Phison Aggressively Debunks Claims Of Bricked Windows 11 SSDs With Extensive Testing
Phison has issued another statement, and possibly its last on the matter, in regards to the recent brouhaha surrounding reports of solid state drives (SSDs) failing from a pair of supposedly buggy Windows 11 updates. Following thousands of hours of testing, Phison said it was unable to reproduce a drive failure, nor have any customers reached out to report an issue.
"As stated on August 18, Phison was made aware of the 'KB5063878' and ‘KB5062660’ updates on Windows 11 that potentially impacted several storage devices, including some supported by Phison. In response, Phison dedicated over 4,500 cumulative testing hours to the drives reported as potentially impacted and conducted more than 2,200 test cycles. We were unable to reproduce the reported issue, and no partners or customers have reported that the issue affected their drives at this time," Phison said in a new statement.
Phison is referencing a situation that arose from a post on X by user Necoru_cat. The user reported that the data on their SSD became corrupted after applying a Steam update for Cyberpunk 2077, and that subsequent tests left their PC in a non-bootable state.
Like any good tech detective, Necoru_cat went the extra mile—several extra miles, actually—and performed exhaustive tests on nearly two dozen additional SSD models, including a mix of SATA and NVMe flavors. Several of those drives experienced issues, including major data loss on a few of the SSDs.
The user concluded that a recent Windows 11 update was the culprit, and that large file transfers of 50GB of more could trigger the issue.
This raised concerns that SSDs might start failing on PCs that were fully patched with the latest Windows 11 updates. The plot thickened when, days later, Phison brought to attention a "falsified document" purporting to come from the company was making the rounds. The document detailed supposed findings and guidance by Phison, but the firm said it was "neither an official or unofficial communication" from the company, and that it was addressing the matter "through appropriate legal processes."
Reading between the lines, it appeared as though someone or some entity was trying to capitalize on the situation by making it appear as though (A) there was a issue and (B) it was limited in scope to Phison. Neither of those appear to be correct.
As far as we know, only other person anecdotally reported a similar issue, though nothing really tied the two incidents together. As we originally surmised, the actual culprit is likely something to do with Necoru_cat's setup, as all of their followup testing was performed on the same test bed. That's not a knock on the user, by the way, and we're actually quite impressed with their commitment to test so many SSD models.
Simply put, Phison says its validation testing "has not identified any concerns related to these Windows 11 updates." That said, it did offer up some general guidance.
"We continue to advise users that for extended workloads, such as transferring large files or decompressing large archives, make sure a proper heatsink or thermal pad is used with the storage device. This helps maintain optimal operating temperatures, reduces the likelihood of thermal throttling, and ensures sustained performance," Phison said.
Phison also said that if any users have questions or troubleshooting needs, feel free to reach out to the company at support@phison.com.
