Is it actually killing the SSD (SSD can no longer be used) or just corrupting the data on the SSD? It's hard to make out from all the comments and news articles.
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And why does the SSD allow this to happen? A SSD has its own onboard computer, it's not just allowing the OS to do whatever it wants. Obviously the OS can write way too much and reach the endurance limit but that should have been figured out almost instantly, with OS write stats and SMART stats.
That's also what I want to know. All the information on this topic seems to be just circular anecdotes like a snake eating its own tail: a bunch of anecdotal reddit posts, quoting a Tom's hardware article, that's quoting more anecdotal reddit posts, that's quoting one Japanese tweet of someone's speculation.
Like how many of these SSD deaths can actually be pinned on this update, and how much of this is just "Havana syndrome" of people's SSDs dying for whatever other reason, then they hear about this hubbub in the news and then they go on reddit and say "OMG mine too", then clickbait journalists pick up on it, and round and round we go, further reinforcing the FUD, but without any actual technical analysis to verify.
[1] https://wccftech.com/phison-dismisses-reports-of-windows-11-...
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=mlY2QjP_-9s (JayzTwoCents)
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=sU_WepeHUd8 (ThioJoe)
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=7xS-CE-hy6Q (Dave's Attic)
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=zoHGSz-f6os (Pureinfotech)
edit: The author of the comment I replied to has changed their comment to remove all details of their testing.
I don't want to endorse Windows at all (use Linux if you can!). But maybe you need it to occasionally test something or whatever.
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-latest-windows...
IMO, the only good way is "if it works, don't fix it", which means, no updates. People are seriously overhyping updates.
I stopped updating all the stuff - OSes, smart locks, android apps, TVs, BP monitors - I honestly had multiple update problems on ALL mentioned devices, multiple times. I only update the thing when I have an actual problem and there is changelog stating that the bug is fixed, or when I want a new feature. You can handle security in other ways in almost all the cases.
I think this IT update burden has gotten out of hand - I don't recall any other domain is like that - my car, my house, my bicycle, my glasses DO NOT UPDATE and its glorious - apart from physical damage, they work the same as yesterday.
I’ve had repeatable data loss recently from windows 11 under a specific condition copying directories in explorer. The case works on windows 10 LTSC fine. I have absolutely no idea where to even raise this as an issue now. I’m not sure I even give a fuck.
If the device is DRAM-less, much of its central information (large parts of the FTL, in particular) resides in the host's RAM, where the OS could presumably touch it. If that area of RAM is _somehow_ being overwritten or out-of-sync or otherwise unreliable, you can get pretty bad corruption.
And after a whole day of debugging and hair pulling at work I just don't feel like then also debugging why a game is not running like it should.
But I heard I should give it a try again, last time I gave it a shot was 2-3 years ago. Big plus would be that I'd be completely free of Windows...
i get it for private/home stuff (even then it would make me uncomfortable, but i see the appeal).
This ofc. happened at worst possible time.
In fact; I have a laptop right now that hasn't received updates because there's a shared object that has been removed that `yay` depends on.
(this was from a long time ago).
I generally think that updates of the mainstream distro's like Debian will definitely *NOT* brick your system in almost any circumstance, and arch tends to be somewhat solid, but every once in a while something dire happens with arch which would make me not agree with the fact that updates are always seamless.
The amount of registry hacks and debloat scripts and messed up updates I've had to endure on Windows makes my Linux experience seem very breezy by comparison to be perfectly honest with you.
The main issue I have with my own reasoning here is that about 20 years ago when I was getting into Linux: it was hard; and thus I learned a lot. Something that is a literal 2 second fix for me might take someone else 2 days or not be solvable. I can't really understand how hard others have it.
But: my mum ran Linux mint for the last 8 years without issue. So maybe it really is a skill issue. This woman is not tech literate like I am. So, there's that.
I had a BSOD last week, 0x0000012b (FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE), which I've never had, and was hoping it isn't related to this update.
"AUR packages are user-produced content. These PKGBUILDs are completely unofficial and have not been thoroughly vetted. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk."
Usually just rebuilding a AUR package will fix most issues.
It shouldn't be that way though. Especially the billion dollar corporations should not be excused for shipping insecure software - the sad reality though is that Microsoft seems to have lost most of its QA team and what remains of its dev team gets shifted to developing adware for that sweet sweet "recurring revenue" nectar. Apple doesn't have that problem at least, but their management also has massive problems, prioritizing shiny new gadgets over fixing the tons of bugs people have.
Build a tiny core, ask the community to extend: never be liable for any issue because important packages that are essentially required aren't part of the core and thus any criticism is invalid.
Not saying that's happening here, but it could happen by this definition.
But, ok, there are more issues anyway, for example it's pretty common that you have to update archlinux-keychain before an upgrade can succeed because the signing keys have rotated and someone has already packaged an update to something with the new key. That is definitely base.
There is more chance of being able to fix data corruption, than being able to fix a bricked drive or one with unbearable blocks.
A line item on my agenda today is actually helping a team figure out why when they do a release upgrade on their pet Ubuntu VM practically everything they care about on the box breaks and helping them plan out strategies to un-pet these workloads.
I've had a good share of Windows updates making a mess of things, don't get me wrong. But I've had plenty of bad updates in Linux over the years.
I don't think the analogy is good. You might be better off replacing Linus with Apple and Linux with macOS. In that case, I would definitely think Apple should be held liable if an update to macOS bricks some hardware in a Mac.
But with Linux, it is different: You do not have a business relationship with Linus.
Sure, if you bought your Linux distribution from, say Red Hat, and it bricks your server, I think you might have a good case against Red Hat(IBM).
> https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5536733/...
Please don't buy "grey market" MS keys (i.e. super cheap keys or keys for products not sold to end users, like LTSC).
Either buy keys from legitimate vendors or use alternative activation methods (emulated KMS, etc.). I believe a lot of these grey market keys come either from MSDN subscriptions or leaked MAK keys, in either case, you aren't really paying for the product, you're just funneling money to sketchy people.
Your own usage of Linux is irrelevant to the mainstream user. If you use anything for 20 years, you will probably be good with it if you care at least a bit. Most people don't care, it is a mean to an end. Hell, I am in IT since kindergarten and I don't care sometimes, it happens now and then that I just want some stuff to work without any issues.
Linux is harder than Windows. It can't be anything else, as it is not originally made for mainstream user, but for engineers and geeks. We came a long way since inception though and today many distros offer decent OS for mainstream user.
>it's pretty common that you have to update archlinux-keychain before an upgrade can succeed because the signing keys
"Since 2022-07-29, the archlinux-keyring-wkd-sync.service and the associated systemd timer have been created and enabled by default"
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Package_signing#Upgr...
Because if its power users; having command of the whole operating system is just objectively better. Nothing hidden or forbidden and no oddities and quirks that are non-detiministic, indeterministic and actively prohibit debugging.
If its ease of use: then the easiest laptop operating system to maintain is… Linux (in the form of a chromebook).
That said, I really haven’t helped my mum with her laptop- I actually thought she didn’t use it because she didn’t ask me any support questions but it turned out that it “just worked” and she clicked the update pop-up once in a while like I asked her to.
> Linux is harder than Windows. It can't be anything else, as it is not originally made for mainstream user
This sounds like cope. Accessibility can be better on Windows for this reason… people being paid to drudge through an accessibility checklist- but the reality is not this. CommodoreOS was also built for humans and its harder to use than OpenBSD (which makes no apologies to non-power users). Your entire thesis here is bunk- there’s just countless examples of people thinking they know best for users but actively harming them instead (by hiding information or misleading them intentionally).
The shit is broken sometimes, it’s ok, but we are here to be intellectually curious and have a discussion.
Lying to people about how broken it can be to update in reality is the opposite of that.
We aren’t here to pull down arch or the community; just here to spit facts.
Publications need clicks, videos need watches, people need upvotes
At the end of the day arch is firmly a do it yourself distro where some user intervention is expected.
https://serverfault.com/questions/1172216/issue-with-samsung...
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dro...
> I've also been using Linux for years (Arch, btw) and never had an update break my install or cause issues
Is an anecdote that is worthy of being attacked with my own, given the context that people might come away thinking that Arch updates do not break their system.. right?
>Many people use Arch because of its package manager
True pacman is great but that has nothing to do with the AUR.
They want to stick with Windows because it's safe and just works.
There is probably something going on. It could very well just be a bad batch of SSD controllers from one manufacturer failing.
Or if they were properly done. Example: Intel and the plundervolt vulnerability. To fix that they removed the ability for undervolting in ny laptop. If I don't use SGX there's no reason for the block. They could've restricted undervolting only when SGX is enabled but no, they had to "fix" it in the worst way possible.
Anyway, security updates should be decoupled from feature updates, so that people aren't hesitant to update. Otherwise, you get people who hold out because they're worried the new release is going to break all their settings and "opt-in" into all kinds of new telemetry.
That said, people use words with a different meaning all the time, and data corruption could fit as a failure.
The FTL algorithm still needs one or more large tables. The driver allocates host-side memory for these tables, and the CPU on the SSD that runs the FTL has to reach out over the PCIe bus (e.g. using DMA operations) to write or read these tables.
It's an abomination that wouldn't exist in an ideal world, but in that same ideal world people wouldn't buy a crappy product because it's $5 cheaper.
Then again, I think dramless SSDs represent a large fraction of the consumer SSD market, so they'd probably be well-represented no matter what causes the issue.
Finally, I'll point out that there's a lot of nonsense about DRAMless SSDs on the internet - e.g. Google shows this snippet from r/hardware: "Top answer: DRAM on the drive benefits writes, not reads. Gaming is extremely read-heavy, and reads are..."
FTL stands for flash TRANSLATION layer - it needs to translate from a logical disk address to a real location on the flash chip, and every time you write a logical block that real location changes, because you can't overwrite data in flash. (you have to wait and then erase a huge group of blocks - i.e. garbage collection)
If you put the translation table in on-SSD DRAM, it's real fast, but gets huge for a modern SSD (1+GB per TB of SSD). If you put all of it on flash - well, that's one reason thumb drives are so slow. I believe most DRAM-full consumer SSDs nowadays keep their translation tables in flash, but use a bunch of DRAM to cache as much as they can, and use the rest of their DRAM for write buffering.
DRAMless controllers put those tables in host memory, although I'd bet they still treat it as a cache and put the full table in flash. I can't imagine them using it as a write buffer; instead I'm guessing when they DMA a block from the host, they buffer 512B or so on-chip to compute ECC, then send those chunks directly to the flash chips.
There's a lot of guesswork here - I don't have engineering-level access to SSD vendors, and it's been a decade since I've put a logic analyzer on an SSD and done any reverse-engineering; SSDs are far more complicated today. If anyone has some hard facts they can share, I'd appreciate it.
I'm actually very surprised a single person managed to pull off a scam of this magnitude and am very worried about what effect fabricated news (now helped by AI) will have in the future.
>but gets huge for a modern SSD (1+GB per TB of SSD)
except most drives allocate 64MB thru HMB. Do you know of any NVME drives that steal Gigabytes of ram? Afaik Windows limits HMB to ~200MB?
>Finally, I'll point out that there's a lot of nonsense about DRAMless SSDs on the internet
FTL doesnt need all that ram. Ram on drives _is_ used for caching writes, or more specifically reordering and grouping small writes to efficiently fill whole NAND pages preventing fragmentation that destroys endurance and write speed.
There was a firmware bug, but updating the firmware was inconvenient, and the specific interaction that caused the failure wasn't stated, so I couldn't avoid whatever it was; seemed connected to being pretty idle... we had a second data center as an untested "warm" failover target, and disks would tend to die over there where nothing significant was happening.
> the statements incompatible with local law are to be disregarded as void
This is to protect The beneficent of EULA terms (Microsoft) from the possibility that entire EULA is rendered illegal because one of its statements is illegal.
So EULA doesn't say
> no
What it says instead is
> no, if that's legal where you use this software
Though this condition doesn't neighbor the statement like this.
This does not seems to be the case. Rounding buttons and changing icons size in Teams and Office 365 has nothing to do with security.
Sorry but this drive is almost 15 years old.
Yeah aggressive anticheat won’t work - but I don’t care much about multiplayer these days, and have consoles to play on if I really want.
And how does such a thing reserve host RAM?
I got the data off, but most of the data wasn't really that important so there might have been dead regions.
I feel that many consumers won't really know if it's still readable, I'd suggest that 90% of people just have a single drive, and windows doesn't cope with a non-writable root drive particularly well.
https://youtu.be/TbFIUu_7LIc?si=o1p2FrDYFeLEtIoF
Youtube got bit by this randomly, just working, not looking for this issue.