If you, like me, are a PC user with an AMD Radeon graphics card, you are likely well-acquainted with issues surrounding driver software. In this instance, it has been confirmed that an update to the AMD Software: Adrenalin suite can lead to performance degradation in your computer's storage.
AMD has recently confirmed that users with AMD Radeon graphics cards—running versions 26.19.2 or earlier of the AMD Software: Adrenalin driver (and potentially the latest version, 26.20.2)—may encounter an issue where the "External Events Utility" (EEU) continuously writes data to their storage at a rate of 1MB/s to 5MB/s. This constant activity negatively impacts both the health and performance of the storage drive.
Even a rate of 1MB/s is significant; if it occurs continuously, it equates to writing 84GB of data over a 24-hour period. At a rate of 5MB/s, that figure climbs to 432GB within the same timeframe.
This high volume of data writes is particularly concerning for lower-capacity storage drives, which generally have a shorter "mean time before failure" (MTBF) compared to higher-capacity counterparts. Furthermore, given the rising costs of storage components—whether SSDs or hard drives—this presents a very serious issue, especially for the average user.
AMD is reportedly aware of the problem and has stated that an upcoming update to the AMD Software: Adrenalin suite will resolve the issue in the near future.
