New *critical* Western Digital/SanDisk NVMe drive firmware update available

[justinclift]

Public Service Announcement: Anyone using Western Digital/SanDisk NVMe drives should probably have a look over this new firmware update:
https://support-en.sandisk.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/51469

Note that Host Memory Buffer (HMB) problems with these WD NVMe drives have been reported with OS's other than Windows too, it's just that WD seems to think that only Windows exists. https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793

Release Notes
Addresses an issue with the HMB (Host Memory Buffer) for certain models of Western Digital and SanDisk SSDs, where the drive may cause a BSOD on Windows 11 24H2.

Affected Products

Name	Model Number Starting With	Updated Firmware Version
WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 2TB	WDBBDL0020BNC, WDS200T3X0E	731130WD
WD_BLACK SN770M NVMe SSD 2TB	WDBDNH0020BBK, WDS200T3X0G	731130WD
WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD 2TB	WDBWMY0020BBL, WDS200T3B0E	281050WD
WD Blue SN5000 NVMe SSD 2TB	WDBS3F0020BNC, WDS200T4B0E	291020WD
SanDisk Extreme M.2 NVMe SSD 2TB	SDSSDX3N-2T00	731130WD

 

[esi_y]

Thanks for posting this here, a couple of days ago I was about to ask what are the experiences of anyone here with HMB SSDs (mostly concerning Samsungs 990EVOs now), but then I figured I'd rather not as search for "HMB" did not yield anything on the forum, ZFS is used by lots of users (which I do not worry about for myself, i.e. using HMBs with CoW) and it would probably point me to the quoted ZFS issue.

Do you use HMBs in your setup? I mean, what's not to like, they get the buffer through Linux driver and low price, consumption and heat, easy to procure in bulk and coming with 1,000T+ endurance per piece options now. Obviously, when I ask about this, I do not need to know about PLP options, this is more of a HMB or SSD with dedicated DRAM (no PLP) topic.

 

[justinclift]

Do you use HMBs in your setup?

My production systems only use enterprise SSDs, and even for my homelab stuff there's (purposely) nothing from Western Digital. So I'm not personally (directly) affected by the above announcement, more just aware of things via that ZFS issue.