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Hardware·1 min read

AMD Adrenalin driver bug is wearing out SSDs with heavy writes

A bug in AMD's Adrenalin driver has been putting heavy write load on system drives for months. An independent developer's tool measures it and sidesteps the problem.

A graphics card and an M.2 SSD on a motherboard, illustrating the AMD Adrenalin driver bug that wears down system drives.
Image: heise online
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If your PC runs an AMD graphics card, your system SSD may have been taking more punishment than it should. A bug in AMD's Adrenalin driver has been causing heavy write load on system drives for months, and that can shorten how long an SSD lasts.

SSDs can only be written to a limited number of times, so unnecessary writes eat into their lifespan. That is why a driver that keeps hammering the drive in the background is more than an annoyance.

How can I check whether my SSD is affected?

An independent developer has released a tool that measures the damage the bug causes. It also works around the problem, so the extra writes can be avoided without waiting for a fix.

The details of how the bug behaves, which Adrenalin versions are affected and whether AMD has responded were not available to us, so we are not guessing at them. Anyone running an AMD GPU who keeps an eye on their drive's health data may want to look at how much has been written to the system drive in recent months.

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Tags:amdadrenalinssddriver bugwrite load

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