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M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear
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You have to consider a look at the memory tab while you work. Some app may be using big amounts of memory causing kernel task to swap.
I have noticed even with the 16gb configuration I am using tons of memory as swap. Yet I haven't seen it max out it's ram capacity.
It's kinda disappointing to see applications use 9 GB if RAM and 12 GB if swap.
I'm okay with it for massive projects which don't come up that often. But even day to day tasks it tends to have 2-4 GB set for rapidly used swap (when it could be used by ram).
From the start I only intended to use the 1tb hard drive for OS and for Applications to prolong lifespan. (And A removable SSD for rapid read write and a raid of spinning drives for medium to long term storage). I figured it would swap, but this is excessive. I wonder if there a way I can change the swap drive to another connected by thunderbolt? And only use the main drive when speed is job critical?
It's kinda disappointing to see applications use 9 GB if RAM and 12 GB if swap.
I'm okay with it for massive projects which don't come up that often. But even day to day tasks it tends to have 2-4 GB set for rapidly used swap (when it could be used by ram).
From the start I only intended to use the 1tb hard drive for OS and for Applications to prolong lifespan. (And A removable SSD for rapid read write and a raid of spinning drives for medium to long term storage). I figured it would swap, but this is excessive. I wonder if there a way I can change the swap drive to another connected by thunderbolt? And only use the main drive when speed is job critical?
Well, here is just three articles, but I could find and link hundreds of similar news, posts, articles and comments like these:
Lifewire: How 8GB RAM Overperforms in M1 Macs. Yes, it's enough.
Medium: Who Really Needs 16GB In Their M1 Mac? Not me, and probably not you.
Mark Ellis: 8GB vs 16GB M1 MacBook – Does It Even Matter?
What is normal use anyway, you ask? Well, office work, light internet browsing? Just look at todays internet! It is more and more demanding and will be even more in future. Is 8 GB enough? For some, maybe. But in the future? Hell, no.
Yes, if this is the case, Apple must get their things together and fix ASAP.
You've only had yours running 70 hours.
I've only had mine for 5 days and I've ran more hours. There is no "comparison" here.
MacOS writing excessive amounts of something, isn't new, model or OS version specific.
Here's my SMART from mini2018's internal:
I don't use that internal ssd pretty much at all.
Hence the power on hours 174!
So, MacOS has written to it average of 71GB per hour!
I'm running Mojave, so this has nothing to do with Big Sur.
I'll have to boot to internal, to see the real attributes to my regular boot disk, wd blue.
Here's my SMART from mini2018's internal:
Code:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 37 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 2%
Data Units Read: 28,634,238 [14.6 TB]
Data Units Written: 24,043,651 [12.3 TB]
Host Read Commands: 364,008,679
Host Write Commands: 160,832,173
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 392
Power On Hours: 174
Unsafe Shutdowns: 251
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0Hence the power on hours 174!
So, MacOS has written to it average of 71GB per hour!
I'm running Mojave, so this has nothing to do with Big Sur.
I'll have to boot to internal, to see the real attributes to my regular boot disk, wd blue.
If you use it for ~10hrs a day, that makes 2GB/hour which I'd call totally normal, especially if there are 8GB of RAM.
... by the kernel alone! Boy that looks strikingly like mine. And not normal compared what I got on the 2013 MBA, which was MBs instead of GBs.
I've shut down my M1 MBA until I get some understanding of what's going on. When I received my new MBA, I even cleaned it of a ton of unnecessary services, which BTW was almost x4 of the number of threads and processes running on 10.9.5.
I simply don't understand how anyone can consider this normal, a "nothing burger" or FUD!
It depends on the amount of RAM you have and use. Kerneltask is responsible for swapping.
This is difficult to compare, because new macOS versions are optimized für SSD and may have another swapping strategy.
Nein Bruder, 10.9.5 was well optimized for SSDs. What, you think you cannot run Big Sur on an HDD?
No, this is most likely a system-wide traffic measurement bug. It's not conceivable so much data is being read and written for no reason. Once again, if you consider it swapping mem, my older MBA has only 4GB, where much more swapping should occur.
From a company whose marketing is heavily based on how “eco-friendly” their products are, I’d say Apple needs to be better than they are and I’m certainly not alone on this.
Code:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 26 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 4,882,564 [2.49 TB]
Data Units Written: 3,546,962 [1.81 TB]
Host Read Commands: 52,361,900
Host Write Commands: 23,705,727
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 140
Power On Hours: 32
Unsafe Shutdowns: 14
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0about a month old
This thread has 18 pages but no real confirmation on whether the issue is an actual issue or not.
Many are saying it is nothing to worry about. SMART is not always accurate especially with new M1 chip etc. And many other reasons.
Above all, Hector (the guy who first reported this whole issue) said it was caused by an app (called "self mirror" or so)....
I just wanna know if this is truly an issue or not lol.
Many are saying it is nothing to worry about. SMART is not always accurate especially with new M1 chip etc. And many other reasons.
Above all, Hector (the guy who first reported this whole issue) said it was caused by an app (called "self mirror" or so)....
I just wanna know if this is truly an issue or not lol.
For the time being, it's a concern in the sense that the volume of SSD reads and writes don't match what we should normally expect based on previous generations of macs and macOS. And it's a significant order of magnitude.
They are replaceable and removable, if you really want to keep using your M1 like 10-15 years from now then it should take a specialist no more than like, 15 minutes to replace your bad soldered CPU/RAM/SSD, if this practice becomes mainstream then so will the equivalent repair services.
Replacing a worn clutch-disc is x100 more hellish than any repair you can do on a computer and yet it's not stopping people from enjoying and working their cars or mechanics with zero formal education figuring it out.
For comparison Intel equipped my MacBook Pro 16 - 32GB RAM - 1 TB disk, 6 months old, always on and used all the time for softdev including multiple virtual machines:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 29 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 25,207,456 [12.9 TB]
Data Units Written: 15,716,961 [8.04 TB] - it would mean that daily average is about 45 GB written
Host Read Commands: 520,860,201
Host Write Commands: 369,386,958
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 142
Power On Hours: 351
Unsafe Shutdowns: 31
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
My previous MacBook Pro 13 - 8GB RAM - 500 GB disk had 90 TB written after 5 years which translated to drive health 82%
Above usage rate tells me that my laptops SSD can last "forever".
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 29 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 25,207,456 [12.9 TB]
Data Units Written: 15,716,961 [8.04 TB] - it would mean that daily average is about 45 GB written
Host Read Commands: 520,860,201
Host Write Commands: 369,386,958
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 142
Power On Hours: 351
Unsafe Shutdowns: 31
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
My previous MacBook Pro 13 - 8GB RAM - 500 GB disk had 90 TB written after 5 years which translated to drive health 82%
Above usage rate tells me that my laptops SSD can last "forever".
Code:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 27 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 1%
Data Units Read: 138,965,116 [71.1 TB]
Data Units Written: 79,297,096 [40.6 TB]
Host Read Commands: 1,054,861,612
Host Write Commands: 648,196,396
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 180
Power On Hours: 731
Unsafe Shutdowns: 51
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 02019 MBP16 at about 16 months of ownership. 2TB SSD, 32GB memory.
