KB5063878 Storage Mystery: Windows 11 Update and SSD Testing

Microsoft’s audit of the August Windows 11 cumulative update has closed one chapter of an unusually noisy storage scare, but it has left behind a tangle of reproducible community tests, partial vendor confirmations, and unanswered forensic questions that IT teams and power users should still treat seriously. Microsoft says it “found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media,” while Phison — the SSD controller designer most often named in community reproductions — reports thousands of hours of lab testing without a reproducible failure. (bleepingcomputer.com) (tomshardware.com)

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Background​

What shipped and when​

On August 12, 2025 Microsoft released the monthly cumulative package tracked as KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946) for Windows 11 version 24H2. The update bundles a servicing stack update (SSU) and quality/security fixes; Microsoft’s KB entry for the package explicitly stated at publication that it was “not currently aware of any issues with this update.” (support.microsoft.com)
Within days of that release, members of the enthusiast community posted repeatable test benches showing a consistent failure profile: during large, sustained sequential writes (commonly tests involve writing ~50 GB or more), some NVMe SSDs would abruptly stop responding, disappear from Windows’ device topology, and in a subset of reports leave written files truncated or corrupted. Those community reproductions — amplified across forums, X (formerly Twitter), and specialist outlets — forced vendor and platform attention.

The immediate responses​

Microsoft opened an internal investigation and solicited telemetry and Feedback Hub reports. Phison and other SSD vendors launched validation campaigns. Over the course of the probe, Phison reported running thousands of cumulative test hours and more than 2,200 test cycles on drives identified in community reports, while Microsoft reported no telemetry spike or internal repros that tied the update to platform-wide disk failures. (neowin.net)

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Timeline: how the story unfolded​

• August 12, 2025 — Microsoft publishes KB5063878 for Windows 11 24H2. The official KB lists fixes and lists no known storage regressions at the time. (support.microsoft.com)
• Mid‑August 2025 — community testers publish step‑by‑step reproducible benches where SSDs vanish during sustained large writes; social posts and videos amplify the issue.
• August 18–27, 2025 — Phison publicly acknowledges reports and begins validation testing; several independent outlets and specialist sites reproduce aspects of the failure fingerprint and publish model/firmware lists being tested. (tomshardware.com)
• Late August 2025 — Microsoft issues a service alert after internal testing and partner-assisted validation, stating it “found no connection” between the August update and the reported hard drive failures; Phison publishes a test summary reporting extensive lab hours without reproducible failures. (bleepingcomputer.com) (neowin.net)

This compressed timeline is important: the incident went from anecdote to industry investigation in under two weeks because the failure profile was repeatable in independent labs — a fact that raised alarms even as vendors later failed to reproduce a universal fault.

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The reproducible failure fingerprint (what community labs found)​

Community test benches converged on a consistent set of observations. The most commonly reported conditions and symptoms were:

• A sustained, large sequential write workload (examples: extracting a 50+ GB archive directly to the target drive, installing a multi‑tens‑GB game, cloning a disk image).
• The target drive being partially full (community benches repeatedly cited ~50–60% fill as a common precondition for a reliable reproduction).
• An abrupt halt in the write operation followed by the SSD vanishing from File Explorer, Disk Management, and Device Manager; SMART/controller telemetry could become unreadable. Reboots often restored visibility for many drives, but files written during the failure window were sometimes truncated or corrupted.

Multiple independent outlets and hobbyist labs documented the same general recipe; that repeatability is the reason the incident escalated to vendors and Microsoft rather than being dismissed as isolated hardware faults.

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What Microsoft and Phison actually said and tested​

Microsoft: “no connection” found​

Microsoft’s service alert — and subsequent coverage by specialist outlets — states that Redmond’s internal review did not find telemetry evidence or an internal reproduction that links KB5063878 to a systemic rise in disk failures. The company said it continued to monitor and would investigate any future credible reports. That phrasing is narrow and operationally precise: Microsoft could not validate a platform‑wide causal link with the update based on its telemetry and in‑house test matrices. (bleepingcomputer.com)

Phison: extensive lab validation without reproduction​

Phison, the SSD controller designer often cited in community model lists, reported dedicating over 4,500 cumulative testing hours and more than 2,200 test cycles to drives named in community reports and said it was unable to reproduce a universal failure tied to the update. Phison also reported receiving no confirmed failure reports from partners or customers in that timeframe and published guidance on general thermal management best practices. (neowin.net) (guru3d.com)

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Technical possibilities and plausible root causes​

No single, definitive public root cause has been published, and that matters. The available evidence suggests several plausible mechanisms — none mutually exclusive — that could produce the observed behavior.

1) A host‑side behavioral change that exposes firmware edge cases​

Modern NVMe SSDs increasingly rely on host cooperation features such as the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) to improve performance on DRAM‑less controllers. Slight changes in how the OS allocates or manages host memory, command pacing, or I/O buffering under sustained sequential writes can expose latent firmware timing or resource‑management bugs, producing the controller‑stall symptom set seen in community benches. Community analysis and specialist reporting specifically flagged HMB‑related interactions as a credible hypothesis. (tomshardware.com)

2) Controller firmware sensitivity and device state​

Some controller firmware implementations have narrow tolerances for timing and internal state transitions under heavy load or when the drive is partially full. If a firmware bug is present, the device can effectively stop responding to host commands while remaining electrically connected — producing the “vanished” drive phenomenon that disappears from host enumeration until a reboot or vendor-level reinitialization. Community benches and vendor-led investigations both point to controller/firmware as a likely domain for the fault.

3) Thermal or power‑related confounders​

High sustained write workloads generate heat and can trigger thermal throttling or power-management interactions that exacerbate timing sensitivity. Several vendor advisories during the incident emphasized thermal management (heatsinks, airflow) as a general best practice — not a definitive fix to the reported fault, but a reasonable mitigation against related instability in high‑performance drives. (tomshardware.com)

4) Coincidence or defective batches​

The possibility remains that some of the worst failures were caused by defective NAND, controller silicon, or OEM assembly issues that happened to surface contemporaneously with the Windows update. Investigators flagged the absence of a consolidated telemetry signal as consistent with a low-volume hardware‑specific problem rather than a systemic software regression. This remains a plausible alternate explanation.

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Strengths and limits of the public evidence​

• Strength: independent reproducibility. Multiple enthusiasts and testing outlets published recipes that triggered the same failure fingerprint under controlled conditions, which elevated the issue beyond noisy anecdotes.
• Strength: vendor attention. Phison’s large‑scale lab campaign and Microsoft’s internal tests are real, material efforts that weigh against an immediately obvious platform‑wide regression. (neowin.net)
• Limitation: no single, authoritative forensic report. Neither Microsoft nor Phison published a forensic trace that pins the failure to a specific kernel change or firmware bug; public telemetries or aggregated failure rates have not been released. That leaves open legitimate uncertainty about scale, root cause, and the degree to which the update may have been a triggering or coincident factor.
• Limitation: reporting bias and social amplification. Much of the early narrative was driven by high‑visibility social posts and videos that may not reflect representative statistics. Microsoft’s support channels reportedly received limited direct complaints compared with the volume of social posts, which complicates scale estimation.

Because of these strengths and limits, the correct operational posture is cautious: treat the vendor statements as powerful but incomplete, and handle any affected device as a potential data‑loss incident until proven otherwise.

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Practical guidance for Windows users and administrators​

The technical ambiguity means the defensive checklist matters more than theoretical assignment of blame. The following steps are practical, low‑risk, and immediately actionable.

For home users and prosumers​

• Back up critical data now. Create a full image or at least copy irreplaceable files off the SSD to another device or cloud service before running large writes or testing. This is the single most important action.
• Avoid sustained large, sequential writes (game installs, huge archive extraction, cloning) on systems that recently installed the August update until you have verified firmware and vendor guidance. Community reproductions repeatedly used this workload profile as the trigger.
• Check SSD firmware and vendor advisories. If a firmware update is available from your drive vendor, review release notes and vendor guidance before applying it; update only after creating a verified backup. Phison and other vendors emphasized monitoring partner advisories. (guru3d.com)
• Enable system recovery protections. Turn on System Restore and keep an up‑to‑date system image if possible; Windows’ Quick Machine Recovery and system-image features can reduce recovery time. Specialist guides outline rollback and recovery steps if an update causes operational problems. (windowscentral.com)

For IT teams and administrators​

• Stage updates in representative pilot rings that include hardware with the same SSD controllers and firmware levels as production. The incident underscores the need for representative workload tests that include sustained writes.
• Block or defer the update for at‑risk populations until vendor firmware or Microsoft guidance clears the combination, especially on machines that perform heavy write workloads (build machines, content creation workstations, imaging servers).
• Collect and preserve forensic logs for any affected machine: Windows Event logs, NVMe SMART data, vendor utility dumps and serial numbers, and a memory image if practical. These artifacts are often essential when working with vendor support to identify firmware or hardware anomalies.

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What vendors and Microsoft could / should publish next​

The incident illustrates gaps in how complex hardware/software interactions are communicated and resolved. The following steps would materially reduce residual risk and public confusion:

• Publish aggregated telemetry (anonymized) showing whether disk failure rates changed after the update and what model/failure fingerprints were observed. This would either confirm a systemic issue or reduce public uncertainty.
• Release a joint Microsoft‑vendor forensic advisory that includes the exact host workloads tested, kernel-level traces if a host-side effect was considered, and a list of validated unaffected and affected firmware versions (if any). That level of transparency resolves speculation and focuses remediation.
• Expand pre-release stress testing to include sustained sequential write profiles across a representative matrix of DRAM and DRAM‑less controllers, fill levels, and OEM firmware. This is a capability gap that the incident exposed.

Until such publication happens, vendors and Microsoft must be credited for rapid engagement and thorough lab validation, but their statements should not be mistaken for final forensic closure when community reproducible tests exist.

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Assessment: who’s at risk and how big is the problem?​

• At‑risk scenarios: systems performing sustained, large sequential writes on NVMe drives that are partially full; particularly DRAM‑less or HMB‑reliant designs were frequently named in early benches.
• At‑risk users: content creators, PC gamers installing very large titles, backup/cloning operations, and system builders who routinely run large write workloads.
• Scale: available public evidence points to a narrow but real failure fingerprint that was reproducible by knowledgeable testers; however, platform‑wide telemetry and vendor partner reports do not show a widespread failure rate spike tied to the update. The combination means the impact potential per incident is high (data loss), while the observed population-level incidence appears low or localized. (bleepingcomputer.com)

This duality — serious consequences for individual incidents, but limited evidence of broad scale — is what makes measured, precautionary behavior the right course.

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Final analysis and the responsible takeaway​

Microsoft’s declarative statement that it “found no connection” between KB5063878 and the reported hard‑drive failures is important and supported by partner testing from Phison, which likewise reports no reproducible universal failure after thousands of lab hours. Those vendor statements should reassure the broader population that a catastrophic, update‑wide bricking event is unlikely. (bleepingcomputer.com) (neowin.net)
At the same time, independent community tests reproduced a clear and repeatable failure fingerprint under specific workload and device conditions — sustained large sequential writes and drives ~50–60% full — and those tests were the reason the issue was escalated in the first place. That reproducibility is the kernel of remaining concern: reproducible bugs deserve forensic closure, not dismissal.
The responsible posture for users and IT administrators is therefore straightforward:

• Assume the vendor statements are evidence that no broad, systemic regression was found; but
• Treat any vanishing SSD or data corruption incident as a serious, local event that requires immediate backup, forensic preservation, vendor engagement, and caution about repeated heavy writes until the exact cause is identified for that device.

Microsoft and the SSD ecosystem moved fast to investigate; they deserve that credit. The remaining work is forensic: clearer aggregated telemetry, transparent test recipes and traces, and any targeted firmware or OS mitigation required to eliminate the specific reproducible failure fingerprints from community labs. Until those artifacts appear, users should prioritize backups, staged deployments, and vendor firmware checks — pragmatic, low‑cost steps that materially reduce the chance of losing data. (guru3d.com)

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The SSD episode is an uncomfortable but salutary reminder: modern storage reliability depends on finely balanced interactions between the OS, driver stack, controller firmware, and workload. Updates change those interactions even when they do not change stored data directly. The safest default posture for anyone who values local data remains the same — back up, stage updates, and test representative workloads before wide rollout.

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Source: News18 Did A Windows 11 Update Make Your PCs SSD Storage Unusable? Microsoft Gives The Answer

 

[ChatGPT]

Microsoft says a fresh internal review has found no direct link between the August 12, 2025 Windows 11 security update (KB5063878) and the social-media reports that some users’ NVMe and SATA drives became inaccessible or suffered data corruption — even as independent tests, vendor investigations and eyewitness accounts continue to paint a messy, unresolved picture for a subset of power users. (bleepingcomputer.com)

Background​

The August 12, 2025 cumulative security update for Windows 11 24H2 — cataloged as KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946) — shipped as part of Microsoft’s regular Patch Tuesday cycle and was intended to deliver security fixes and stability improvements. Microsoft published the standard support article for the release, including known issues and deployment notes, and began rolling the update through Windows Update and managed channels. (support.microsoft.com)
Within days, posts began appearing on social platforms and enthusiast forums reporting a common pattern: after installing the update and performing heavy disk writes (for example, installing large game updates or copying large files), some systems showed the target drive as “RAW” or simply stopped enumerating the SSD in File Explorer and—worse—sometimes in the BIOS. Reports originated primarily in Japan and spread internationally as testers and builders reproduced or attempted to reproduce the behavior. Early posts described symptoms including File Explorer hangs, I/O errors in Event Viewer, and drives that reappeared after reboot for some users but remained inaccessible for others.
Microsoft initially acknowledged it was investigating the reports and asked affected users to submit logs and Feedback Hub reports. After completing an investigation that included internal reproduction attempts and collaborative testing with storage partners, Microsoft updated its service alert and said it had “found no connection between the August 2025 Windows security update and the types of hard drive failures reported on social media.” (bleepingcomputer.com)

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What users actually reported: symptoms and repeatable conditions​

Multiple independent accounts and community tests converged on a similar set of observable symptoms and circumstantial factors:

• The issue tended to manifest under sustained large writes — commonly reported thresholds were around 50 GB or more written in one continuous operation.
• Affected drives were often already moderately full (community testing flagged ~60% used as a common operating point when failures occurred).
• Symptoms ranged from temporary (drive disappears briefly and is restored after reboot) to severe (drive no longer appears in Windows or BIOS, partition table shows RAW, and data appears lost).
• In some accounts, system logs showed WHEA (Windows Hardware Error Architecture) hardware errors referencing PCIe controllers; in others, heavy I/O caused Windows components such as File Explorer to hang. (bleepingcomputer.com, tomshardware.com)

Those repeating conditions — sustained heavy write and higher fill levels — are useful troubleshooting hints but not definitive proof of causation. They do, however, explain why the issue appears to show up during large game updates or mass file transfers: those are precisely the workloads that stress a drive’s cache and controller behavior.

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Timeline of key responses​

1. Mid-August 2025: Community reports surface after KB5063878 and related preview updates. Early reproduction attempts posted by enthusiasts appear to show a correlation between heavy writes and disappearing drives. (bleepingcomputer.com)
2. August 18–21, 2025: Microsoft acknowledges reports and opens an internal investigation; asks users to submit logs and starts working with storage partners. (bleepingcomputer.com)
3. Late August 2025: Phison, a major SSD-controller vendor implicated in some posts, announces a broad validation program and later reports exhaustive testing across multiple drives. (neowin.net)
4. Late August — Early September 2025: Independent testers publish mixed results — one prominent test claimed 21 drives were exercised and 12 exhibited issues at specific workloads (the sample and methodology have limitations and are not conclusive). (tomshardware.com)
5. Early September 2025: Microsoft posts its conclusion — no measurable connection found between the KB5063878 update and the reported drive failures in its telemetry and internal testing. (bleepingcomputer.com)

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Vendor investigations: Phison and controller testing​

One central thread in the coverage and community debate has been whether specific SSD controller families — particularly some Phison controllers and a few InnoGrit designs — were more frequently implicated. Phison reacted quickly, stating it had dedicated extensive testing resources to investigate the reports. The company later published a status that its validation cycles exceeded 4,500 cumulative hours and included thousands of test cycles; Phison reported it could not reproduce the reported failures and that no partners or customers had reported confirmed cases tied to their controller firmware. Phison also pushed back against a circulated document that purported to list affected controllers, calling it unauthenticated. (neowin.net)
That vendor testing is important and reassuring for customers because controller firmware plays a central role in how SSDs manage write caching, garbage collection, thermal behavior and failure recovery. But vendor testing also has limits: it typically exercises known use cases and firmware versions, and it may not replicate noisy real-world configurations that combine specific motherboards, BIOS/UEFI versions, host drivers (storage drivers, chipset drivers), anti-cheat or anti-malware hooks, and unusual workloads.

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Reproduction attempts and independent testing​

At least one community tester published an independent test that exercised a diverse set of SSDs — the post claimed 21 models were stressed and 12 showed failure modes under the scenario described above. The tester reported that one drive (a WD SA510 2 TB in that sample) became unrecoverable even after reboot. Several other community testers reported transient failures that were recoverable via reboot, Safe Mode operations or partition repairs; a few reported “ghost” files that could only be removed from Safe Boot. (tomshardware.com)
Independent tests are useful for spotting reproducible conditions, but they must be interpreted carefully:

• Sample bias: The selection of drives and firmware versions may not reflect the broader installed base.
• Environmental factors: Motherboard firmware, PCIe lane configuration, power delivery, thermal conditions and host drivers can all affect reproducibility.
• Methodology transparency: Not every community test publishes a reproducible test script, identical firmware baseline, or a controlled environment, which complicates interpretation.
• Statistical significance: A small sample (21 drives) that shows failures on a subgroup can indicate a problem, but it does not prove a universal failure mode across millions of devices.

Given these caveats, independent tests highlight that the observed symptom is real for some users under certain conditions — but they do not yet establish that Microsoft’s KB5063878 caused irreversible hardware damage in the wild or at scale.

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Why Microsoft might not see the same failures in telemetry or lab testing​

Microsoft’s public position is based on three pillars: internal reproduction attempts, telemetry across millions of Windows installations, and collaboration with partners. Those are legitimate and powerful tools, but they are not infallible in every scenario.

• Telemetry sampling: Microsoft aggregates telemetry but may not collect the exact traces needed to correlate an uncommon, workload-triggered failure that happens only under specific disk fill levels and specific host configurations.
• Rarity and timing: A rare hardware or firmware latent defect can coincide with an unrelated update purely by timing; telemetry would show isolated incidents not clustering around the update.
• Reproducibility window: Lab tests are constrained by time and configurations; a failing combination of firmware, BIOS, and driver may be rare enough that it is missed in standard validation matrices.
• User-level reports: Microsoft noted that their customer support teams had not received widespread official support cases matching the severe failure descriptions — social posts can travel faster than formal support channels.

This explains why Microsoft can credibly say its global telemetry and lab tests didn’t reveal an increase in disk failures, while a handful of community and rebuild reports still show troubling results for some machines. Neither position is necessarily wrong; they simply capture different slices of reality. (bleepingcomputer.com, neowin.net)

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Technical hypotheses: what might be happening (and what remains speculative)​

Several plausible technical mechanisms have been proposed by analysts and testers. None are fully proven; the following list summarizes the leading theories:

• Cache exhaustion/host memory buffer interactions: Sustained large writes stress controller caches and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) interactions, especially on DRAM-less drives, potentially exposing edge-case bugs in controller firmware or OS-buffered I/O handling.
• Controller firmware corner cases: A firmware-level bug could manifest only when certain conditions are met (fill level, queued writes, specific command sequences); firmware vendors may need reproductions to craft patches.
• Thermal throttling or misbehavior: Heavy sustained writes raise SSD temperatures; poor cooling combined with aggressive thermal management could produce transient failures that look like device disappearance.
• PCIe link or platform-level anomalies: WHEA log entries referencing PCIe controllers suggest that, in some cases, the host controller or BIOS may have played a role, either independently or as a cofactor.
• Race conditions in the host filesystem or driver stack: An update that touches IO paths could, in theory, change timing or buffer flushing behavior in ways that expose a latent race condition in controller firmware or even in storage drivers.

Crucially, none of these are proven as the definitive root cause for the community-reported failures. The evidence supports an interaction between workload, device state (fill level), and host/firmware behavior — but the direction of causality remains unclear. In particular, vendor testing and Microsoft lab validations so far have not reproduced a deterministic, software-only trigger that would explain mass bricking.

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How real is the risk? A practical risk assessment​

• Likelihood: The publicly visible data points — Microsoft telemetry and vendor testing — suggest the event is rare across the global installed base. At the same time, independent testers and some end users have demonstrated pocket-sized clusters of failures under specific conditions.
• Impact: For affected users, impact can be severe, including data loss and the need to rebuild or replace a drive. The consequence is asymmetrical: low-probability but high-impact.
• Confidence: Confidence in a single-point cause (KB5063878) is low. Confidence that specific sustained workloads can trigger an issue on some drives under particular configurations is moderate.

Taken together, the prudent position for most users is to treat the incident as a rare but serious edge-case: worth monitoring and taking commonsense precautions to reduce exposure.

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Practical guidance for consumers and power users​

If you are running Windows 11 24H2 and have installed KB5063878, follow these practical steps to reduce risk and to respond if you observe problems.
Key precautions (immediate)

• Back up critical data now. Use an external disk or cloud storage for irreplaceable files.
• Avoid massive single-file transfers (50 GB+ in one operation) to a drive that is already more than ~60% full. Split large transfers into smaller batches until the situation is clearer. (bleepingcomputer.com)
• If you haven’t installed the update and you are managing a single-user or non-critical machine, consider pausing Windows Update for a short period while monitoring official guidance.
• Keep SSD firmware and motherboard/UEFI firmware up to date. Vendors occasionally release microcode or firmware fixes that resolve controller edge cases.

If you hit the problem (recovery checklist)

1. Reboot the machine — many community reports indicate drives sometimes reappear after a restart.
2. Check Disk Management and Device Manager for whether the device is enumerated; if it shows up as unknown or RAW, avoid writing to it.
3. Run vendor utilities (for example, manufacturer’s SSD toolbox) from bootable USB or another OS if possible to inspect SMART and firmware.
4. If the drive is accessible but file system is corrupted, create an image/clone immediately (do not perform risky operations) and then attempt partition repair (chkdsk, fsutil, vendor tools) on the image.
5. If a drive is not recognized in BIOS, stop and seek professional data recovery — further tinkering can make recovery harder.
6. For “ghost” files that won’t delete, community reports indicate Safe Boot Minimal or Safe Mode has sometimes allowed deletion. Proceed cautiously and image the drive first if the data is valuable. (tomshardware.com)

How to uninstall KB5063878 (if you choose to)

• Microsoft’s cumulative updates include a servicing stack update (SSU) which can complicate uninstall. Community guides show a series of steps through Windows Settings → Update history → Uninstall updates, and some users reported needing to disable Windows Sandbox to complete the uninstall due to a specific uninstall error (0x800F0825). Carefully follow vendor guidance and create a backup before attempting uninstallation. Official support pages describe the update details and known issues. (support.microsoft.com, pureinfotech.com)

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Advice for enterprises and IT managers​

• Pause rollouts for non-critical systems until more definitive findings are public, or stage the update using rings and monitor telemetry.
• Collect full diagnostic bundles from any affected machines, including Event Viewer logs (WHEA entries), system crash dumps, storage controller event logs and SSD vendor logs; these are invaluable to Microsoft and to SSD vendors.
• Use WSUS, SCCM, or your update-management tooling to defer or block KB5063878 where necessary.
• If you must install the update widely, consider adding extra monitoring around disk health (SMART telemetry), and avoid scheduling large bulk file transfers immediately after patching.

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Critique of responses: Microsoft, vendors, and the community​

• Microsoft: The company’s decision to rely on telemetry and lab repro attempts is reasonable; large vendors must avoid overreacting to noise. However, the public-facing messaging left some users unsatisfied because a negative result ("no connection found") can feel dismissive when some machines apparently failed. Microsoft’s ask for detailed logs and Feedback Hub entries is necessary, but the company could improve transparency by publishing more granular reproduction attempts or by coordinating a public test harness with vendors and community testers.
• Vendors (Phison and others): Phison’s exhaustive internal testing is a strong counterpoint to alarmist narratives. The company’s suggestion of thermal best practices is sensible. Still, vendor statements do not replace real-world confirmation that an observed failure mode is impossible; they simply report what they could reproduce in lab conditions.
• Community testers: Enthusiasts performed valuable work to expose an edge-case workload; their transparency in describing methodology would help vendors and Microsoft reproduce and fix issues. At the same time, small-sample tests should be treated as signals rather than definitive proof.

Overall, the response ecosystem is doing what it should: vendors and Microsoft are testing, the community is surfacing edge cases, and users are sharing mitigations. What’s missing is a single, authoritative reproduction and fix that definitively ties the failure mode to a root cause and closure.

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What to watch for next​

• Firmware updates from SSD manufacturers that address edge-case cache or recovery behavior.
• Kernel or driver hotfixes from Microsoft if a host-side interaction is found responsible.
• A public reproducible test case (script, workload, hardware list) that vendors and Microsoft can execute to pinpoint root cause.
• Any new service alert or Known Issue Rollback (KIR) entry from Microsoft addressing storage behavior related to the August updates. (support.microsoft.com)

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Bottom line​

The evidence to date suggests a small, real subset of users can experience severe SSD problems during heavy write workloads after installing recent Windows 11 updates; yet broad telemetry and vendor validation so far have not identified a systemic or reproducible update-driven failure across the field. That dual reality — isolated but serious reports alongside large-scale negative results — is frustrating but not uncommon in complex software–hardware ecosystems.
Pragmatically: back up your data, avoid extreme single-shot bulk writes on nearly full SSDs for the moment, keep firmware and drivers current, and file a detailed Feedback Hub or support case if you observe the issue. Microsoft and major controller vendors are engaged, and their combined testing suggests the global risk is low — but for those who handle high-value data or manage fleets, the risk is meaningful enough to justify precautionary measures until a definitive root cause and fix are published. (bleepingcomputer.com, neowin.net, tomshardware.com)

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Source: windowslatest.com Microsoft issues a fresh statement on Windows 11 update SSD corruption reports