Un-clickbaiting the title: an update to Windows 11 exposes a flaw in poorly built firmware of certain mass storage devices.
throwaway290 · 17m ago
Yeah, including enterprise grade SSDs and HDDs;)
If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly.
The best they can do to save their ass is say "actually you know what these SSD and HDD are all incompatible with W11" and start a new hardware certification program.
So... WD/SanDisk only tested the SN770’s firmware with then-contemporary Windows, different behaviour from Linux/ZoL led to breakage, and now Windows too has changed its behaviour enough to expose the breakage?
(I’m still wondering if the successor, SN7100, is affected, as it’s not mentioned in that thread either way. The upmarket DRAMful SN850X seems not to be affected.)
Or not? The bug here looks different from that one, which the same outlet reported[1] on earlier.
Is this actually breaking the drives or just making particular files on that particular partition un-readable by Windows? Stated another way: Could a system that dual-boots Linux and Windows actually brick the drives system-wide by what Windows is doing?
gruez · 17m ago
Nobody really knows. The entire article hinges on a random post from twitter. It doesn't even try to corroborate it with third party accounts.
qwertytyyuu · 1h ago
Again? I swear this has happened before
jrs235 · 23m ago
Great. So this might be the cause of ally problems. I just happen to cloning drives to swap out with a larger one and Windows 11 is so slow. Also seems there were issues found that needing fixing after cloning.
dataflow · 17m ago
What actions can we take here? Is there a list of the particular drives that would be affected by this?
elorant · 36m ago
Just a reminder to switch to Linux in October when win10 reaches EOL.
1over137 · 28m ago
Or a BSD :)
igtztorrero · 35m ago
The most basic thing an operating system should do is keep your files and information safe. Microsoft Windows has been steadily declining in that direction. It's time to punish them and let them see the consequences. It's time to switch to Linux Debian or Ubuntu.
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
>The issue purportedly surfaces during heavy write operations to certain NVMe SSDs as well as HDDs, especially when continuous sustained writes approach 50 GB on drives and exceed 60 per cent controller usage.
bobmcnamara · 56m ago
Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.
throwaway290 · 27m ago
Well. Ballmer said it back when MS needed them to train the LLMs after all. it was a different time!
wistleblowanon · 1h ago
Another real reason not to move to 11. Thank you Microsoft.
lucb1e · 26m ago
This was being downvoted, but there is actually research showing a link between code age and security bugs: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s... "Code matures and gets safer with time, exponentially, making the returns on investments like rewrites diminish over time as code gets older."
Not an argument for staying on an unsupported OS, but an argument for staying on a stable release as long as possible if you prefer stability over features
tropicalfruit · 1h ago
yep bricked my beelink SER9 which I had for 8 months only
and i see the same error under windows update on my backup pc now:
2025-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 24H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5063878) (26100.4946)
Failed to install on 17/08/2025 - 0x80073712
articles says August but I had this update stuck on failed for 2 months. bricked last pc now waiting for it to brick my current one.
how long does it take MS to fix something..
alecco · 54m ago
> how long does it take MS to fix something..
I wouldn't be surprised if the related dev/QA teams were part of recent layoffs/offshoring.
mikestew · 45m ago
Microsoft famously got rid of their test teams something like ten years ago.
tempodox · 1h ago
Until hell freezes over?
lazide · 1h ago
Honestly, I’ve seen a concerning behavior where the failures seem to escalate and get worse over time.
Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now.
Weird stuff like nearly impossible to find/configure network connections? Worse over time.
It’s like whatever criteria the MS PM’s are using is prioritizing ‘engagement’ (aka how frustrated and angry someone gets at the OS) over anything else.
vachina · 8m ago
Microsoft don’t sell OS now. They sell their services using Windows as a platform. Naturally Windows is going to stagnate.
kotaKat · 1h ago
> Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now.
I'm finding it super concerning that it seems like Microsoft isn't even pushing driver updates properly nowadays. Everything just sits as an 'optional update' hidden away buried under a couple more menus, and the latest drivers are jumbled in the list, and you can't tell which driver is for which device.
And that's how I discovered my WiFi was breaking out of the box because Microsoft had newer drivers they didn't push down...
ksec · 1h ago
Neowin. My old account is from 2001. Although I stopped reading around 2010 when I found them too Anti-Apple and extremely Pro Microsoft. But there seems to be a surge in submission and I am not sure if it is good enough for HN.
No comments yet
dboreham · 1h ago
Reading the article, the headline is inaccurate/wrong: the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates. This Windows update happens to include an application that can generate such a workload.
rikafurude21 · 1h ago
Why blame the crappy SSDs when the issue seems to be that Microsoft doesnt care about their low end users and happily deploys apps which creates work loads that can literally break hardware? Even if it doesnt break your hardware, why deploy something so bloated?
BenjiWiebe · 1h ago
If your software can break your hardware on a normal PC (not talking industrial robots or something), your hardware is flawed.
gchamonlive · 1h ago
While this is largely true, that's no excuse for a system such as Windows to brick SSDs like that. It's still by far the most popular operating system despite Microsoft's best efforts into enshitifying it.
Windows is therefore going to be used by a wide variety of systems, including those with low grade hardware parts. So it either has to be part of windows quality control to test these low end systems or it should make it very clear about the system requirements.
Either way, the problem was patched, which makes it a problem on windows side.
bboygravity · 5m ago
There's also not really an alternative to Windows on PCs.
Linux still has tons of driver issues and is a massive time vampire with its "type magic spells into a terminal for hours to get something done" GUI.
Mac is way more expensive and doesn't run a ton of apps available on Windows.
nottorp · 58m ago
Not to mention that I don't see why Windows Defender should generate such heavy write workloads... an antivirus has no reason to. Have they rewriten it in React like the crippled taskbar?
gchamonlive · 52m ago
Seems to me like either technical debt or symptoms of data farming, where the OS hoards data from the system for later analysis
c-hendricks · 19m ago
One part of one component of the task bar is written in React but go off
gchamonlive · 16m ago
The acceptable amount of browser in the taskbar should be zero. Teams widget also gobbled memory just because it spawned an Edge worker, even if you didn't open or logged into teams. You start to make these concessions, no wonder windows is a bloated mess these days.
ghosty141 · 58m ago
What? If your SSD is old and close to failure, you can’t blame the software pushing it over the edge. If a company sells parts that can’t handle writes that are within spec then I’m sorry you bought junk…
gchamonlive · 56m ago
Is that the case in the article? Why did it happen after the latest update? Why did it need a patch then? Your comment seems out of context.
gruez · 19m ago
No, your comment is out of context. If you read the comments in this thread, it's clear that the this subthread is presupposing the issue caused by bad hardware, and debating what obligation (if any) microsoft has.
gchamonlive · 15m ago
So care to answer? "Is that the case in the article? Why did it happen after the latest update? Why did it need a patch then?"
gruez · 10m ago
I replied to your other comment asking the same question 10 minutes ago.
wiseowise · 1h ago
Your finger can also be easily cut off by a wood cutter, doesn't mean that it has to be.
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
It’s a bit of column A, a bit of column B sort of situation.
Microsoft should be more careful, but also such blatantly garbage hardware never should’ve shipped. So I’d say hold MS responsible, but also push back against manufactured e-waste like that.
gruez · 31m ago
>Microsoft should be more careful
What does "more careful" even mean? For instance, if your crappy SSD has some bug that causes data corruption if there are more than 16 writes in flight at a time, and microsoft pushes an update that causes it to do writes more aggressively, should it really be microsoft's fault that your crappy SSD broke? Should microsoft keep throttle windows IO at 2000s HDD throguhput on the off chance that some IDE drive bricks itself when it encounters SSD level workloads?
cosmic_cheese · 1m ago
It’s not really MS’ fault that crappy SSDs broke, but at the same time it’s only ever Windows that sees these issues. This suggests that this kind of strain on the hardware is unnecessary given the task, which then paints a picture of negligence in engineering and QA culture at MS.
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
Since when is shitty designed HW bricking itself from OS I/O calls, a software issue?
Sure, Microsoft can issue a SW workaround to mitigate this issue as they did for Intel Skylake CPU issues, but that doesn't change the fact that the core issue is faulty designed HW.
Why don't SSD manufacturers test their shit before shoveling it out the door to consumers?
bigyabai · 1h ago
> Why don't SSD manufacturers test their shit
Most of them do, not that it stops people from buying Temu PCs anyways.
FirmwareBurner · 5m ago
They clearly don't. They just boot windows, run a benchmark and call it a day.
gchamonlive · 1h ago
I'll keep using Linux then, if my crappy SSD is an excuse to use an actually functional OS, all the better. It's a win-win.
jlokier · 1h ago
That's up to you. But if you have one of the SSD models the article is about, Linux probably won't help. It might make it worse.
Linux is beautifully optimised for performance. Linux is more likely to write the same data more quickly than Windows, when an application has a large amount of data to write. So if the problem is the SSD fails when a large amount of data is written quickly but within specs, then it's likely to fail on Linux too.
Unless it's a bug in the Windows driver. But it sounds from descriptions that it isn't a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the SSD that went unnoticed because not many people wrote large amounts of data quickly on systems with those SSDs.
So it sounds like there may be a model-specific blacklist required in the driver, to detect particular SSDs and reduce the speed they are written to, because they fail when run at the speed they advertise to the OS.
Or, alternatively, it sounds like those models may require a firmware upgrade from the SSD vendor.
If either of those are required, a similar workaround will be required in the Linux driver too, to avoid the same problem as soon as someone runs a similar application on Linux.
Unfortunately, even with a speed-limiting blacklist in the driver, whether in Window or Linux, those SSD models probably still corrupt data from time to time, because speed alone is unlikely to be the underlying cause of corruption. A vendor firmware update, or vendor confirmation that a specific change in the driver avoids the SSD bug, are what's required.
gchamonlive · 56m ago
You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts? Why did it started happening after a windows update then? And why did it need a patch?
gruez · 24m ago
>You are saying we are going to see similar reports for Linux when using these parts?
The linux install base is orders of magnitude smaller than windows, so there's less of a chance that it gets picked up by tech media. Moreover if it's really an issue with the underlying hardware itself, a more technical user base would be able to trace the issue to the actual hardware, rather than going straight to social media with "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!"
>Why did it started happening after a windows update then?
Some sort of code change that changes the behavior of the drive, but is technically within spec.
>And why did it need a patch?
Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault. The linux kernel is filled with workarounds for crappy hardware as well. The existence of those workarounds don't imply linux was somehow at fault for those bugs.
gchamonlive · 12m ago
> if it's really an issue with the underlying hardware itself, a more technical user base would be able to trace the issue to the actual hardware, rather than going straight to social media with "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!"
So what you are saying is that users went "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!" And that prompted the article?
> Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault
If you designed a system for certain range of hardware, your latest update broke that design and you had to go back and put a patch, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft at fault here, even though your comment is right
gruez · 2m ago
>So what you are saying is that users went "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!" And that prompted the article?
Most tech "journalism" is basically regurgitating stuff from reddit/twitter/other tech sites, so yes.
>If you designed a system for certain range of hardware, your latest update broke that design and you had to go back and put a patch, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft at fault here, even though your comment is right
So there's no accounting for which party broke the spec? Whoever touched it last is at fault?
Good thing defaults for domestic systems are ext4 and btrfs, not zfs which needs a ton of memory and server grade hardware?
icehawk · 34m ago
> the problem is crappy SSDs (an age-old problem) that can't handle/brick under some workload presumably involving high write rates
which part of the article leads you to believe this?
wildpeaks · 56m ago
The result is the same from the point of view of the end user, the hardware would have continued working without the software update.
lexlambda · 1h ago
Reading the article further, they do note that "A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem.", although I concede that no source is provided for that.
dundarious · 34m ago
What is the basis for this statement that "the problem is crappy SSDs"? From TFA:
> The report speculates that this could be due to a malfunction in the drive cache subsystem. Symptoms are said to recur predictably after a system reboot, which temporarily restores drive visibility but does not address the underlying fault. Affected users are said to be consistently experiencing failure under similar workload patterns within minutes.
> Further analysis has suggested that SSDs built on Phison NAND controllers especially DRAM-less models exhibit failures at lower write volumes. Reports suggest that select enterprise-grade HDDs also display comparable symptoms under intensive writes.
> The issue definitely bears high similarity to the WD SN770 host memory buffer (HMB) flaw, and in this case, too, restricting or disabling HMB yields no improvement. A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem.
Speculation almost entirely revolves around the Windows disk cache subsystem.
That being said, I completely disagree with most of the replies you are getting. If Intel/AMD released a CPU that exhibited faults at high instruction throughput (making good use of all execution ports, etc.) but within the advertised power limits, I would in no way blame whatever software exhibited the problem, I would blame the chip.
oncallthrow · 1h ago
Please explain to me in precise terms how the headline is "wrong".
dkiebd · 1h ago
SSDs bricking themselves when you write to them is not a Windows issue.
cm2187 · 1h ago
The article also mentions enterprise SSDs.
fifteen1506 · 1h ago
Sometimes people have limited amount of money available and buying a new SSD for the sake of buying them is not on top of their priority list.
Sure, we can always contract a divinacy specialist to guess which hardware may fail next, but I thought the (paid) Windows testers had that job.
whatevaa · 1h ago
Windows has paid QA these days? I thought insiders do that for free.
gchamonlive · 1h ago
Apparently it's not wise to replace your QA testers with vibe coders, specially when your models are mediocre at best
If you push an update that bricks your customers machines you have failed and you have no QA clearly.
The best they can do to save their ass is say "actually you know what these SSD and HDD are all incompatible with W11" and start a new hardware certification program.
"enterprise" doesn't imply reliability, eg. https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-25-hpe-ssd-bricked-firmware...
The article is light in the details of which are those enterprise grade SSDs
(I’m still wondering if the successor, SN7100, is affected, as it’s not mentioned in that thread either way. The upmarket DRAMful SN850X seems not to be affected.)
Or not? The bug here looks different from that one, which the same outlet reported[1] on earlier.
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/wd-ssds-still-block-windows-11-2...
Not an argument for staying on an unsupported OS, but an argument for staying on a stable release as long as possible if you prefer stability over features
and i see the same error under windows update on my backup pc now:
2025-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 24H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5063878) (26100.4946) Failed to install on 17/08/2025 - 0x80073712
articles says August but I had this update stuck on failed for 2 months. bricked last pc now waiting for it to brick my current one.
how long does it take MS to fix something..
I wouldn't be surprised if the related dev/QA teams were part of recent layoffs/offshoring.
Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now.
Weird stuff like nearly impossible to find/configure network connections? Worse over time.
It’s like whatever criteria the MS PM’s are using is prioritizing ‘engagement’ (aka how frustrated and angry someone gets at the OS) over anything else.
I'm finding it super concerning that it seems like Microsoft isn't even pushing driver updates properly nowadays. Everything just sits as an 'optional update' hidden away buried under a couple more menus, and the latest drivers are jumbled in the list, and you can't tell which driver is for which device.
And that's how I discovered my WiFi was breaking out of the box because Microsoft had newer drivers they didn't push down...
No comments yet
Windows is therefore going to be used by a wide variety of systems, including those with low grade hardware parts. So it either has to be part of windows quality control to test these low end systems or it should make it very clear about the system requirements.
Either way, the problem was patched, which makes it a problem on windows side.
Linux still has tons of driver issues and is a massive time vampire with its "type magic spells into a terminal for hours to get something done" GUI.
Mac is way more expensive and doesn't run a ton of apps available on Windows.
Microsoft should be more careful, but also such blatantly garbage hardware never should’ve shipped. So I’d say hold MS responsible, but also push back against manufactured e-waste like that.
What does "more careful" even mean? For instance, if your crappy SSD has some bug that causes data corruption if there are more than 16 writes in flight at a time, and microsoft pushes an update that causes it to do writes more aggressively, should it really be microsoft's fault that your crappy SSD broke? Should microsoft keep throttle windows IO at 2000s HDD throguhput on the off chance that some IDE drive bricks itself when it encounters SSD level workloads?
Sure, Microsoft can issue a SW workaround to mitigate this issue as they did for Intel Skylake CPU issues, but that doesn't change the fact that the core issue is faulty designed HW.
Why don't SSD manufacturers test their shit before shoveling it out the door to consumers?
Most of them do, not that it stops people from buying Temu PCs anyways.
Linux is beautifully optimised for performance. Linux is more likely to write the same data more quickly than Windows, when an application has a large amount of data to write. So if the problem is the SSD fails when a large amount of data is written quickly but within specs, then it's likely to fail on Linux too.
Unless it's a bug in the Windows driver. But it sounds from descriptions that it isn't a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the SSD that went unnoticed because not many people wrote large amounts of data quickly on systems with those SSDs.
So it sounds like there may be a model-specific blacklist required in the driver, to detect particular SSDs and reduce the speed they are written to, because they fail when run at the speed they advertise to the OS.
Or, alternatively, it sounds like those models may require a firmware upgrade from the SSD vendor.
If either of those are required, a similar workaround will be required in the Linux driver too, to avoid the same problem as soon as someone runs a similar application on Linux.
Unfortunately, even with a speed-limiting blacklist in the driver, whether in Window or Linux, those SSD models probably still corrupt data from time to time, because speed alone is unlikely to be the underlying cause of corruption. A vendor firmware update, or vendor confirmation that a specific change in the driver avoids the SSD bug, are what's required.
The linux install base is orders of magnitude smaller than windows, so there's less of a chance that it gets picked up by tech media. Moreover if it's really an issue with the underlying hardware itself, a more technical user base would be able to trace the issue to the actual hardware, rather than going straight to social media with "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!"
>Why did it started happening after a windows update then?
Some sort of code change that changes the behavior of the drive, but is technically within spec.
>And why did it need a patch?
Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault. The linux kernel is filled with workarounds for crappy hardware as well. The existence of those workarounds don't imply linux was somehow at fault for those bugs.
So what you are saying is that users went "ZOMG windows update bricked my PC!" And that prompted the article?
> Because putting in a patch doesn't imply you're at fault
If you designed a system for certain range of hardware, your latest update broke that design and you had to go back and put a patch, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft at fault here, even though your comment is right
Most tech "journalism" is basically regurgitating stuff from reddit/twitter/other tech sites, so yes.
>If you designed a system for certain range of hardware, your latest update broke that design and you had to go back and put a patch, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft at fault here, even though your comment is right
So there's no accounting for which party broke the spec? Whoever touched it last is at fault?
which part of the article leads you to believe this?
> The report speculates that this could be due to a malfunction in the drive cache subsystem. Symptoms are said to recur predictably after a system reboot, which temporarily restores drive visibility but does not address the underlying fault. Affected users are said to be consistently experiencing failure under similar workload patterns within minutes.
> Further analysis has suggested that SSDs built on Phison NAND controllers especially DRAM-less models exhibit failures at lower write volumes. Reports suggest that select enterprise-grade HDDs also display comparable symptoms under intensive writes.
> The issue definitely bears high similarity to the WD SN770 host memory buffer (HMB) flaw, and in this case, too, restricting or disabling HMB yields no improvement. A suspected memory leak in Windows’ OS-buffered cache region could be the problem.
Speculation almost entirely revolves around the Windows disk cache subsystem.
That being said, I completely disagree with most of the replies you are getting. If Intel/AMD released a CPU that exhibited faults at high instruction throughput (making good use of all execution ports, etc.) but within the advertised power limits, I would in no way blame whatever software exhibited the problem, I would blame the chip.
Sure, we can always contract a divinacy specialist to guess which hardware may fail next, but I thought the (paid) Windows testers had that job.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763389