GoKawiilAMD confirms Radeon driver bug causes constant SSD writes, degrading drive health
AMD has acknowledged a bug in its External Events Utility, bundled with Radeon GPU drivers, that continuously writes data to system SSDs even when the PC is idle. Users on Reddit and AMD's community forums reported sustained writes of roughly 5MB/s at idle, with one owner claiming their SSD health dropped about 1% monthly over 16 months. AMD representatives confirmed the issue is being investigated, with one saying a fix is expected in an upcoming driver release.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
Continuous background writes at the reported rate could add up to hundreds of gigabytes of unnecessary wear per day, potentially shortening SSD lifespan for affected users, according to the math laid out by reporters. This is the second time in roughly a year that an AMD driver utility has been linked to excessive, unexplained disk writes, which may raise questions among users about the reliability of AMD's driver software stack more broadly.
- AMD's External Events Utility, installed with Radeon drivers, has been writing data to SSDs continuously even at idle.
- Some users report SSD health dropping about 1% per month over 16 months, and idle writes around 5MB/s.
- AMD has acknowledged the bug and says a fix is hoped for in an upcoming driver release.
Samsung 990 Pro SSD — If a buggy driver is quietly chewing through your SSD's write endurance, having a drive with high TBW endurance ratings gives extra peace of mind. The Samsung 990 Pro is a popular high-endurance NVMe SSD well suited for gaming PCs running demanding GPU drivers. It's a solid upgrade or replacement while AMD works out a permanent fix for the EEU issue.
See Samsung 990 Pro SSD on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: tomshardware.com — Newton Gitonga, 2026-11-09
Published there as: “AMD admits GPU driver bug is writing data continuously, wearing out SSDs”
Read the original report → The summary and analysis above are GoKawiil's own, written from reporting by the source above. Facts and quotes belong to the original publisher.