New Windows Update could brick your SSD

[jaybee]

This thread is like Borris Johnson's speech about COVID and staying at home. What a bunch of muddled information.

Might be a bug not a bug.
Might be Phison not Phison.
Might affect certain drives but can affect all drives.
Affects AMD but doesn't affect AMD.
Caused by Microsoft update not caused by Microsoft update.

Please all take the relevant precautions and ensure you are up to date with updates, but of course, use due diligence and avoid all updates.

 

[Thekwango]

This thread is like Borris Johnson's speech about COVID and staying at home. What a bunch of muddled information.

Might be a bug not a bug.
Might be Phison not Phison.
Might affect certain drives but can affect all drives.
Affects AMD but doesn't affect AMD.
Caused by Microsoft update not caused by Microsoft update.

Please all take the relevant precautions and ensure you are up to date with updates, but of course, use due diligence and avoid all updates.

aye, i've just read all 60 odd posts and i'm none the wiser now as when i started

 

[Uther]

aye, i've just read all 60 odd posts and i'm none the wiser now as when i started

Uninstall that security update, pause updates and cross your fingers seems to be the advice.

 

[deviation]

I've just been hit by this on a Samsung 990. I was downloading the new Mechwarrior 5 DLC from EGS when the SSD slowed right down and then vanished. The PC auto-restarted and couldn't find a boot drive. After a full power cycle, it came back. Pretty much exactly the same progression as J2C saw.

I think some of the original bug reports were misleading. They pointed to a specific controller and said it was related to downloading 50+ gigs.

It seems to affect all drives and it looks like it can occur in a range of scenarios, possibly where both CPU and disk usage are high.

And it's no surprise MS's telemetry couldn't measure it. You can't save an error report to a drive that your PC can't detect.

Thanks for your input, at least we know this is a real thing now, regardless of what hardware it occurs on, it's happening to people. So the more information that we can gather, helps us all.

This thread is like Borris Johnson's speech about COVID and staying at home. What a bunch of muddled information.

Might be a bug not a bug.
Might be Phison not Phison.
Might affect certain drives but can affect all drives.
Affects AMD but doesn't affect AMD.
Caused by Microsoft update not caused by Microsoft update.

Please all take the relevant precautions and ensure you are up to date with updates, but of course, use due diligence and avoid all updates.

aye, i've just read all 60 odd posts and i'm none the wiser now as when i started

Well that was rude of both of you?
I'm trying to help people with the limited information that's provided online regarding this issue, and updating it as and when I find more information? It isn't exactly my fault no-one has a definitive solution or list of everything it affects?

The arrogance of some people!

 

[darael]

This thread is like Borris Johnson's speech about COVID and staying at home. What a bunch of muddled information.

Might be a bug not a bug.
Might be Phison not Phison.
Might affect certain drives but can affect all drives.
Affects AMD but doesn't affect AMD.
Caused by Microsoft update not caused by Microsoft update.

Please all take the relevant precautions and ensure you are up to date with updates, but of course, use due diligence and avoid all updates.

This is a bug that is probably introduced by the latest Windows 11 updates. It first appeared to affect SSDs that use Phison controllers, but, it later turns out that most, if not all, SSDs are affected, regardless of the controller used. A common factor appears to be AMD systems just now - but it may turn out that more systems are affected, so heed caution. Best practice is to uninstall the KB5063878 and KB5062660 updates and pause Windows Update until the fault has been properly acknowledged and fixed. It would also be wise to keep regular backups, whether or not you have the aforementioned updates installed - we all know how Microsoft like to force updates on it's users, whether they want them or not.

The above is currently best way I can summarise the situation and advice right now.

 

[Rogueywon]

I would look in the Application and System Event Logs in the moments leading up to the drive disappearing and see if that reveals anything.

Absolutely nothing - the "slow crash" happens, I assume, because Windows can run off what's stored in memory for a few seconds. There's no drive there to write events to.

 

[jaybee]

Thanks for your input, at least we know this is a real thing now, regardless of what hardware it occurs on, it's happening to people. So the more information that we can gather, helps us all.




Well that was rude of both of you?
I'm trying to help people with the limited information that's provided online regarding this issue, and updating it as and when I find more information? It isn't exactly my fault no-one has a definitive solution or list of everything it affects?

The arrogance of some people!

Chill.
I appreciate it but first of all the thread title is false. It doesn't brick SSDs.
Secondly your opening sentence is apparently now false.
Might be worth updating those surely?

 

[leezer3]

If you want a blunt opinion:
There's absolutely no bug, never has been.
Install the patch, or not, it'll make absolutely no difference to you.

Sometimes drives / boards die. They always have done, always will do, often randomly and without warning. SSDs are worse for this, simply due to the nature of what they are.
Now, a couple of iffy tech channels have started the classic rumour mill running with absolutely no data.

Even the posters on here have *absolutely* no concrete data supporting anything other than the normal occasional death / glitch of a drive.
Absolutely to be expected with the sample size we've got here (~3k people online, countless posts per day...)

 

[Thekwango]

Well that was rude of both of you?

Rude?? Give yourself a shake fella, it was a joke. And just because the thread is a mess of counter information doesn’t mean anyone is having a pop at you for posting the thread!

 

[deviation]

Chill.
I appreciate it but first of all the thread title is false. It doesn't brick SSDs.
Secondly your opening sentence is apparently now false.
Might be worth updating those surely?

The thread title was named after the video linked's original title. What do you want me to rename it to?

Rude?? Give yourself a shake fella, it was a joke. And just because the thread is a mess of counter information doesn’t mean anyone is having a pop at you for posting the thread!

Ok, well I thought you were slating me the OP, for starting the thread based on the limited information I could find at the time - I just thought it was worth doing to potential save someone loosing their work/data, and that it could help and be updated as more information became available.
But if it wasn't a digg at me, then fair enough.

 

[Thekwango]

Ok, well I thought you were slating me the OP, for starting the thread based on the limited information I could find at the time - I just thought it was worth doing to potential save someone loosing their work/data, and that it could help and be updated as more information became available.
But if it wasn't a digg at me, then fair enough

nah wasn't having a dig at you at all dude - just making a joke about how the thread had become a mish mash of info and counter info without really providing any real 'answers' as such. that ain't on you dude, that's just the nature of the beast when potentially odd/niche issues arise with pc's.

even if it ultimately turns out to be a mountain out of a molehill scenario, there was nowt wrong with bringing it to peoples attention. if any one does/did intentionally have a pop at you as the op (no idea why they would) i'd suggest just to ignore the haters my friend

 

[deviation]

nah wasn't having a dig at you at all dude - just making a joke about how the thread had become a mish mash of info and counter info without really providing any real 'answers' as such. that ain't on you dude, that's just the nature of the beast when potentially odd/niche issues arise with pc's.

even if it ultimately turns out to be a mountain out of a molehill scenario, there was nowt wrong with bringing it to peoples attention. if any one does/did intentionally have a pop at you as the op (no idea why they would) i'd suggest just to ignore the haters my friend

Ah no worries then
You know what it's like when people shoot the messenger and expect them to have all the answers lol. So I thought that was being done to me.
Thanks, I'm glad you did appreciate it

 

[Rogueywon]

If you want a blunt opinion:
There's absolutely no bug, never has been.
Install the patch, or not, it'll make absolutely no difference to you.

Sometimes drives / boards die. They always have done, always will do, often randomly and without warning. SSDs are worse for this, simply due to the nature of what they are.
Now, a couple of iffy tech channels have started the classic rumour mill running with absolutely no data.

Even the posters on here have *absolutely* no concrete data supporting anything other than the normal occasional death / glitch of a drive.
Absolutely to be expected with the sample size we've got here (~3k people online, countless posts per day...)

I'm not sure about that. I've had an SSD die on me before, about 3 years ago. When that happened, the drive was still visible in the UEFI - it just wasn't usable. No amount of power-cycling made it work again.

What we've seen in the last few weeks is a spate of SSDs experiencing the exact same symptoms - suddenly becoming completely invisible to the system during use and then becoming visible again after a full power cycle. That's really odd behaviour and for so many people to be experiencing it at once all of a sudden feels weird.

I don't think the initial alert that went out on this, which very specifically linked it to Phison controllers and transfers of 50GB, helped anybody. It's clear now the issue isn't that simple and I think this allowed MS and Phison to give a premature "all clear".

I've done multiple transfers of more than 50GB to (and between) my two SSDs since this problem was first reported with no issues. What triggered it was an 18GB download from EGS, which was doing that weird "download a chunk, decompress a chunk" spurt that EGS downloads sometimes do.

 

[leezer3]

Whilst you may be right, I'm afraid this whole thread smacks strongly of confirmation bias and sn absolute fuss over nothing.

I've seen SSDs, and for that matter HDDs drop off completely many times before- This is not by any means an unheard of phenomenon.
Just stick SSD (or HDD) dropping offline into your favourite search engine, and you'll see this happening constantly with the exact same symptoms- My first page of results has a StackOverflow question from 2012 with identical symptoms.....

The classic solution to all of a computers ills since time immemorial has been the complete power cycle

 

[CuriousTomCat]

This issue is real. I've dealt with it on two separate customer machines this week.

Gaming PC – 4TB Samsung 980 Pro (Elpis Controller)

- Stable in Windows until writing large chunks of data
- Crashes with WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

Gaming Laptop – 1TB Kingston NV2 (Phison E21T Controller)

- Crashes with - INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

KB5063878 couldn’t be uninstalled, and there were no restore points available.

Workaround:

I cloned the NV2 to a 1TB Kingston NV3 (different controller). That allowed me to boot into Windows. It eventually blue screened again with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE but at least I had a working environment to troubleshoot. To reduce disk I/O, I disabled all non-essential services and startup programs. After hitting a brick wall, I downloaded the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft and installed it over the top while preserving the customer’s programs and files. Unfortunately, KB5063878 had been slipstreamed into the ISO, so the issue persisted. Luckily, I had a June ISO without KB5063878. I installed it over the top, while again, retaining the customer’s programs and files. After that, I carefully installed updates and used WuShowhide.diagcab to block KB5063878 as soon as it appeared. I also blocked the follow-up update it tried to push. I then cloned it back to the original 1 TB Kingston NV2 SSD and it worked.
No issues since.

This isn’t anecdotal - it’s repeatable, controller-specific, and disruptive. If you’re seeing similar symptoms, check your SSD controller and block KB5063878 before it takes your system down. Happy to share more details or logs if it helps others confirm the pattern.

 

[Rogueywon]

One thing I've noticed from the anecdotal stuff online - this seems to be hitting gaming PCs rather than general-use ones. I'm wondering if the culprit is something gaming related.

While it's very unlikely, wouldn't it be a perfect twist in the Nvidia drivers saga if it turned out they'd managed to produce a set that made SSDs drop out?

 

[darael]

@CuriousTomCat
What CPU and chipset were both the machines using? I'm curious to see if they were AMD, Intel or perhaps both.

I've a couple of spare SSD drives, but I don't know what controllers they use from the top of my head. I might tinker with any with Phison controllers, the latest Windows 11 and large amounts of writes (ie: torrents) to see what happens.

 

[jaybee]

This issue is real. I've dealt with it on two separate customer machines this week.

Gaming PC – 4TB Samsung 980 Pro (Elpis Controller)

- Stable in Windows until writing large chunks of data
- Crashes with WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

Gaming Laptop – 1TB Kingston NV2 (Phison E21T Controller)

- Crashes with - INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

KB5063878 couldn’t be uninstalled, and there were no restore points available.

Workaround:

I cloned the NV2 to a 1TB Kingston NV3 (different controller). That allowed me to boot into Windows. It eventually blue screened again with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE but at least I had a working environment to troubleshoot. To reduce disk I/O, I disabled all non-essential services and startup programs. After hitting a brick wall, I downloaded the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft and installed it over the top while preserving the customer’s programs and files. Unfortunately, KB5063878 had been slipstreamed into the ISO, so the issue persisted. Luckily, I had a June ISO without KB5063878. I installed it over the top, while again, retaining the customer’s programs and files. After that, I carefully installed updates and used WuShowhide.diagcab to block KB5063878 as soon as it appeared. I also blocked the follow-up update it tried to push. I then cloned it back to the original 1 TB Kingston NV2 SSD and it worked.
No issues since.

This isn’t anecdotal - it’s repeatable, controller-specific, and disruptive. If you’re seeing similar symptoms, check your SSD controller and block KB5063878 before it takes your system down. Happy to share more details or logs if it helps others confirm the pattern.

Can you post full system specs of each including BIOS versions?
Do you know if a large number of writes to the SSD occured around the time of the issues?

 

[AthlonXP1800]

This issue is real. I've dealt with it on two separate customer machines this week.

Gaming PC – 4TB Samsung 980 Pro (Elpis Controller)

- Stable in Windows until writing large chunks of data
- Crashes with WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

Gaming Laptop – 1TB Kingston NV2 (Phison E21T Controller)

- Crashes with - INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
- No event logs captured
- SSD disappears from BIOS post-crash
- Requires full power cycle to restore visibility
- Issue reproducible consistently

KB5063878 couldn’t be uninstalled, and there were no restore points available.

Workaround:

I cloned the NV2 to a 1TB Kingston NV3 (different controller). That allowed me to boot into Windows. It eventually blue screened again with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE but at least I had a working environment to troubleshoot. To reduce disk I/O, I disabled all non-essential services and startup programs. After hitting a brick wall, I downloaded the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft and installed it over the top while preserving the customer’s programs and files. Unfortunately, KB5063878 had been slipstreamed into the ISO, so the issue persisted. Luckily, I had a June ISO without KB5063878. I installed it over the top, while again, retaining the customer’s programs and files. After that, I carefully installed updates and used WuShowhide.diagcab to block KB5063878 as soon as it appeared. I also blocked the follow-up update it tried to push. I then cloned it back to the original 1 TB Kingston NV2 SSD and it worked.
No issues since.

This isn’t anecdotal - it’s repeatable, controller-specific, and disruptive. If you’re seeing similar symptoms, check your SSD controller and block KB5063878 before it takes your system down. Happy to share more details or logs if it helps others confirm the pattern.

What your gaming PC and laptop specs or brands and models?

Microsoft issues a fresh statement on Windows 11 update SSD corruption reports

Microsoft issues a fresh statement on Windows 11 SSD corruption reports, denying that a recent update is at fault.

www.windowslatest.com

“I have a Crucial T710 2TB, and I also suffered a glitch. Not as serious, but nevertheless, a glitch. I tried transferring a 151GB file; it failed, and it lingered in my SSD as a ‘ghost’ file. I could not delete it, access it, or anything. After 3 attempts, I was able to delete it via Safe Boot Minimal,” another tester told Windows Latest.

Can you test install KB5063878 update again and see if you can boot into Windows with Safe Boot Minimal from msconfig?

Safe Boot Minimal loaded only 3 drivers keyboard, mouse and display drivers.

Maybe some other device drivers did not liked KB5063878 update or outdated drivers could have nasty bugs conflicted with KB5063878 when latest drivers fixed bugs have no issue with KB5063878.

 

[leezer3]

One thing I've noticed from the anecdotal stuff online - this seems to be hitting gaming PCs rather than general-use ones. I'm wondering if the culprit is something gaming related.

While it's very unlikely, wouldn't it be a perfect twist in the Nvidia drivers saga if it turned out they'd managed to produce a set that made SSDs drop out?

First point of order on gaming PCs- They're much more likely to be overclocked.

That oddly enough reduces general stability, and I remember plenty of 'stable' PCs having random crashes when Win10 was first introduced until the overclocks were backed off.