[ANSWERED] – Some SSDs are apparently causing blue screens on Windows 11

Many people use SSDs in their computers to enjoy blazing-fast speed and increased booting time. However, sometimes, SSDs tend to generate various BSoD error screens.

WD or Western Digital is a renowned brand known for its durable and reliable data storage solutions like HDDs, SSDs, etc. Last year, it launched a brand new high-performance SSD – WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD that was meant for gamers and users with large data computing needs.

While this new SSD provided blazing-fast speed, it also brought an issue that affected a large number of users in the form of random BSoDs and error messages. Let’s get behind what happened and try to understand it.

What is wrong with WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD?

According to many user reports and forums online, users who are using the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD reported an annoying BSOD on their Windows 11 computers.

The forums suggest that the majority of the users encountered the ‘stornvme.sys’ error code in the event viewer and with the BSOD screens. Most of the affected users have recently built new PCs running on Windows 11 where they were using this SSD as their main storage unit or in a RAID setup.

As per the comments, users are encountering BSoD errors in the following situations listed below –

• While booting or rebooting their system
• While in sleep mode causing users to force shut down the computer
• While launching applications or games

While looking at the Windows system log, users encountered a similar-looking error message – “The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort1.” Some users also experienced slow boot times and stuttering along with this error.

Why is the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD Showing BSOD Errors?

There are only speculations to back various issues like BSODs faced by the affected users. These could be due to buggy firmware loaded into it, or due to controller errors like \Device\RaidPort0 leading to the generation of multiple BSoD error instances.

How to Fix WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD from Generating Blue Screens?

Before moving on to the methods to fix the issue, we will look at some temporary fixes that affected users employed to get rid of the blue screens caused by the WD_BLACK SN850X SSD.

• Some users suggested disabling the XMP in BIOS, which resulted in the elimination of randomly occurring BSoD errors. However, the ‘stornvme.exe’ error was still showing in the Event Viewer.
• Some users forcefully installed the Micron NVMe driver, which resulted in the total elimination of the error. This, however, led to increased boot time and reduced performance. You can find out more about it . However, we would recommend taking a complete backup of your data before proceeding .

Note – Western Digital has released the firmware update addressing the issue that was causing BSoD errors on Windows 11 computers with WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD. If you’re also facing this issue, check the Western Digital Dashboard installed on your computer to update the SSD firmware. See this page for more details.

The above-mentioned information pertains to just one type of SSD. If you have other malfunctioning SSD including the WD SSD, you can try some other methods, such as:

• Performing SFC scan while booting the PC in safe mode
• Repairing Windows and the boot drive using the Windows media creation tool
• Using the ‘bootrec’ command in CMD
• Performing low-level format on the drive
• Updating the SSD’s firmware
• Trying out another SSD to rule out hardware failures

What to do in case of data loss from an SSD?

Losing your personal or important data or files can be a difficult situation. If you have lost your important files or data from an SSD, no need to worry, as there is a way to get them back. You can use a professional data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery Professional to get the lost files back.

Note – Before using this software to perform data recovery, make sure that the TRIM command is disabled on the SSD. If not, you can use this guide and disable it before moving further.

Stellar Data Recovery Professional is a powerful DIY data recovery tool that can easily recover various types of files lost due to accidental deletion, formatting, corruption and more. This software allows users to recover data from almost any data storage device like HDDs, SSDs, USB drives, etc. This software can also handle data recovery from encrypted drives. It also allows users to create a bootable media drive for performing data recovery from crashed or unbootable computers.

Conclusion

In this post, we discussed the BSOD occurring in Western Digital SSD-enabled PCs. In this post, we highlighted the possible causes behind the error along with various fixes discussed by the affected users. And when in doubt, simply download a professional data recovery tool to recover missing data from an SSD.