WD rushes out a firmware fix for SSDs hit by nightmarish Windows 11 24H2 BSoD bug

If you own certain models of Western Digital SSDs then the company is 'highly recommending' that you install a new firmware update that resolves a bug in Windows 11 24H2.

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The WD Black SN770 is one of the models hit by the unfortunate bug (Image Credit: WD)

As you may have seen yesterday, the issue pertains to the Host Memory Buffer feature (for more details, read our previous article), and the resulting bug means that some SSDs are affected by repeated crashing (with some ending up in a boot loop of BSoDs, in fact - really nasty).

WD tells us that the affected models are as follows:

• WD Black SN770 NVMe SSD 2TB
• WD Black SN770M NVMe SSD 2TB
• WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD 2TB
• WD Blue SN5000 NVMe SSD 2TB
• SanDisk Extreme M.2 NVMe SSD 2TB

If you have one of these drives, in fact, you should now be blocked from installing Windows 11 24H2 (and you may not be able to grab the upgrade until you update your SSD firmware). This might not be true in all cases, though, so be careful about proceeding with the 24H2 upgrade if you have one of the above drives, and be sure to apply the firmware update as WD suggests.

As ever with a firmware update, there is a risk of data loss (should the power go out mid-update, and the drive gets switched off), so you should always back up the contents of your SSD before proceeding.

The instructions for updating the firmware are provided by WD here (hat tip to Tom's Hardware for spotting this).

Read more: Windows 11 24H2 arrives out of the blue - here's what to expect on normal (non-Copilot+) PCs