Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 cumulative update has been linked by multiple community tests and vendor advisories to a storage regression that, under specific conditions, can make some NVMe SSDs disappear during large sustained writes — risking data corruption or loss — and has reignited a debate about staged rollouts, firmware preparedness, and how to protect users with at‑risk drives. raced after the August cumulative rollup for Windows 11 (24H2), distributed as KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946). Community reproductions show a reliable failure mode: during sustained large sequential writes (community tests commonly cite a threshold near ~50 GB), the target NVMe drive can stop responding, vanish from the operating system, and leave files written during the failure window incomplete or corrupted. Reboot often restores visibility temporarily, but the same workload can trigger the failure again.
Early reporting also caught a related but the 24H2 feature update: certain Western Digital and SanDisk DRAM‑less NVMe models suffered BSODs tied to Host Memory Buffer (HMB) allocation behavior. Microsoft and vendors have treated these symptoms separately but they overlap in the impacted hardware families and in the urgency of remediation.
This article explains what’s happening, who’s at risk, how to t l mitigation and recovery steps for both consumers and IT administrators — including safe ways to roll back or block the update, firmware and driver remediation, and how to minimize the chance of data loss.
Immediate actions for maximum safety are straightforward: back up, avoid heavy sequential writesed drives, check and apply vendor firmware where recommended, and use rollback or update‑management tools in production gistry hacks as temporary, for advanced users only, and prioritize vendor‑sanctioned firmware fixes and Microsoft remediation once published.
inder that even mature update processes can interact unpredictably with diverse hardware ecosystems. The best defense ispolicies for mission‑critical machines, disciplined backups, and checking vendor and Microsoft advisories before executing large or irreversible tasks on newly patched systems.
If you suspect your drive has been affected, prioritize imaging and vendor support over repeated experiments — preserving evidence improves the chance of recovery and helps vendors and Microsoft identify and e
Source: Gagadget.com Latest Windows 11 update kills some SSDs - who's at risk and what to do
Early reporting also caught a related but the 24H2 feature update: certain Western Digital and SanDisk DRAM‑less NVMe models suffered BSODs tied to Host Memory Buffer (HMB) allocation behavior. Microsoft and vendors have treated these symptoms separately but they overlap in the impacted hardware families and in the urgency of remediation.
This article explains what’s happening, who’s at risk, how to t l mitigation and recovery steps for both consumers and IT administrators — including safe ways to roll back or block the update, firmware and driver remediation, and how to minimize the chance of data loss.
What exactly is failing?
Symptom profile (what users report)
- The SSD disappears mid‑write from File Explorer, Disk Management, and Device Manager.
- SMART or controller telemetry becomes unreadable to host utilities.
- Files written during the failure window may be truncated, incomplete, or otherwise corrupted.
- Reboot sometimes restores the drive temporarily; some reports describe drives remaining inaccessible even after reboot.
- The failure is most reliably reproduced during sustained, large sequential writes — examples include large game downloads, bulk file copies, archive extraction, cloning, or media exports.
Probable technical fingerprint
Community testing points to an interaction between Windows I/O/driver bh and particular SSD controller/firmware combinations under sustained sequential loads. The observable behavior is consistent with a controller stall, host/driver timing fault, or resource-management regression that makes the device effectively offline while still electrically present on the bus. In many reproducible cases the controller reinitializes after a reboot; in some cases vendor firmware has proven to fix the underlying controller-handling bug.Who is at risk?
At‑risk device types and scenarios
- NVMe SSDs with particular controller families (community testind some DRAM‑less controller configurations) appear most vulnerable to the sustained-write regression.
- Users performing large sequential writes (≥ ~50 GB) — gamers installing large titles, content creators exporting media, backup/cloning jobs, or masesk.
- Systems that received the August cumulative update (KB5063878 / Build 26100.4946) are the primary focus of current community reproductions; the symptom set is not necessarily limited to WD/Sanrs may also be affected on particular firmware versions.
Models and vendors called out in the field
- Reports and vendor threads called out Western Digital (WD) Black SN770 / SN770M, WD Blue SN580 and other WD/SanDisk models during the earlier 24H2 rollout where HMB als. However, the large‑write disappearance regression linked to KB5063878 affects an overlapping but not identical set of controller/firmware combinations; Phison‑based drives and DRAM‑less designs have come up frequently in tests.
How to tell whether the update is installed and you’re exposed
- Check Windows build: Run winver or open Settings → System → About. If your build matches or lists KB5063878 (OS Build 26100.4946) you have the patch applied.
- Confirm device activity: If you routinely dnstalls, archive extraction, video exports), exercise caution until your drive firmware and Windows build are validated. Community reproductions typically trigger after sustained writes around ~50 GB.
- Inspect SSD model/firmware: board or a diagnostic tool to note the SSD model and firmware version. If a vendor has published a firmware advisory for your model, follow their recommended update steps after backing up.
Immediate practical mitigation (what to do right now)
The fastest way toreduce the workload that reproduces the failure and to ensure your drive firmware is up to date.- Back up critical data now to an independent device or cloud. This is the single most important step — if the drive fails while writing, files ian be lost.
- Avoid sustained large sequential writes on NVMe drives until either vendor firmware or an official Windows remediation is confirmed. Examples to avoid: large game installs, mass copies, disk cloning, bulk archive extraction, large media exports.
- Check vendor dashboards (WD Dashboard, SanDisk SSD Dashboard, vendor utilities for Phison‑based drives) and apply *vare updates — but only after backing up, because firmware flashes have their own small risk of failure. Vendor firmware updates have fixed related controller regressions historically.
- If you experience a disappearance mid‑write: power down the maent (timestamp, what you were copying, logs from Event Viewer), and contact vendor support. If the data is critical, image the drive before attempting aggressive recovery.
Workarounds: registry tweak, rollback, and blocking updates
1. Temporary registry tweak (for HMB-related BSOD cases)
For the BSODs linked toMB) allocation (primarily earlier 24H2 symptom set affecting DRAM‑less WD/SanDisk models), community workarounds limited HMB allocation or disabled it via Registry edits. This is an advanced, risk‑bearing change: back up the registry and data before proceeding. path mentioned in community guidance:- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device
2. Rolling back the update (consumer path)
If you installed the update in the past 10 days, Windows’ built‑in rollback allows reverting to the prior feature update (23H2) from Settings → System → Recovery → Go back. Use this only if the rollback option is available and you understand you may lose settings installed since the upgrade. This is often the fastest route to restore stability in user reports.3. Uninstalling a cumulative LCU (advanceds delivered as a combined SSU + LCU package; standard wusa /uninstall may not remove the LCU. For administrators who must remove the LCU, Microsoft documents using DISM /Remove‑Package or using update management tooling to roll back the LCU portion. Production environments should use WSUS/SCCM or MDM controls rather than manual mass uninstalls.
4. Blocking or staging via management tools (enterprise)
ITd:- Pause broad deployment of the KB across fleets.
- Stage the update against representative hardware and run large‑write workloads as part of validation.
- Use WSUS, SCCM, Intune, or other management tools to hold the update pending vendor verification.
- Collect telemetry (Event Viewer, system logs, SMART dumps) and vendor diagnostics if a drive fails; imaging the device preserves forensic evidence.eps if a drive fails or becomes inaccessible
- Power off the system immediately and preserve the state. Rapid power cycles can make forensic recovery harder.
- Record timestamps, the exact operation in progress, and any error messages or Event Viewer entries. These details help vendor diagnostics.
- If the data is critical, image the drive as soon as possible with a block‑level imager. Imaging preserves the data for forensic recovery and vendor analysis.
- Contact the SSD vendor’s supogs, and reproduction steps. Vendors may request SMART dumps, firmware version, and full event logs.
What Microsoft and vendors are doing (and the limits of public informa been made aware of the reports and has mechanisms (Known Issue Rollback, staged re-releases, and update blocks) to mitigate widespread impact whtinue. In some cases Microsoft applied deployment blocks or re-released packages for managed channels after encountering enterprise deployment regressions.
- SSDally released firmware updates when controller/firmware interactions with host OS changes cause regressions. For the earlier 24H2 HMB BSOD episode, WD and Saupdates and posted advisories; similar vendor action is the expected path for the large‑write disappearance regression when a controller firmware bug is implicated. Users should monitor vendor tool dashboards for model‑specific firmware updates.
Risk analysis — strengths, gaps, and potential long-term effects
Strengths in the response so far
- Rapid community triage and reproduction narrowed the failure profile to sustained large writes, which is actionable for both consumers and admins who can avoid those workloads.
- Vendor tools and firmware update mechanisms exist and hav controller bugs effectively.
- Enterprise update management (WSUS/SCCM/Intune) enables staged rollouts and selective blocking while investigations proceed.
Gaps and risks
- Public vendor/Microsoft communications initially lag community reports; when details are sparse, users must rely on scard‑party tests to make high‑stakes decisions. This creates confusion and increases the likelihood of data loss if users don’t immediately back up.
- Workload sensitivity complicates reproducibility in diverse environments; a drive that passes usual desktop workloads may still fail during sfer. This makes “safe” classification of masses of drives challenging until firmware updates or Microsoft fixes astry workarounds and manual firmware flashing carry their own risks; inexperienced users attempting fixes are exposed to accidentack up first.
Broader implications
This episode illustrates the fragile boundary between operating‑system upgrades and device firmware compatibility. As OS vendors introduce more aggressive performance optimizations or memory-management changes, SSD controller firmware must be maintained to match new hoststry response model — rapid vendor firmware updates coordinated with Microsoft’s staging and rollback tooling — remains the most practical fix, but it depends on timely communication and widespread adoption of firmware updates by end users.Practical checklist: what every Windows 11 ow
- Back up critical files to an external drive or a trusted cloud provider now. This is non‑negotiable.
- Check Windows build (winver) for KB5063878 / Build 26100.494ng heavy write tasks on NVMe drives if the patch is present.
- Use your SSD vendor’s dashboard to check firmware; follow vendor guidance for firmware updates after backing up.
- If you manage multiple devices, stage the update, run large‑write tests, and use update management to withhold KB5063878 until validated.
- If a drive disappears during a write: power down, document, image if data is critical, and contact vendor support.
Final assessment and closing guidance
The community and vendor signals are strong: KB5063878 introduced a t, under sustained large writes and on certain controller/firmware combinations, can cause NVMe drives to become unresponsive and risk file corruption. Multiple independent reproductios make this a credible and actionable incident.Immediate actions for maximum safety are straightforward: back up, avoid heavy sequential writesed drives, check and apply vendor firmware where recommended, and use rollback or update‑management tools in production gistry hacks as temporary, for advanced users only, and prioritize vendor‑sanctioned firmware fixes and Microsoft remediation once published.
inder that even mature update processes can interact unpredictably with diverse hardware ecosystems. The best defense ispolicies for mission‑critical machines, disciplined backups, and checking vendor and Microsoft advisories before executing large or irreversible tasks on newly patched systems.
If you suspect your drive has been affected, prioritize imaging and vendor support over repeated experiments — preserving evidence improves the chance of recovery and helps vendors and Microsoft identify and e
Source: Gagadget.com Latest Windows 11 update kills some SSDs - who's at risk and what to do
