHGSz-f6os https://youtube.com/watch?v=zoHGSz-f6os (Pureinfotech)
- Zr01 1y agoThat's why I don't install updates, unless and until they've been proven not to break things. I miss the old days when software was expected to work out of the box and updates, on the rare occasions when they appeared, were actually useful.
- russfink 1y agoI hope you are speaking with tongue in cheek. Security is the main reason to keep current with updates. They address various “CVE” reports and go beyond to patch things not reported by CVEs.
- mschuster91 1y ago> Security is the main reason to keep current with updates. It shouldn't be that way though. Especially the billion dollar corporations should not be excused for shipping insecure software - the sad reality though is that Microsoft seems to have lost most of its QA team and what remains of its dev team gets shifted to developing adware for that sweet sweet "recurring revenue" nectar. Apple doesn't have that problem at least, but their management also has massive problems, prioritizing shiny new gadgets over fixing the tons of bugs people have.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cesarb 1y ago> Security is the main reason to keep current with updates. For plenty of users, their only exposed attack surface is the web browser and AV codecs. Updates outside of that make no security difference for them.
- hulitu 1y ago> For plenty of users, their only exposed attack surface is the web browser Until they realize that every Microsoft app sends data to mothership.
- worewood 1y ago
- ahartmetz 1y agoInstall "Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC" if you don't mind buying grey market keys. Less crapware, more mature and less enshittified than 11, and security fixes until 2032. I don't want to endorse Windows at all (use Linux if you can!). But maybe you need it to occasionally test something or whatever.
- 4ggr0 1y agoEven though I professionally work with Linux I still don't trust it enough for gaming. I know that Steam does great things with Proton, my issue is that I'm not the type of gamer who constantly plays the same game - Play a game for how long the story or my interests lasts, then switch to the next game. And after a whole day of debugging and hair pulling at work I just don't feel like then also debugging why a game is not running like it should. But I heard I should give it a try again, last time I gave it a shot was 2-3 years ago. Big plus would be that I'd be completely free of Windows...
- johanvts 1y agoDid you try bazzite OS, the only issue I have had was to select the proton build of CS, everything else works out of the box. Except for games that need anti-cheat… So I still ended up with a windows partition.
- BoredPositron 1y agoI guess he wants to use his general computing device as a general computing device and not as a console.
- plipt 1y agoMaybe you know this but Bazzite works perfectly well as a standard Linux desktop operating system. It comes with a non-gaming desktop environment and can be setup to boot directly into that desktop environment. It just defaults to the steam gaming interface.
- jokoon 1y agoIf it breaks a SSD, would microsoft be liable for the damage?
- yonatan8070 1y agoI doubt it
- formerly_proven 1y agoHas Microsoft ever been liable for anything?
- ekianjo 1y agoThe EULA that nobody reads says no
- Etherlord87 1y agoI think you also didn't read the EULA. The EULA says something along the lines: > the statements incompatible with local law are to be disregarded as void This is to protect The beneficent of EULA terms (Microsoft) from the possibility that entire EULA is rendered illegal because one of its statements is illegal. So EULA doesn't say > no What it says instead is > no, if that's legal where you use this software Though this condition doesn't neighbor the statement like this.
- NKCSS 1y agoWasn't this mostly a WD HBM issue? [1] [1] https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-latest-windows-11-24h2-update-breaks-ssdshdds-may-corrupt-your-data/ https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-latest-windows...
- crinkly 1y agoThe biggest problem with this is near zero communications from Microsoft. But what do I expect these days? Shovel AI in everything at any cost. I’ve had repeatable data loss recently from windows 11 under a specific condition copying directories in explorer. The case works on windows 10 LTSC fine. I have absolutely no idea where to even raise this as an issue now. I’m not sure I even give a fuck.
- luckys 1y agoSome more information here https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/08/20/microsoft-is-investigating-windows-11-kb5063878-ssd-data-corruption-failure-issue/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/08/20/microsoft-is-invest...
- qwertox 1y agoI'm wondering if I should defer my full system backup on the 1st of September, as the resulting file is 300+ GB. I had a BSOD last week, 0x0000012b (FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE), which I've never had, and was hoping it isn't related to this update.
- cesarb 1y agoYou might want to run memtest86+ (or the built-in equivalent from some OEMs like Dell), in my experience memory sticks sometimes go bad after being in use for a while.
- worewood 1y agoMaybe just re-tuning the timing, if he's using high performance sticks. Because parts are hard to get by where I live, I usually stick 10+ years with a PC. With usage I found that I have to relax the timings a bit after some years.
- gethly 1y agoWe knew more technical information about the CrowdStrike than we know about this. It's ridiculous.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Hilift 1y agoNot related, but this reminds me of a recent issue with the Samsung 990 Pro SSD that required a firmware update for fix, and some drives had to be returned. I speculate it was exacerbated by increased usage. https://serverfault.com/questions/1172216/issue-with-samsung-ssd-990-pro-with-heatsink https://serverfault.com/questions/1172216/issue-with-samsung... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dropping-fast https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dro...
- hulitu 1y ago> I speculate it was exacerbated by increased usage. Then the drive is defective.
- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931383
- pessimizer 1y agoTomorrow, somebody will still explain to you like you're a child that Linux has hardware incompatibilities (on the computer they bought last week the day it came out), and is just not ready for prime time. They want to stick with Windows because it's safe and just works.
- avidphantasm 1y agoAnd I will continue to use non-upgradable Macs because, while I miss tinkering with and upgrading my computers, I simply don’t have time for it anymore.
- shadowpho 1y agoAnd sadly they’ll still be right :<
- gigel82 1y agoI have a strong suspicion this was some kind of stock / market attack. Phison dropped 14% (and their main competitor Silicon Motion increased 7% incidentally), while every single "news / slop" points to a single original source, some random Japanese person called "necoru_cat" that posted a supposed list of affected models (full of spelling mistakes). I'm actually very surprised a single person managed to pull off a scam of this magnitude and am very worried about what effect fabricated news (now helped by AI) will have in the future.
- whatevaa 1y agoNope. https://youtu.be/TbFIUu_7LIc?si=o1p2FrDYFeLEtIoF https://youtu.be/TbFIUu_7LIc?si=o1p2FrDYFeLEtIoF Youtube got bit by this randomly, just working, not looking for this issue.
- gradientsrneat 1y agoDidn't this patch already get automatically reverted by Windows Update?
- mikewarot 1y agoSo the thing we learn from this is that apparently there's now an SSD version of WinModems[1]. The lesson from the 1990s needs to be re-learned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmodem
- BobbyTables2 1y agoHow does one detect a DRAM-less SSD? (From Linux?) And how does such a thing reserve host RAM?
- rasz 1y agonvme get-feature /dev/nvme0 -H -f 0x0d