SSDs May Slow After Windows Update

Windows 11 users are continuing to report hard drives performing more slowly after mandatory system updates. The problem appears to affect solid state drives rather than traditional older model hard drives with moving parts.

The Windows Latest website gathered together reports from its own forums, discussion site Reddit, and Microsoft's support forums. It concluded that the "performance issue doesn't appear to be widespread, but it is real." (Source: windowslatest.com)

One piece of evidence that something is actually amiss rather than it just being a fluke pattern is that those complaining point to a consistent timeline. It seems the problems affect all the "Patch Tuesday" updates since March. Those are security updates that are, in theory at least, mandatory to install.

Users who've noticed the slowdown say that manually uninstalling the updates back to March restores the speed of their hard drives. That's not really a viable workaround as it could mean a significant security risk, plus Windows will normally reinstall of the updates on the next "Patch Tuesday", the second Tuesday of the month.

Writing Slowdown

While the data from users varies, it appears the main problem is with writing to disks rather than reading from them. In some cases, users are sharing test data that shows speeds halved or worse.

The most noticeable effect is a big slowdown when copying or moving large files. Some users have also reported significant negative effects when playing games.

At the moment there doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern over which makes or models of drives exist. It's possible there's a specific issue with a type of drive that is rare enough that it wasn't covered by Microsoft's testing programs.

Criticism Mounts

The problem has prompted criticism that Microsoft is concentrating too much on adding new features rather than making sure core functionality works as well as possible. Another common complaint is that Microsoft hasn't really addressed the problem other than to confirm it has received the reports. (Source: yahoo.com)

What's Your Opinion?

Have you experienced the problem? Is it fair to expect Microsoft to pick up such issues in testing? Should Microsoft make all updates optional, even security fixes?