- Microsoft has finished its research on the reports of a SSD break error
- The company said the August update for Windows 11 is not the fault
- However, there are still failures of the unit that are filtered, and some people are not happy with Microsoft’s conclusion
Microsoft has been investigating the reports of the most recent Windows 11 update that broke some SSD, and now we have the results of that effort, and the company found that the August patch for the operating system is not the fault.
Bleeping Computer reports that Microsoft published a service alert in its administration center (a link that cannot be contacted for normal Microsoft accounts, only commercial accounts) that indicates the following: “After an exhaustive investigation, Microsoft has not found a connection between the Windows security update of August 2025 and the types of hard disk failures informed on social networks.”
Microsoft added: “As always, we continue to monitor the comments after the launch of each Windows update and investigate any future report.”
Keep in mind that Microsoft mentions “hard disk failures”, and this is because the problem has also affected hard drives, depending on reports, although most incidents have affected SSDs.
Microsoft has worked with its partners in the investigation of the problem, including SSD (and hard disk) manufacturers as expected, but in collaboration they have not presented evidence of a connection between the most recent update for Windows 11 24h2 and the failures of the informed unit.
In fact, we already hear directly from Phison, which makes the controllers for the SSDs that the reports have suggested are more likely to be involved in these failures, refuting that notion and clearly indicating that the error could not reproduce (in 4,500 hours of testing).
Microsoft clarifies even more than its Windows 11 telemetry, diagnostic data taken from computers that execute their operating system, does not show evidence of an increase in unit failures.
ANALYSIS: Coincidence and ‘natural’ impulse failures, or something else?
In summary: there is nothing to do here, keep going. Based on Microsoft’s investigation, which took a while, so I suppose it deepened (Phison’s certainly did), the Windows 11 of August is not responsible for breaking the SSDs or hard drives (neither are Phison controllers).
The problem is that there are still a few Windows 11 users who publish in online forums, such as Reddit, insisting that they have had their SSD sunk with this most recent update for Windows 11. On the other hand, there are others that publish on the administration of PC fleets and not seeing anything with this cumulative update that has been applied, not even a track of a failure of a failure of a failure of a boost in those computers.
So what is happening? A theory that is issued is that it could be a coincidence: the impulse failures occur all the time, and in any week, some Windows 11 PC will see some breaks in this regard. And because there are reports that August update is the problem, people will assume that they are to blame, when it is not.
However, I could certainly argue that there are too many reports for this to be a comfortable conclusion. In addition, if it were natural impulse failures erroneously until the problem, it would also point to the oldest hardware being affected, since it is more likely that the failures occur with aged SSDs, but there are reports of new (or almost new) units that this error is affected by this error.
Here is another possibility that, even given Microsoft’s statement that there is nothing openly bad with Windows 11, there could still be something in the August update, buried, perhaps, that is somehow making a hardware failure in certain units more likely to occur. In other words, this would not necessarily be the fault of Microsoft, but it could still be indirectly related to the update.
However, with Microsoft and Phison apparently unable to reproduce the error in a complete test load, this seems quite unlikely. What takes us back to: What is happening with these reports that are still dripping? There is no clear answer here, but there are clearly some unhappy people who publish online about their SSD problems.
It is worth checking the apparent cause of the error, which is starting a large file copy, such as a games installation, for example. As the Bleeping computer points out, the fault seems more likely to happen if your unit is more than half (60% or more). When passing through reports, the affected SSD is disappearing from the system, although in some cases it returns after a simple restart (in others, it does not, which is obviously a great headache).
Windows 11 domestic users can postpone the installation of an update accumulated for a short time, so they will eventually take it to their machine, if they have been trying to avoid it. At that time, it depends on the individual user, they are sure to feel if they want to carry out a considerable file operation such as the installation of a thick game or application. If they are still paranoid and their impulse is almost full, they may want to play for sure for now.
Microsoft points out that it can “investigate any future report”, so we can even hear more from the company; But for the moment, it seems to want to draw a line under the matter. And for now, we have to trust Microsoft and Phison’s conclusions, although obviously there are people who remain skeptical and feel that we have not yet reached the end of this episode.
