Microsoft's Windows 11 24H2 update has caused Blue Screens of Death to appear on certain Western Digital SSDs.

Another Windows update and another round of complaints about bugs and crashes. This is not news, but the problem is still very annoying. It involves Western Digital SSDs. Specifically, its SN770 or SN580 models. These drives aren't up to date with the 24H2 patch, and this is causing a lot of crashes and BSODs.

TechSpot reports that SN770/SN580 users have reported all of these problems on the Western Digital community forums. The problem seems to be centered around the Host Memory Buffer. All SSDs keep a map that shows where the data is stored within their flash memory chips. This map is constantly updated as information is deleted and added.

Many gaming SSDs do not have DRAM and instead store the map within a small portion of the PC's memory. This is the HMB, and without it performance suffers when performing lots of small writes and erases.

According to WD SSD users, the WD Black SN770 & Blue SN580 are limited to a HMB maximum of 64 MB. However, Windows increased this to 200 MB in the 24H2 Update. The SSD firmware doesn't like the figure, and this is what causes all the errors.

Current solutions involve delving into Window's registry and heading to the Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorPort section. Owners of SN770/SN850 should find an entry labelled HMBAllocationPolicy. All they need to do is change the value to zero, and then reboot. This disables HMB, but it appears to fix the problem.

Other forum visitors have suggested that a value of two works for them. Some users used Windows' rollback function to restore the operating system back to its 23H2 state. The real solution is a Microsoft fix and/or a Western Digital firmware update for these SSDs.

It's interesting that a lot of other SSD models use the same 64 MB HMB, but I haven't seen any complaints yet about Windows bailing on these drives. I'm not saying this is Western Digital's fault. One thing we don't yet know is if Microsoft told all SSD vendors the default HMB would be changed to 24H2.

The 24H2 is currently being rolled out slowly, so not everyone can install it. If you own a WD SN770 SSD or SN580, I recommend that you wait until Western Digital releases a firmware update for the drives.