2022 MBPro 14" Memory Swapping SSD Degradation - Issue or Not?

[jav6454]

For most users, yes. But, the system can read and write to swap so fast that if the system is thrashing indefinitely, the SSD can wear out quickly enough to have an unexpectedly short lifetime. I've had multiple non-Apple SSDs and SSHDs (hybrid drives) die on me in previous Macs I installed 'em into.
I've learned to keep an eye on mine and take action when it is thrashing, even though the system still performs OK, in order to maintain longevity. The wear level is given by the “Percentage Used” field. That 16% below would probably be 50 or 75% if I hadn't. While it's thrashing, which it can do indefinitely when I have left too much running (normal use for me - bad habits), it's reading and writing over 500MB a second, sustained, thus the nearly one PETAbyte transferred so far. I meant to sign up for AppleCare right after purchase but missed the deadline cuz I was sick. So far it's doing OK, and this is confirmed by SMART info showing no uncorrectable errors:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/disk0

Password:
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [Darwin 21.5.0 arm64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org


=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       APPLE SSD AP0512Q
Serial Number:                      xxx
Firmware Version:                   387.120.
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x106b
...

NVMe Version:                       <1.2
Number of Namespaces:               3
Local Time is:                      Tue Jun 21 23:46:01 2022 PDT
Firmware Updates (0x02):            1 Slot
...


=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED


SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        54 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    16%
Data Units Read:                    987,678,100 [505 TB]
Data Units Written:                 934,461,978 [478 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 7,095,295,298
Host Write Commands:                3,111,096,942
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       407
Power On Hours:                     2,242
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   28
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0


Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745

You mentioned nonApple SSDs. Apple SSDs have been confirmed to be of a higher durability rate in terms of TBW.

 

[htnt7919]

Your laptop would be obsolete before the SSD break down. I have a SSD from 2011 still running today with no degradation on speed .

 

[jav6454]

Your laptop would be obsolete before the SSD break down. I have a SSD from 2011 still running today with no degradation on speed .

People tend to exaggerate things. There are failures, but usually stem from manufacturing or excessive writing from the user itself.

 

[Fishrrman]

This might be a problem for some users.
For many (most?) others, no.

There's a long thread about it in the "Apple Silicon" sub forum here at macrumors.

My solution (for my own base model MBP 14"):
I DISABLED virtual memory disk swapping using terminal.
This forces everything to run in physically-installed RAM.
Still runs fine, and it has NEVER crashed.
I DO "manage my open apps" so as not to overload the RAM...