Microsoft Adds Windows 10 Storage Health Monitoring For NVMe SSDs

Microsoft added storage health monitoring to Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226, the latest Windows build available for Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel.

Starting with this build, Windows 10 will alert users of any hardware issues affecting their NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) Solid State Drives (SSDs) that could potentially lead to a risk of failure.

The new feature will also provide drive health information including estimated remaining life, available space, and their SSD devices’ temperatures.

Windows 10 customers will be automatically notified when the spare storage capacity is low, if the SSD’s reliability is degraded due to “significant media-related errors or an internal error to the NVM subsystem,” or if the SSD is set to read-only preventing the OS or the user to write to it.

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When Windows 10 displays storage health notifications, users can click the message or go to Start > Settings > System > Storage > Manage disks and volumes, then select Properties for the problematic disk to get additional details about the detected irregularities.

“This feature is designed to detect hardware abnormalities for NVMe SSDs and notify users with enough time to act,” Windows Insider Program senior program manager Brandon LeBlanc explained.

“It is strongly recommended that users immediately back up their data after receiving a notification,” he added.

For the time being, Windows 10’s new storage health monitoring feature will only monitor NVM SSDs and not SATA SSDs or hard disk drives (HDD) for hardware anomalies.

More information on what to do when you’re warned that one of your storage devices may be at risk of failure can be found in this Windows support document.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 now also allows Windows Insiders to “link a new device, remove an old device, and switch between active devices” within the Your Phone app and added visual improvements to how it displays the users’ device list.

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If you are a Windows Insider in the Dev Channel, you can update to the Insider Preview Build 20226 by going into Settings -> Update & Security -> Windows Update and then checking for new updates.

Changes & improvements:

• We’re starting to roll out a change that will turn off theme syncing. As part of that, you will no longer see “Theme” as an option in Sync your settings, and changes made to your background will not sync across device. If you have been using theme synchronization, when setting up a new PC or account there will be a one-time download of the last saved synchronized desktop background to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\WallpaperBackup if you need to access it.
• Thanks for your patience – after making some reliability improvement, we’re re-enabling the ability for Notepad windows to persist update and restarts (if “Restart apps” is enabled in Sign-in Settings).
• When you have a PWA installed from Microsoft Edge, Task Manager will now correctly display it under Applications instead of Background Processes in the Processes tab, and will show the app icon associated with the PWA.
• We’re updating File Explorer so that if you right-click on a zipped OneDrive file that was set to online-only, you’ll now see an Extract All option, same as if the file was available locally on the PC.
• We’re updating the new DNS options in settings to make a statis DNS required when entering a static IP, and to make gateway not a required field.
• We’re updating the N’Ko keyboard layout so that pressing Shift + 6 will now insert ߾ (U+07FE ) and pressing Shift + 7 will now insert ߿ (U+07FF).

Fixes:

• We’ve resolved an issue resulting in Settings crashing for some Insiders when opening Manage Disks and Volumes.
• We fixed an issue affecting Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 distros where users can receive the error: “The remote procedure call failed” on startup. See this GitHub issue for more details.
• We fixed an issue where activating Speech Recognition under Ease of Access in Settings was unexpectedly requiring admin permissions.
• We fixed an issue where after turning off “Drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop”, and opening Task View, the drop shadows would unexpectedly reappear.
• We fixed an issue where pressing F7 in the File Explorer search box would bring up a dialog asking to enable caret browsing.
• We fixed an issue where Focus Assist was considering Screensaver to be a full screen app and suppressing notifications when it was running.
• We fixed an issue impacting explorer.exe reliability for some Insiders in the last few flights.
• We fixed an issue where some of the apps in the Windows Accessories folder in Start’s all apps list, would unexpectedly display the name Windows Accessories when pinned to the Start menu in recent builds.
• We fixed an issue impacting taskbar performance and reliability on 2-in-1 convertible devices.
• We fixed a few issues impacting Action Center reliability.
• We fixed a couple of issues impacting Settings reliability.
• We fixed an issue where the Settings icon was unexpectedly small when pinned to the Start menu and using the small tile size.
• We fixed an issue in Touchpad Settings where the header for the Taps section was unexpectedly missing in the last few flights.
• We fixed an issue with Meet Now resulting in the flyout crashing if you pressed the Esc key while it was open.
• We fixed an issue that if Meet Now was opened before opening a jumplist from the taskbar, then ShellExperienceHost would crash.
• We’ve made some fixes to improve accessibility of the Meet Now flyout, including updating the tab order, marking the image so it’s not read out by Narrator, adjusting the contrast of the buttons, making the arrow keys navigate between the buttons, and fixing an issue where focus wasn’t returning to the previous location in the taskbar after pressing the Esc key.
• We fixed an issue from the last few flights resulting in some apps failing to install, citing a lack of internet connectivity, when IPV6 was enabled.
• We fixed an issue with the new DNS options in Network Settings where switching back from a custom DNS to automatic would result in a loss of connectivity.
• We fixed an issue resulting in not being able to insert the full-width question mark when typing with the Pinyin IME in recent builds.
• We fixed an issue that could result in the Japanese IME crashing on initialization.
• We fixed two issues with the Bopomofo IME impacting Shift and Ctrl key usage in apps when the IME was active.
• We fixed an issue with the Turkish one-handed touch keyboard layout, where it was missing keys for ü and ö.
• We fixed an issue when using the Japanese touch keyboard layout that could result in the spacebar UI appearing stuck in a pressed state.

Known issues:

• We’re looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.
• We’re working on a fix to enable live preview for pinned site tabs.
• We’re working on enabling the new taskbar experience for existing pinned sites. In the meantime, you can unpin the site from the taskbar, remove it from the edge://apps page, and then re-pin the site.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue where some Office applications crashing or missing after updating to a new build.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue causing some devices experiencing a KMODE_EXCEPTION bugcheck when using certain virtualization technologies.
• We’re working on a fix where some devices are experiencing a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION bugcheck.
• We’re investigating a bug where the vEthernet adapter in Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 distros becomes disconnected after a period of use. For full details please follow this GitHub thread.
• We’re working on a fix for an issue where after taking this build some users receive a Compatibility Assistant notification that “Microsoft Office is no longer available”. Despite the notification, Office should still be there and working fine.

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