In recent weeks, the tech community has been buzzing with reports claiming that certain Windows 11 updates are causing SSDs to “brick” or crash. These alarming headlines painted a picture of catastrophic failures affecting consumer hardware, but an investigation by the Taiwanese hardware review site, PCDIY, has shed light on the real causes behind these incidents.
The Root Cause: Engineering Firmware
PCDIY’s investigation revealed that the SSD issues stemmed predominantly from products utilizing PHISON controllers in their pre-production, engineering firmware versions. Specifically, they tested media samples like the Corsair FORCE SERIES MP600 2TB and the Silicon Power SP US70 2TB, both equipped with the PHISON PS5016-E16-32 controller. Their rigorous testing, which involved writing extensive quantities of data (up to 1TB), led to these SSDs experiencing catastrophic failures, effectively rendering them inoperable.
Interestingly, the firmware these media samples were running was not the final, commercial version available to consumers. PCDIY confirmed that the engineering firmware could have contributed significantly to these failures, indicating that the SSDs were not market-ready when subjected to the stress tests. The investigation also revealed that they were able to replicate the issue with the assistance of four engineers sent from PHISON, further underlining the validity of their findings.
Consumer Models Have Different Experiences
However, this situation does not reflect the experience of everyday consumers using retail versions of the affected SSDs. PCDIY clarified that consumer variants, such as the Apacer AS2280F4 2TB with the PHISON PS5016-E26-52 controller, showed a different behavior entirely. While they did experience performance slowdowns after the overprovisioning space was exhausted, these issues were not linked to the catastrophic failures observed in the media samples. In fact, the slowdowns are considered normal SSD behavior and can be rectified easily using the manufacturer’s official SSD wiping software—commonly known as Secure Erase.
Remaining Concerns: Windows Updates
While PCDIY has made significant strides in identifying the root causes of the SSD issues, they were careful to note that they could not entirely rule out the Windows updates’ contribution to the problems. So, while it appears that the engineering firmware played the primary role in the devices’ failures, the interaction between these firmware versions and the Windows OS updates warrants further scrutiny, especially for future versions or patches.
Final Takeaway
In conclusion, while the investigation by PCDIY offers valuable insights into the specific failures experienced by a small subset of SSDs, it is essential for consumers to understand that the issues reported largely pertain to pre-production samples. Consumer-grade SSDs remain unaffected by these engineering flaws, and any performance drop can be easily managed. As always, users should ensure their firmware is up-to-date and use provided tools to maintain their SSDs in optimal condition.
The tech community can rest assured that with ongoing investigations and testing, we can expect more clarity on hardware concerns in conjunction with software updates.
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