Windows 11 bugs come in a huge spectrum. Sometimes they can be mildly annoying, and sometimes they can do serious damage to your data or hardware. Reports are coming in about a potential bug that fits into the latter category, as it can cause an SSD to "vanish" from Windows 11. And if someone is very unlucky, the SSD will still gone even after a restart.

Windows 11's newest update may have introduced a nasty SSD bug

The story begins as a report by Necoru_Cat on X on August 15th. They claimed that the Windows 11 KB5063878 update was causing some SSDs to become undiscoverable by the operating system after transferring a lot of data. Necoru_Cat went on to say that they suspected that, if someone transferred over 50GB of data onto an affected SSD that had over 60% disk usage, the drive had the chance to "go missing" on Windows. Sometimes a restart would fix it, and sometimes it wouldn't.

At the time, it was just Necoru_Cat claiming the bug's existence, so it was difficult to put much weight on it. After all, something about their setup may have been causing the SSD issues, and it may not have been a widespread issue. However, it turns out that more and more reports are coming in, to the point where SSD manufacturers and Microsoft itself have broken the silence to state they're now checking it out.

First, there was a statement by Phison to Tom's Hardware:

"Phison has recently been made aware of the industry-wide effects of the 'KB5063878' and ‘KB5062660’ updates on Windows 11 that potentially impacted several storage devices, including some supported by Phison. [...] At this time, the controllers that may have been affected are under review and we are working with partners. We will continue to provide updates and advisories to partners who may have been impacted to provide support and ensure any applicable remediation."

And now, Microsoft itself has made a statement to Ars Technica:

"We're aware of these reports and are investigating with our partners."

So, what's going on? What's causing the issues, and what can people do to solve them? Unfortunately, right now, it looks like we're in the discovery phase of analyzing this bug. While the company statements hint that the bug is very much real and affecting people, we're still not 100% sure what's causing it. The newest Windows 11 updates seem to be the prime culprits, but there are so many factors in play that it may be something else.

If you're concerned, your best bet is to uninstall the Windows 11 update and wait for more details. If you're still concerned, don't do any large file transfers on your SSD for now. This includes downloads, as Ars Technica reported that someone tried downloading the Cyberpunk 2077 game on their SSD and triggered the bug.