(Credit: Joseph Maldonado/PCMag)
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UPDATE 8/29: Microsoft has found no evidence that a recent Windows 11 update can corrupt a PC’s SSD. Taiwanese memory component supplier Phison also said it couldn’t reproduce the issue after 4,500 cumulative testing hours.
Original Story:
It took a few days, but Microsoft has confirmed that it's investigating reports of a Windows 11 security update causing SSD drives to disappear from a user’s PC.
"We're aware of these reports and are investigating with our partners,” the company tells PCMag.
The problems involve the Windows 11 24H2 update, KB5063878, which began rolling out last Tuesday, mainly to address an issue about sign-in delays on new devices. Since updating, some users have noticed major errors with SSD storage drives.
“Had my Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD disappear under normal operation today after this update,” wrote one user on Reddit. Others reports that the update caused their PC to freeze or crash.
“The drive is completely unresponsive, it shows up as unallocated space, but I can't initialize it to be able to do anything with it,” wrote another user.
A PC builder in Japan initially brought up the problem after also discovering the update caused SSD drives to disappear from the Windows 11 OS. Importantly, the issue appears “on SSDs with over 60% usage after approximately 50GB of continuous writing,” @Necoru_cat wrote. That’s a problem if you’re downloading and installing a major software package, such as a PC game.
As a result, the PC community is warning others to avoid the update. Windows 11 has been installing it automatically, although you can roll back the update.
Others users have not encountered any problems. We tried to replicate the issue but have not experienced any major SSD failures thus far.
In the meantime, Phison, a Taiwanese provider of controllers for SSD drives, is also investigating the issue. “Regarding the Windows 11 updates, current online testing reports show this may impact storage devices from multiple vendors, and span across both SSDs and HDDs,” the company says. “We are working closely with Microsoft to help resolve this matter.”
Japanese publication NichePCGamer also compiled a list of SSD drives from users that’ve encountered the problem.