AMD is working on a software update to fix a driver issue that causes excessive, continuous data writes to solid-state drives across its Radeon GPU lineup.
First reported on sites including Tom’s Hardware and Neowin, the bug has been traced to two pieces of software: AMD External Events Client Module and Utility, known as atieclxx.exe or atiesrxx.exe under Windows processes. The background service handles monitoring functions, but as some users have noticed, it’s also writing a large amount of data to SSDs, as much as 432GB in 24 hours, according to Neowin.
This excessive data writing is a concern because it can accelerate the wear and tear on an SSD, potentially shortening its lifespan. According to PC Gamer, that could mean losing 1% of the drive’s health in just a month. As one Reddit poster pointed out, this is not a new bug and in one case may have caused SSD degradation for nearly a year and a half.
In an email to CNET, an AMD spokesperson said the company didn’t have additional details but pointed to a help article that mentions its Adrenalin Edition driver software, which includes the External Events software as a background process.
