Image: HPE

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) warned customers last week to install a critical firmware patch to prevent SAS SSDs (Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives) from permanently failing after 32,768 hours of operation -- which is 3 years, 270 days, and 8 hours.

"After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered," HPE said, clearly suggesting that device owners need to install the firmware patch if they want to keep using their devices past the 32,768-hour deadline.

Users who keep data backups on different drives will be able to recover their data, but the HPE SSD will be unrecoverable, according to HPE.

Impacted SAS SSD models are listed in the table at the bottom of this article.

HPE said some SSD models are sold as standalone products, but others are also incorporated inside other HPE products -- such as ProLiant, Synergy, Apollo, JBOD D3xxx, D6xxx, D8xxx, MSA, StoreVirtual 4335, and StoreVirtual 3200.

The hardware maker said it learned of this bug from another SSD manufacturer, but did not name the company who found the issue.

The bug affects all HPE SAS SSDs with a firmware versions prior to HPD8. Upgrading the SSD firmware to version HPD8 fixes the problem, HPE said.

Some SAS SSD models have received a patch on November 22, while a second set of SSD models will get their patches during the week that starts on December 9, next month.

Firmware download links are available in the official HPE advisory, along with instructions on how to apply the firmware update, and how to check an SSD's uptime and see how many hours companies have at their disposal to schedule a maintenance window to apply the updated firmware.The HPE advisory also includes a full list of HPE products that incorporated the vulnerable SAS SSDs.

This entire issue is eerily similar to what happened to Intel earlier this year when the company found out that two SSD models (D3-S4510 and D3-S4610) also contained a bug that would brick the device after 1,700 cumulative hours spent in idle mode. Per Reddit, some HPE SSD owners have already had storage drives die out.