Excessive data reads/writes

[sjbeau]

Hi... I am new to this forum and definitely not a geek. However I watch my activity monitor consistently and have noticed the disc reads/writes are sooo fast, to the tune of 30GB+ in 36 hours. Is that normal? I can't find anyone whose iMac or MBP can go that fast. And for what reason? CPU usage is less than 20% of my machine. Can anyone weigh in on this issue?

Eleven days ago my iMac restarted on its own and got stuck. I had to call Apple to help me with disc repair. When I was back and running the activity monitor had reset. Since then it's faster than ever. I am not on my computer all day and I was out of town three of those eleven days. Is someone else using my device? This happens whether I am online or not. Am I being used as a "zombie" computer?

The first image was taken on March 18, 2022 @12:46 PM
The second image was taken on March 21, 2022 @1:28 AM
The third image was taken on March 22, 2022 @8:42 PM

Thoughts????

 

[DeltaMac]

Can you tell us about your Mac?
What model? How old is it? What version of macOS are you running?

You can see much of this in your Apple menu / About This Mac

 

[sjbeau]

Hi... and thank you for responding.

I am running MacOs Monterey 12.2.1

I have an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
Processor 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
Memory 24 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Startup Disk Macintosh HD
Graphics Radeon Pro 575 4GB

My disc has 1 TB of storage

My iMac is faster than ever!

I also found software for Smart Cards as follows:

Readers:
Reader Drivers:
#01: fr.apdu.ccid.smartcardccid:1.4.34 (/usr/libexec/SmartCardServices/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle)
SmartCard Drivers:

#01: com.apple.CryptoTokenKit.pivtoken:1.0 (/System/Library/Frameworks/CryptoTokenKit.framework/PlugIns/pivtoken.appex)


Available SmartCards (keychain):
com.apple.setoken:aks:

Available SmartCards (token):
com.apple.setoken:aks:

Is all of this normal?

 

[DeltaMac]

You can update to the current system version 12.3

The files that you mentioned are a normal part of your system

I'm not sure if you mean "fast" as speed of your Mac (which is a good thing!), but you mean that the system keeps showing more reads and writes. Is that correct?
Reads is not really a problem, and a Mac is always writing back to the system. It's kind of how it works.

Here's something that you can try that MIGHT help with your read/write question -- Try an NVRAM reset:
Restart your Mac while holding the Option-Command-p-r keys. You will hear a boot chime sound. Keep holding the same 4 keys until you hear the boot chime 2 more times. Then, release the keys to allow a normal boot. Your default boot setting will be removed as a result of the NVRAM reset, so after your Mac has booted back to your desktop, Open your System Preferences. Go to the Startup Disk preference pane. Unlock that pane by clicking on the padlock, and typing in your password. Then, click on your hard drive to select it. You can quit System Preferences then. Hopefully, the reset will help your situation, but it is not always a fix. Post back here in that case, and I may have another suggestion. Give it a few days, to be sure about that.

 

[chabig]

However I watch my activity monitor consistently and have noticed the disc reads/writes are sooo fast, to the tune of 30GB+ in 36 hours. Is that normal?

First, I would discourage you from obsessing on Activity Monitor. Second, my M1 MacBook Pro presently reports 1.80TB of data written and 1.36TB of data read. It's operating normally.