Microsoft’s latest update for Windows 11, version 24H2, which brings all kinds of new AI features, has been updated with new AI features and improvements seems to have encountered a small problem on https: //www.techspot.com/news/105134-windows-11-24h2-causing-headaches-western-digital-ssd.html. Users of Western Digital NVMe SSDs are facing serious issues, such as constant crashes with blue screen of death (BSOD).
The issue appears to primarily affect the WD Black SN770 and WD Blue SN580 SSDs, which do not have a DRAM-based cache. Instead, they rely on something called Host Memory Buffer (HMB), which came with the NVMe version 1.2 standard. This allows them to use the system’s RAM as cache, and usually these drives use around 64MB of that memory.
But with the new Windows 11 24H2 update, the system suddenly reserves up to 200 MB for I/O caching, much more than the usual 64 MB. This extra 136 MB seems to disrupt the SSDs, which is probably the cause of the frequent BSOD crashes.
Western Digital’s forums are flooded with users reporting these issues. Many of them report that rolling back to the previous version of Windows 11 (23H2) fixes the crashes, suggesting that the new update is the cause of the problem.
This situation is part of a larger pattern regarding Microsoft’s recent updates. Since the company replaced its traditional internal testing with the Windows Insider program, it seems that ordinary users have become unofficial beta testers. Sure, some updates bring nice performance improvements, but others, like this one, can make systems unstable.
For anyone facing this issue, there is a workaround involving some registry changes to limit HMB to 64MB or even disable it completely. This may slow performance during heavy file transfers, but it should semi-stabilize Windows 11 24H2 after a reboot.
