When did this problem start?

The issue originated in December 2025 when a talent-review feature was added to Codex CLI, and was made worse in February 2026 when an update changed the SQLite log level to TRACE, causing unnecessary verbose logging to the SSD.

How much data was being written?

One user experienced 37TB of writes in 21 days. Extrapolated over a full year, that would total approximately 640TB—enough to exhaust a typical consumer SSD rated for 600TB total bytes written (TBW) in less than a year.

What did OpenAI do about it?

OpenAI acknowledged the issue and stopped distributing Codex CLI. However, the company has not announced a timeline for a fix or provided clear guidance on remediation for affected users.

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OpenAI's Codex CLI floods SSDs with unwanted writes, killing drives in weeks

ITmedia AI＋2d ago5 min read

Key takeaway

OpenAI's Codex CLI coding assistant tool is writing excessive amounts of data to users' solid-state drives due to overly verbose logging, with one user losing 37TB of writes in 21 days. At this rate, standard SSDs would fail within a year of normal use. Although OpenAI has acknowledged the problem and halted distribution of the tool, the incident highlights how AI software can cause hardware damage beyond its intended function without user awareness.

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3 Key Points

What happened
OpenAI's Codex CLI tool—a coding assistant—is writing excessive data to users' SSDs through unnecessary log operations, causing one user to lose 37TB of writes to their drive in just 21 days. The issue stems from verbose SQLite logging that was enabled by default in a December 2025 feature and remained active after a February 2026 update changed the log level to TRACE.
Why it matters
SSDs have a finite lifespan measured in total bytes written (TBW). At the rate one user experienced, an SSD rated for 600TB TBW would reach its limit in under one year of normal use. For developers relying on AI coding tools, this represents an unplanned hardware cost—the tool itself is damaging their equipment without explicit user consent. OpenAI has acknowledged the issue and stopped distributing Codex CLI, but the incident illustrates how AI agents can cause unexpected infrastructure damage that goes beyond the software's intended purpose.
What to watch
One user's testing of a Samsung 990 2TB NVMe SSD showed a 38.64 dB drive noise reduction after the problematic writes stopped, suggesting the drive was operating under severe stress. The Register reported the issue on June 23, 2026. OpenAI has not committed to a public fix timeline, leaving affected users to manually disable or downgrade the tool.

FAQ

When did this problem start?: The issue originated in December 2025 when a talent-review feature was added to Codex CLI, and was made worse in February 2026 when an update changed the SQLite log level to TRACE, causing unnecessary verbose logging to the SSD.
How much data was being written?: One user experienced 37TB of writes in 21 days. Extrapolated over a full year, that would total approximately 640TB—enough to exhaust a typical consumer SSD rated for 600TB total bytes written (TBW) in less than a year.
What did OpenAI do about it?: OpenAI acknowledged the issue and stopped distributing Codex CLI. However, the company has not announced a timeline for a fix or provided clear guidance on remediation for affected users.

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