AMD is working on a fix for Radeon drivers writing to SSDs

AMD is working on a fix for a bug that causes the AMD External Events Utility to write continuously to SSDs. The issue involves the atieclxx.exe process and affects systems running Windows 10 and Windows 11. Users have reported write speeds between 0.3 and 1.5 MB/s, while one report reached 5 MB/s. These ongoing writes have the potential to accumulate roughly 432 gigabytes daily or almost 13 terabytes monthly, while the real consequence for drive longevity remains uncertain.

Photo: Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

An AMD employee linked the problem to the utility working alongside Microsoft's PCIe filter driver. The issue has appeared across multiple Adrenalin driver versions, but some users say they have seen no unusual disk activity on Adrenalin 26.10.2. AMD acknowledged the problem in October and says a fix is currently undergoing final checks. A company spokesperson noted that the upcoming software patch might not arrive in the very next package.

Users have found temporary workarounds, such as disabling Resizable BAR or stopping the AMD External Events Utility through services.msc. Stopping the utility may affect Adrenalin hotkeys and FreeSync. Disabling Resizable BAR can reduce gaming performance.