AMD admits GPU driver bug is writing data continuously, wearing out SSDs

An SSD can spend most of its day doing very little, particularly when a PC is sitting idle. That may not be the case for some AMD Radeon systems, however, with reports suggesting that AMD’s External Events Utility (EEU), which is installed alongside Radeon drivers, may be writing data to the system driver continuously, even when the computer is barely being used. The issue drew attention again on November 8, when Reddit user ‘darklinkpower’ highlighted reports of the unusual drive activity.

One Radeon owner claimed the problem had been quietly eating into their drive's reported health for more than a year, writing: "I just found out that the driver eats up 1% of my SSD health every month for 16 months." Another user reported sustained writes of approximately 5MB/s while their PC was idle. Another one claimed their SSD health had dropped by about 1% every month for 16 months. AMD has acknowledged the problem. In an October 21 response on its community forum, a company representative confirmed that they were investigating. “Yes. We're looking into it with the aim to resolve it in a future driver release." He said. Another representative, AMAD Vik, subsequently offered a more encouraging update on Reddit, apologizing and saying, “This is hopefully fixed in the next one."

Notably, the EEU is not an entirely unfamiliar culprit. Last November, a similar issue involving AMD chipset drivers arose, with a Redditor claiming he had discovered that the software repeatedly updated a log file whenever on-screen elements were moved or resized. That incident also prompted questions about whether stopping the service would affect FreeSync. The latest reports are a different proposition, though, with some users now seeing writes that barely let up, even when their PCs are doing nothing.

The numbers are worth looking at. At 5 MB/s, an SSD would receive about 18GB of host writes per hour. Over a full day, that's 432GB, and a month of uninterrupted activity could push the figures close to 13TB. That, however, does not necessarily mean being written to the NAND flash itself. SSD controllers use caching and wear-leveling, and other techniques, to manage incoming data. How much of that reported activity thus translates into actual flash wear is still unknown. The user's claim of losing 1% of drive health each month also hasn't been independently confirmed.

Moreover, there doesn't appear to be clear patterns across Radeon driver versions. Reports include systems running Adrenalin 26.19.2, as well as older releases, suggesting the problem may not be limited to the latest update. AMD's October 30 release notes for Adrenalin 26.20.2 don't mention the issue either. For now, it's difficult to say which driver versions, hardware combinations, or system configurations are responsible.

That said, there are two reported workarounds. The first involves opening the Windows Services application by pressing Win + R, entering services.msc, and locating AMD EEU. Users can then stop the service or change its startup type to Disabled. That appears to stop excessive writeups, but isn’t necessarily a clean solution. The second workaround involves disabling Resizable Bar (ReBAR), which another user reported had stopped the disk activity without disabling the EEU. This, however, isn’t ideal either, as ReBAR can improve gaming performance by allowing the PC to access the GPU’S memory more efficiently.

For now, checking whether the problem actually exists on your PC is probably the most sensible first step. Open Windows Resource Monitor by pressing Win + R, typing resmon, and selecting the Disk tab. Sort by write activity and look for sustained writes from atieclxx.exe or atiesrxx.exe. AMD has indicated that a fix is in the works, but hasn’t published a confirmed release date. Until then, Radeon owners may want to monitor their storage activity rather than immediately disabling driver services or changing BIOS settings.

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