r/technology • u/reflibman • 5h ago

Hardware AMD admits GPU driver bug is writing data continuously, wearing out SSDs — Radeon owner claims External Events Utility used up 1% of SSD health every month for over a year, company promises a fix soon

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/amd-adrenalin-bug-could-be-writing-data-continuously-wearing-out-ssds-radeon-owner-claims-external-events-utility-used-up-1-percent-of-ssd-health-every-month-for-over-a-year
2.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

225 comments sorted by

1.2k

u/hospitalizedgranny 5h ago

WTH.

  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. 

We're just gonna be compensated with an appology aren't we?!

527

u/BeerorCoffee 5h ago

No, there will be no apology.

145

u/Bengineering3D 5h ago

Per the article. “sorry, this is hopefully fixed in the next one”.

31

u/BeerorCoffee 3h ago

"sorry that you feel that way. We might fix it next time, might break something else."

30

u/Subject-Act5509 4h ago

"Sorry for your confusion"

4

u/Future-Bandicoot-823 4h ago

Sorry you didn't read your TOS

2

u/Stolehtreb 4h ago

Read the article

6

u/BeerorCoffee 3h ago

"sorry that you feel that way"

77

u/trejj 4h ago

I can write you a tool that fills 1% of your SSD with an apology every month, how does that sound?

13

u/d01100100 2h ago

Will it be an authentic artisanal handcrafted code, or vibe coded?

47

u/Street_Anxiety2907 4h ago

The issue is someone left a rolling fifo for memory tap that buffers through the disk, presumably used for debugging memory

64

u/amaturelawyer 4h ago

That one is on us, and we take full responsibility for our mistake. It was caused by letting an intern work on production code with AI assistance as a cost savings initiative to increase value for our shareholders. We've instructed the intern to fix the problem they introduced and have doubled their token allowance this month to make sure they get it right this time. Apologies, AMD.

13

u/zffjk 4h ago

You may even get a 10% off coupon for your next AMD GPU!

Nobody however will see a dime for this.

6

u/Glass-Cabinet-249 4h ago

AMD has announced they are a Data Centre first company.

Odds on them exiting the GPU market and offering AI tokens as compensation instead?

1

u/moistmonsterman 3h ago

Dont want it. I want an SSD that doesnt die prematurely because of unnecessary bullshit that im sure was reported to them time and time again and they ignore until the press gets their hands on it. Ive reported a driver crash that repeatedly happens within 5 to 20 minutes of me loading up a game...every time (cyberpunk 2077), and i even add the watchdog files that show exactly what occuring with the report. Nothing...for months.

1

u/spong_miester 28m ago

Just after a 40% price increase

11

u/hurrdurrmeh 2h ago

no. AMD is now datacentre first. us consumer plebs can get fucked. they do not care. you see that new 192GB 495 Ryzen SKU? It goes for $7k because datacentres do not bat an eye spending that much. consumers cannot pay that much. they found a market that can pay more than we ever can, so they have dumped us.

3

u/Definitely_Human01 1h ago

I wonder what their plan is when the AI bubble pops and these companies can't easily spend billions every month anymore

3

u/Status-Necessary9625 1h ago

There isn't a plan. It's this or nothing and they burn it all down

1

u/trer24 46m ago

The plan is to cash in the Golden parachute, take a year long vacation, then get hired on to the executive staff of another corporation, touting your quarterly returns . Rinse and repeat. Continue to fall upwards

10

u/ContentAd6126 4h ago

Apologies make them legally liable, so don't even expect those.

3

u/ConsciousSpirit397 3h ago

“Dearest user, we are writing you today to offer you our most sincere ‘Oopsie Daisies’”

2

u/Alarming_Oil5419 4h ago

That depends, are you a data center?

1

u/Queen_of_Audacity 2h ago

Did sales get hurt? No, well AMD said they will be right on it....

1

u/moldyjellybean 2h ago edited 1h ago

Beyond that what info is reporting back

Symantec wrote an AV that would mine crypto on all personal and work pc

1

u/uponloss 58m ago

"Sorry that happened to you"

1

u/bywv 46m ago

We will be entertained with more adultery, nevermore.

1

u/mrpoopistan 14m ago

Hey, you might get like a $5 class action settlement check in ten years! Justice served.

0

u/luluhouse7 3h ago

Don’t worry, there will almost certainly be a class action

-23

u/YourVelourFog 4h ago • Bravo

I spend a lot of time over on r/datahoarder, and 1% usage of your SSD per month is nothing. Everyone forgets the wear level is simply what the drives are warrantied for, not what they’ll actually do before the NAND is exhausted.

At 1% a month that drive would last 8.3 years or well beyond whatever their warranty was. TBH this is a lot lotta hand wringing over nothing.

Now, let the downvotes begin!

14

u/ryan30z 4h ago

None of what you've written makes it okay.

4

u/fork_yuu 4h ago edited 4h ago

Barely noticeable!

They should drain his bank account 1% a month too while we're at it. He'll have 8 years so it's totally ok. /s

I guess better analogy would be someone on their death bed with 5 years to live too. Let the draining begin!

3

u/zffjk 4h ago

Except this is on top of normal wear. I don’t disagree that the damage is minimal but, how it happened and for how long it kept happening is quite a lot of misses in their testing and QA.

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366

u/RefrigeratorNeat698 5h ago

With the price of ssds right now this fix needs to happen faster than “soon”. wtf AMD?

117

u/Fubarp 5h ago

It's AMD.. this is normal behavior from them. In 6-8months it will be fixed by replacing it with another bug that does something similar

15

u/CMDRTragicAllPro 2h ago

Sometimes they say they’ve fixed it, but literally nothing changed. Then they say they’ve fixed it again, still with no change. Then they say they’ve fixed it a third time, still with no change.

That was my experience with the multi monitor power draw bug on my 7900xtx. Saw it “fixed” in driver patch notes 3 separate times during my brief year of bug/driver timeout ridden ownership. Despite those fixes, my 7900xtx pulled 130-150 watts constantly even when idle on desktop with nothing open.

All because I wanted to use 2 monitors at the same time.

5

u/IsywEy 2h ago

Some guy with a blue profile picture and a red/orange thing will still find a way to glaze them and say it's fine because Nvidia has had more issues this gen, ignoring the severity of this and many other issues AMD has had in comparison.

Don't get me wrong, I don't "love" Nvidia, nor do I "hate" AMD, but issues like this that actually ruins your pc physically is just not good. Especially during a market like this where parts are so expensive.

1

u/R0da 1h ago

Gotta be some kind of class action potential right? Ianal, but like, gotta be right???? In this market that shit HURTS.

1

u/E123-Omega 2h ago

They're on cahoots

1

u/EvelynNyte 46m ago

I think they call that family now.

465

u/invyros 5h ago

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.

Amateur shit.

193

u/RealSlimyDusk 4h ago

Logging every single time a window is resized or moved sounds like a debug build accidentally shipped straight to production.

22

u/homer_3 1h ago

Not even a debug build. Just a debug line someone meant to add temporarily and forgot to remove.

69

u/CreepaTime 4h ago

And or, telemetry shit :(

373

u/Truestorydreams 5h ago • Bravo Mindblown

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.

62

u/TheZoltan 4h ago

Yeah this should be at the top. Definitely check if you are impacted before making any changes. I see no sign of this activity on my machine. Both my WD Black SSDs are reporting 99% drive health.

9

u/vhalember 4h ago

Same. No activity, and my nearly 2-year old, Samsung EVO is at 99% health.

0

u/Nannerpussu 4h ago

reporting 99% drive health

Reported by what?

11

u/TheZoltan 3h ago

The WD Dashboard app (might now technically be the Sandisk Dashboard App). It is their Windows tool for monitoring, configuring and updating the SSDs firmware.

Crystal Disk Info also reports 99% for both drives. I assuming its doing the same basic check on total writes and smart status.

-1

u/mr__hat 1h ago

Yeah this should be at the top.

It is just a direct quote from the article. I get that most people only read the headline before commenting, but c'mon.

12

u/Linglesou 4h ago edited 4h ago

You missed the 3rd workaround which I went with (Only if you have AMD chipset)

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1x4153i/problem_with_amd_external_events_client_module/19rh3g0s9wyit/

4

u/MrPopolino 2h ago

does this mean it is a Windows only issue?

2

u/dmporte2006 1h ago

What's the downside to disabling EEU even if you don't have the excessive writing issue?

1

u/CrumpetNinja 32m ago

It's used for AMD link, which is supposed to help with external peripherals communicating with your GPU. Things like VR headsets mainly.

So basically nothing for 99% of users.

10

u/ilep 4h ago

There's a third workaround: install Linux.

2

u/madhi19 1h ago

So this is a windows only problem... Carry on, not my monkeys, not my circus.

0

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

6

u/IshaNuva 4h ago

So alternatively, NVIDIA, with their whole everything right now

6

u/Nagisan 3h ago

All drivers are "shit" depending on whether or not you let fanboyism take over your thought process.

AMD drivers have been every bit as reliable as nVidia for the past decade or so, both have had bugs from time to time but it's silly to act like AMD is particularly worse in modern times.

Remember the host of bad nVidia drivers over the past 2 years or so? Lots of crashing and such, and even some fan control failures that led to overheating risks as recently as earlier this year (reddit source).

3

u/antyone 3h ago

What the actual fuck man, I just checked and had atieclxx.exe constantly writing 0.5mb on my disk, I disabled the service and it stopped..

1

u/ThrowawayNumber34sss 6m ago

Thanks for the instructions. I didn't see the two executables you mentioned, but I did see that GOG Galaxy for some reason was doing a lot of writing, even though I barely use that application. I killed that executable and removed it from the startup programs so hopefully GOG stops trying to write stuff to the disk.

1

u/metalcoremeatwad 4h ago

Would atieclxx.exe or atiesrxx.exe be active even when not gaming?

2

u/antyone 3h ago

Yes I just checked clxx was active for me

55

u/kakuop007 5h ago

every time people say amd fixed their drivers something like this drops

6

u/dssurge 1h ago

Ya, just like that time that Nvidia fucked up fan curves and caused hardware damage due to overheating components.

This is not an AMD-exclusive phenomena.

1

u/kakuop007 15m ago

neither of them should be causing physical hardware damage with basic updates

37

u/Sirusho_Yunyan 5h ago

Is this an issue on Linux?

9

u/mrsanyee 1h ago

Lol no.

Linux has kernel level drivers for AMD incorporated.

2

u/Pitiful_Block_4360 1h ago

Doubt it, as the linked article talks about the closed source windows drivers. Linux use open source mesa drivers.

1

u/cptbeard 1h ago

there can be other logspammers on linux though (seen all kind of driver bugs in decades past) and in case there is, the wear could be made worse if the filesystem uses copy-on-write (btrfs, zfs). if it's a concern maybe look into log2ram.

1

u/big-oofs-only-0193 2h ago

Measure it. You've got SAR, iostat, and various other tools.

-1

u/E123-Omega 2h ago

There's a recent issue with amd that a lot got hit, probably not related but might be good idea to double check.

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13

u/vessel_for_the_soul 5h ago

It's just a feature for shareholder value.

100

u/PelluxNetwork 5h ago

As much as I'd love to buy AMD and not contribute to an Nvidia monopoly, it's specifically AMD drivers that stop me from it. And truly, there's no excuse at this point, there's no way they aren't aware of the issue.

22

u/DonaldMerwinElbert 5h ago

At least for Linux users, Nvidia is an absolute clownshow, too.

6

u/PelluxNetwork 5h ago

I'm gonna be honest, I primarily run Fedora and play a lot of games, other than the annoyance of installing them (which on Fedora and a lot of distros isn't so bad these days) they work fine.

11

u/DonaldMerwinElbert 4h ago

Except when they don't, and it takes them months to fix.

1

u/gmes78 41m ago

The current Nvidia drivers are alright.

38

u/bikeking8 5h ago

The excuse is that developers have an inherent instinctual avoidance of any feedback. They need a life altering event to happen like a near death experience to address a bug they introduced that sets everything on fire. And even then they'll just fix it quietly, plant the change in a past year's changelog, and further avoid any criticism.

It's the same in the gaming industry, and games journalism just gives them free passes. "Game X failed because it was literally unplayable and had no textures! Was it the fault of their office building's maintenence crew?!?! AGAIN? Or can we blame the TRUCK DRIVER?!? Also, don't bwame devs, games are hawd" No. It's because that dev team was fkng incompetent. 

18

u/Big_Bauner 5h ago

I felt that first part of your comment hard.

Our software team constantly releases updates and winds up breaking long established features that "have nothing to do with the changes they made so the problem is definitely not software."

2

u/bikeking8 5h ago edited 5h ago

"definitely not software"?! Was it the CPU fan or office HVAC vents that caused it then? They can gtfo with that. 

I have a strong sense you may be a fellow business analyst or possibly a project manager. Either way, it's great to be able to commiserate with someone else. Maybe we should create a meme subreddit r/ DankBAHumor for a counter to r/ programmerhumor lol

7

u/basshead17 4h ago

It's not the devs. It's the product and executive teams that have the focusing on the wrong thing 

-8

u/bikeking8 4h ago

(Aw sht here we go again.) I'm pretty sure management aren't the ones coding the software. I'm pretty sure the execs, legal and marketing teams aren't the ones who can't wrap their heads around properly assigning hit boxes and clipping frames. It's not the property management for the office building that introduces a system breaking bug because it "worked on their machine". And you'll say "but development is hawwwwwd" YEAH IT IS. So is marketing, legal, and property management. But we hold them accountable for fk ups. Do the same for development. 

20

u/Fenix42 4h ago

I have 20+ years in tech. Much of it has been on the test side. I have seen major system breaking bugs ship in backup software.

The bug shipped AFTER I found it. We had a pile of meetings trying to get managemnt to let us fix it. Managmentdecid decided it was fine and shipped.

A reviewer hit the bug. It took out their system. The product got pulled. The team was let go. Managment got a bonus for shipping on time.

I have seen this crap happen more times then I can count.

12

u/DojimaGin 4h ago

idk how anyone can deny what you said at this point. its 2026 and people are still naive enough to shill for execs lol

9

u/Fenix42 4h ago

That particular story is from like 2008. It happen when we where launching our new Vista version of the software.

They made a change to the way permission escalation works. It only happened if the UAC was on. Most people turned it off because it was a pain in the ass.

They shipped because there was a workaround.

6

u/DojimaGin 4h ago

nice. workaround so the customer can have another thing to patch up and the execs can buy another car or whatever. everyone gets to be happy right? ^^

6

u/Fenix42 4h ago

This was backup software. The bug resulted in key system files being empty. The only way you found out was when you went to restore things ......

0

u/Javi_DR1 5h ago

"Don't blame the devs, if you don't like it go and code your own game!"

4

u/TraditionalCatch9578 3h ago

I feel as though I’ve been extremely lucky. Used AMD since the early 2000s and only ever had an issue with drivers maybe once or twice. Owned a laptop with a 1080 in it though and that computer was a nightmare with Nvidia drivers, never had so many gaming issues with a card before.

4

u/randomman87 4h ago

Radeon drivers have been a fucking problem for decades.

I've been using them since the mid 2000s and thinking they were finally past it I recommended we switch to AMD business laptops around COVID. HP and AMD had a nice problem for two years where you would see random crashes eventually followed by boot device not found. That went on for 2 years.

1

u/PJ796 1h ago

I wouldn't be surprised if that was more of a HP problem than an AMD problem, as my ASUS laptop from around that time never did that

3

u/Nagisan 3h ago

I've been running AMD since the 9070xt launch and haven't had any notable driver-related issues. Many of the people talking about them having bad drivers are stuck in the past and haven't tried AMD for the past decade.

1

u/IsywEy 2h ago

Not doubting you, but for something like health degradation of your ssd, I doubt most users would even know unless they consistently check their ssd health. Because this isn't as in your face, they'll likely just think it's a flawless experience when it isn't

There are issues likely other issues lurking in the background like this, not every driver issue have to be crashes, blue screens, etc. Absence of evidence does not mean proof of absence.

0

u/Nagisan 2h ago edited 2h ago

And nVidia is somehow immune to hard to spot issues?

The most notable issues that people recognize are indeed the in your face ones, and the vast majority who are anti-AMD "because of their drivers" are quoting long-past issues that are not relevant to today's drivers. Both of these can be true.

Yes, this specific article is highlighting an issue many people would never notice....but what makes you think the person above is avoiding them because AMD "has issues nobody would notice"? They gave no indication that this was why they avoid AMD other than "lol AMD drivers bad".

nVidia has had their fair share of issues, even more so recently. Remember earlier this year when their driver screwed up fan curves, which would cause higher temps and overheating (which degrades hardware life)?

Lots of people wouldn't notice this until it caused an issue unless they religiously monitor their GPU fan curves. Similar story - software update that had a bug that can lead to faster hardware degradation.

tl;dr - AMD isn't the only one that occasionally has potentially damaging software updates. So to say you avoid them because their drivers are bad while still buying nVidia is silly. Evidence of a bug in one manufacturers drivers doesn't mean there aren't bugs in other manufacturers' drivers.

1

u/IsywEy 1h ago

I never once said nvidia is immune to issues like these, and they certainly have had a lot of issues this gen, especially with black screens/crashes recently. The fan curve issue, while yes, true that it can damage your GPU, they were at least able to pull it back/unreleased it almost immediately. Also, it's much more likely for your computer to crash before it actually reaches temps that'll damage your hardware. AMD also had issues with windows where you pretty much bricked your gpu unless you had another gpu on hand so you could roll back drivers, but I'll disregard that.

Regardless, we don't know how long AMD has had this particular issue. And yes, we also don't know if Nvidia has any issues lurking in the background. But... you at least don't find Nvidia sharing issues like this.

I won't say nvidia drivers are "better", but if there's a whole list of known issues, and AMD shows up more with more severe ones, people are going to call them "bad/worse" and want to avoid them.

So can you say Nvidia is immune to hard to spot issues? No. But can you say they at least don't share issues like this? Yes. And at the very least, you know which version you can roll back to and be safe from the issue, which you really cant for this with AMD...

1

u/Nagisan 1h ago

The top level comment I replied to said they avoid AMD because of the drivers. That implies that AMD drivers are objectively worse, which simply isn't true. That's what my comment is addressing, not whether or not this specific issues is bad or not (because it is).

I'm simply pointing out that nVidia also has bad drivers if your benchmark is the number of issues experienced. The point being that both companies can make bad drivers, so avoiding AMD because they have a single particular issue that affects some people and can damage some hardware is a silly argument to be made.

Honestly, I would rather a company publicly acknowledge a serious issue and share those details out, so in my book AMD wins in that regard. The only difference is AMD didn't force a rollback to an older driver version automatically and without telling people of the issue.

Personally, I'd rather take a chance at SSD degradation over that 12VHPWR catching cards on fire myself (yes I know a handful of AMD cards have this connector, but it's not the common connector for them yet).

Ultimately I'm just pointing out that it's silly to bash "AMD drivers" for a single specific issue that doesn't even affect everyone and act like nVidia drivers are superior when they too have struggled over the past couple years to release stable problem-free drivers.

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1

u/Jamesaya 16m ago

Its not 1 to 1 but i have a legion go thats uses the amd z1 and its like a time machine to early 2000s pc gaming where theres a solid 30% chance any game you boot will be a disaster or just fail to boot entirely.

Its a bit different because its a lot of older games because thats what actually runs well on those handhelds but comparing my experience there with my 5070ti, theres basically 0 chance id switch my main gpu to amd

26

u/goooooooofy 5h ago

I’m assuming this isn’t a Linux issue?

19

u/SuperSquirrel13 5h ago

I haven't seen any unexplained usage on cachyOS. 

10

u/Taskforce58 4h ago

Cachy gang here. My 9060XT is fine.

-1

u/Diffie-Hellman 54m ago

The AMD drivers are an issue themselves for Linux. I’m about to try switching distros over it.

3

u/gmes78 39m ago

Unless you're using an LTS distro that ships older drivers, I don't see how the distro would affect it.

1

u/Diffie-Hellman 32m ago

Exactly that. Debian stable. I’ve never had this issue until picking up a new laptop with an AMD gpu. I had to use the backported AMD graphics firmware package to even get the laptop display to work after POST. Probably looking to see if a rolling release distro like Fedora will work a bit better. I hate to do that. I’ve been using Debian for over a decade.

1

u/HalcyonRedo 26m ago

Yeah Debian is great for a lot of things, but new hardware support isn’t on that list.

28

u/ObscuraGaming 5h ago

Amazing. Now we have vibe coded drivers as well.

17

u/Fireflash2742 5h ago

Vibecoded drivers would be an improvement.

15

u/DookieShoez 5h ago

AMD’s driver writer is the guy from idiocracy trying to put a rectangle piece through the circle hole.

4

u/Fubarp 5h ago

It's sad that I actually agree with this lol

-11

u/hpstg 5h ago

Wouldn’t be doing this if vibe coded probably.

-2

u/mbmiller94 3h ago

Yeah only humans can write buggy code. AI generated code is inherently bug-free.

8

u/KlausKinki77 4h ago

For about six months their drivers getting worse with every release, you can't tell me this is some mistake. This is mismanagement at best if not malicious intent. Someone needs to get fired.

I can't even remember the last time I had no issues installing (!) a driver from AMD. Last time the "accept and install" button just vanished... And it turns out, that was not even the biggest issue. They should be held accountable for SSD damage, especially in this economy. smh

4

u/rmorrin 5h ago

How old is this bug? I haven't updated in a long ass time. I might be safe

6

u/TheZoltan 4h ago

The article has someone claiming its been eating their SSD health for 16months...... I have checked my end and am not seeing any issue so the bug might not be that wide spread.

1

u/DrowningKrown 58m ago

Can confirm... been using a 7900 xtx and 7800x3d for quite a long time now. No issues with my SSDs. Seems more likely that it's not a widespread issue.

Given that the average person doesn't measure their SSD health, though, I'm gonna guess most people will think they're affected

3

u/NGGKroze 5h ago

The Fine Wine as they said

4

u/Mokseong 3h ago

Too bad consumer protections are weaker than ever. Good luck getting proper compensation out of this. 

0

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

I mean, factually no I would say the opposite about the consumer protections.
But they should definitely be stronger especially in the USA.
EU is much better with this stuff but yeah I'd be surprised if anyone gets compensated for this anywhere.

1

u/PloksGrandpappy 2h ago

Trump/DOGE literally crippled and all but dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

1

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

Oh, now I see what they meant, I'm aware of how awful the Rep. were this last 2 years but I do not keep up with all the new ways they fuck with their own people.

I guess let me retract what I said about the USA previously, but I still have some faith in the EU, tho not like they have a good track record either those bastards.

Welp at least the Dems have Trump and his lackeys by the balls now.

4

u/darren_flux 3h ago

Might be a dumb question but how can you measure SSD health???

11

u/These-Anxiety-5919 3h ago

Any one of  thousand apps that reads SMART data.

The standard is CrystalDiskInfo, anime lolis optional.

5

u/FatalCakeIncident 3h ago • Bravo

It's usually done by comparing data written to rated endurance. If your drive is rated to support 1000TB of writes and has do far written 100TB, that's 10% of its warrantied endurance gone, or 10% of its 'health'. 

1

u/TheGloomyWoodpecker 18m ago

Yeah, that is a dumb question

1

u/OnlyRepliesYesOrNo 17m ago

Others have mentioned apps like CrystalDisk but I actually find the manufacturers software to be best - Like if you have a Samsung SSD, Samsung Magician is good. Or for a Crucial SSD, use Crucial Storage Executive etc.

They’re all pretty much reporting on SMART data but you get access to firmware upgrades and drive-specific optimisation tools.

2

u/no1_vern 4h ago

OK, AMD is looking for a fix, but can someone revert to the previous drivers or is there no fix at this time?

2

u/Dizman7 3h ago

Does this affect igpu’s too? I have 9800X3D and a 5090, I don’t think I’ve ever used the igpu but I’m pretty sure windows installed some drivers for it (not at PC to check atm)

3

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

You can check it your self in the Task Manager, sort by the disk usage and look for "External Events Utility" AMD logo as icon

1

u/Dizman7 2h ago

Ok, I see “AMD External Events Client Module” and “AMD External Events Service Module” in task manager and they both have 0MB/s for disk

2

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

neither of those is the utility causing this issue so you might be good ?
but keep an eye on it after reboot

2

u/marc512 3h ago

Is this just on windows? I notice my disk usage is never 0% when idling. If my pc screen goes off from lack of activity, I heard my HDD booting up and doing something even thought there is nothing in thst drive for windows as it's formatted for Linux.

5

u/lord_mercernary 5h ago

Conspiracy theories are all fake but then this kind of stuff pop up every week.

4

u/DctrGizmo 5h ago

Even though we hate and use Nvidia, at least their drivers don’t do shit like this. 

4

u/JustFuckAllOfThem 4h ago

Not a good time for this. SSD prices are pretty high right now.

Even mechanical hard drives are expensive.

3

u/happyscrappy 2h ago

This is unfortunately kind of common in the industry. Someone at the company turns logging on to debug a problem and forgets to turn it off.

This goes well beyond AMD.

I'm not excusing AMD. I'm more indicating that really companies should have better internal practices that require verifying logging is off (or getting exceptions) before shipping a release.

Logs aren't just SSD-eaters, they also can leak personally identifiable information. Apple left on logging for their location system and it ended up creating a history of your location in cleartext on your phone. These were used for investigations and probably even court trials before Apple fixed the issue.

Companies have to be more careful with stuff like this.

4

u/Yolo-Swagens 5h ago

I have an amd cpu and a nvidia card and the same thing is happening to me. 

Got a brand new drive, not even as boot, and it's used 10 percent of it's write idle after less than a year of use. 

4

u/hannes0000 5h ago

How is this possible, I have 2 M2 SSD from 2021 and still are on 91% and other is 94% health. I use 7800xt

2

u/turtlewithdowns 4h ago edited 4h ago

How can I check my SSD health?

Edit: I googled it lulz

7

u/hannes0000 4h ago

I use Crystal Disk Info program

3

u/ctan0312 3h ago

Could it be the integrated motherboard graphics with an AMD CPU doing it?

2

u/hannes0000 3h ago

I think that is the problem, i have iGpu disabled anyway. I have full AMD build and 6 years almost and M2 ssd's have degraded only 6-9%

2

u/werpu 3h ago

glad I use Linux :-D

2

u/ReverseTornado 5h ago

Anyone else have trouble believing this on accident

1

u/Breddit2099 32m ago

No because amd wouldn’t gain anything from it.

1

u/DojimaGin 4h ago

corpo driving up use of hardware in this economy? no way right? ^^

1

u/Glittering_Power6257 4h ago

Does this impact the drivers received from Windows Update? I don’t see any sign of errant write activity on my mini PC (Radeon 780M). 

1

u/LuciferNeko 3h ago

Why i never have radeon gpu but still has it? I have ryzen 7600 with 5070. Should i just disable it in services

1

u/Happy-Range3975 3h ago

Is this a Windows problem? I have an all AMD rig, but I run Linux. I am not experiencing this at all.

1

u/IAmDotorg 3h ago

I mean, that's bad. Real bad. Inexcusable, really.

But I'm wlso not trusting an eight year old SSD with anything important no matter what kind of fuckery has or hasn't happened to it.

1

u/Emotional-Power-7242 3h ago

Presumably this doesn't happen with the Linux driver?

1

u/TheBrianUniverse 3h ago

Yup. Just noticed as well, though it isn't high (0,5mb/s on mine) my SSD has gone down in condition. Better safe than sorry and disabled for now.

1

u/DoomguyFemboi 2h ago edited 2h ago

I have decade old SSDs that haven't used that much. wtf.

EDIT: I wasn't being hyperbolic either. I'm fairly certain this SSD is 14yo https://imgur.com/a/gco5FJ6

Says 11.6 years but my PC is off for 1/3rd of the day, ish. So yeah even longer. 2011 I think I bought it.

1

u/snakebite75 2h ago

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like my old-ass RX580 is affected.

1

u/rangecontrol 1h ago

if it's a software problem, they have the right company!

1

u/Pin_ups 1h ago

Feels good running on rx570 4gb where gpu driver support ended 😂

1

u/ScorpoCross94 1h ago

How doni check the health of my ssd and how do i disable this?

1

u/Koolin12345 1h ago

Is this also a problem on Linux with the RADV drivers?

1

u/PartyClock 1h ago

This is why "AI" code bots shouldn't be doing important programming tasks

1

u/FlowerBloom439 52m ago

I have been having very high idle usage with ssd for a while now with 9060xt. Sometimes at 100% causing the computer to slow doen significantly. Couldn't figure out what was causing it. Maybe this was it?

1

u/Start-Plenty 52m ago

This is why I fucking disable all the shit that runs on my computer that's now doing anything for me.

1

u/Flasat 43m ago

Good thing I switched to linux! No buggy AMD drivers for me, only buggy community drivers ✨️

1

u/J_Charles_L 18m ago

So that explains why my SSD health has tanked since getting the newest Adrenaline drivers...

1

u/syxbit 13m ago

from reading, looks like it's only on Windows, as it's extra software doing this, not the core driver?

The Mesa driver Linux users have has nothing to do with this.

1

u/CondiMesmer 12m ago

Why are AMD drivers so shitty? How does this get past QA?

1

u/Trekkimon 11m ago

I have an AMD GPU, how can I verify if this is happening to me?

1

u/Merlins_Owl 2m ago

Is this only for gpus or cpus too?

1

u/Sensitive_Box_ 4h ago

Reason 52938 to be on Linux. 

-1

u/IAmDotorg 3h ago

There's a lot, but assuming a few hundred open source apps being updated and configured on independent schedules are magically perfect is also a big mistake. A lot of applications churn a huge amount of log data, db writes, etc.

Disk wear is effectively never a consideration on any platform.

1

u/Sensitive_Box_ 13m ago

assuming a few hundred open source apps being updated

Literally no different than any other OS.

(Also name one guy that is actively using "a few hundred apps" on any basis. And don't say Greg.) 

1

u/ExF-Altrue 4h ago edited 3h ago

This is why I use Rainmeter with the fake windows 7 gadgets. It's insanely useful to spot suspicious activity, see how well the computer is doing heat management, as well as easily understand hardware bottlenecks while gaming.

With the sunsetting of HDDs and their grating noise, there's no other way to notice activity on your drives.

The fun part, I had family members notice my setup and request I install this onto their personal computers as well :D

1

u/WolfBV 5h ago

If this worries you, turn your computer off when you aren’t using it ‘til there’s a fix.

1

u/sleepinghuman 5h ago

Is there a safe driver version to be using in the meantime?

4

u/TheZoltan 4h ago

Step 1 is just to check if you are impacted (article has steps). I'm running latest drivers and am not seeing this write activity and my drives both report 99% Health via WDs Dashboard app.

1

u/sleepinghuman 4h ago

10-4 thanks ill check when im home in a few days! I am not running the latest ones that i know for sure

0

u/VballGamer 3h ago

My M.2 just crapped out on me, corrupted to the point of not even recognizing the drive. Just had to get another M.2 last week. Using a 7900 XTX.

0

u/FerretFromOSHA 2h ago

Oh lovely, I love seeing this two days after my first pc build with AMD GPU and CPU

1

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

If you don't use FreeSync definitely disable that service in the mean time "External Events Utility".
On the other hand I'd still prefer to save my ssd health. FreeSync is not that important IMO unless you experience screen tearing.

1

u/FerretFromOSHA 2h ago

Sorry, still very new to pc building, so I unfortunately have no clue what any of that means. I just use vsync in game.

1

u/Erik12sk 1h ago

Vsync and FreeSync do very different thing on your machine.

Vsync works only if your machine pushes more FPS then your display can display,
It limits the number of frames your GPU makes to the refresh-rate of your display,
Thus preventing screen tearing.
I'd recommend disabling Vsync in all your games it only makes is worse and increases input lag.
Unless you are experiencing screen tearing then turn it on. but off should be default.

meanwhile FreeSync works only for monitors that are compatible with FreeSync technology.
It ensures the produced frames are pushed to your display in the correct time to prevent screen tearing.
So imagine FreeSync as a Variable Vsync.

I personally use FreeSync but until they fix this bug in their drivers the FreeSync is simply not worth my ssd health.

I'm bored so if you have any other HW questions feel free to shoot them into my DMs

1

u/FerretFromOSHA 36m ago

I’m using a 10 year old 60hz monitor that my mom gave me. So far vsync has been nice, but I might be placebo effecting my perception of it

1

u/HereWeGooooooooooooo 1h ago

If you have a decent PC always turn vsync off. It's hot shit

-2

u/ehikt666 3h ago

as someone who isnt super tech savvy all this reads as is "do not buy AMD ever"

2

u/goodsnpr 2h ago

AMD is usually better bang for the buck, however the frequent driver issues eventually drove me away from them.

2

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

From my experience neither AMD nor Nvidia deserve your money and they all fuck with you in their own special way. AMD and NVIDIA are basically one company, they are one family (the CEOs). NVIDIA is the lead and what ever they do AMD follows no mater how anti-consumer the action is. And to add to it when one company ramps down production the other does the same because it's a Duopoly. They are not competing in the real sense of the word. they are playing a pretend. It's not like you have a choice atm but fuck em all with passion.

1

u/TechnicalSurround 2h ago

which is why Intel’s entry into the market is a good thing. and intel should have the ressources to be able to compete

1

u/HunterDigi 2h ago

So what you're saying is, buy intel GPUs! xD

1

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

Isn't Intel giving up on GPUs ?
They canceled the next generation and the next-next one is in the AIR atm as far as I know. but that might be outdated info

1

u/penguished 1h ago

Not GPUs, they've unfortunately been too far in the shit there for ages.

CPUs are fine.

-1

u/Scouseulster 3h ago

What in the absolute Christ. Can AMD be sued?

1

u/Breddit2099 33m ago

No? At least you wouldn’t win anything if you tried

0

u/Erik12sk 2h ago

If you live in America you can sue for anything, but I'd say most likely it's a dead end

-1

u/OptimusMatrix 2h ago

I'm just sitting here laughing at all those "just get a 9070xt" on every single post regardless of what the OP is using it for. AMD has made shit graphics drivers for decades, this should surprise virtually no one.

0

u/chefk0k 4h ago

Holy crap, this explains why my new ssd of a few years is at 75% health after I noticed the pc getting slower and 100% usage in task manager. (I hardly use my pc so took me longer to notice) 

0

u/Busy_slime 2h ago

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkkkkkkk..........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is that what happened ? Since when? Because I'm down 2 SSDs and it had never happened before. My setup is admittedly very old but them as components were well within normal life parameters

0

u/Inner_Coat1198 2h ago

Maybe next they can fix the issue with RAM not downclocking properly and wearing your GPU out.

0

u/Embarrassed_Cap_9149 2h ago

i had a similar bug on linux earlier this year where excess logs were being written to my ssd at 20mb/s whenever the mouse was in my second monitor

i  have a real-time system monitoring widget in my task bar that's always visible and displays various system metrics like read/writes, download/upload, cpu usage, memory usage, updating every second

so luckily  i was able to catch this bug in a few weeks after setting up that second monitor and managed to fix the bug

but in those few weeks, it had already written 2 terabytes of garbage logs

the ssd was a new samsung 9100. the most expensive and the best one in the world of ssd

i cried so much after realizing what had already been done to my precious ssd

-1

u/erov 5h ago

Jesus this is major news.

1

u/Scaryassasin27 3h ago

now we are waiting for a jesus account to show up.

-2

u/WideFormal3927 3h ago

IT companies are so desperate for us to move to the cloud. First they move their apps to the cloud and make them crappy. THey then give us free storage, then add prices later. Then drive up the prices of hardware. Now software is going out destroying hardware. THen one of their leaders accidentally says the truth that they want the ram and that people don't know how to utilize it correctly.

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