Their usual response if any is it's never been reported before or it only affects a small number of people.
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M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear
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Their usual response if any is it's never been reported before or it only affects a small number of people.
Yes, 760 GB writes in a month is in the same ballpark as my no-problem M1 Air and my former dev machine (a Dell on Linux). I wouldn't worry at all.
This is the base model, pros will upgrade to 16GB or wait for the larger M2 MacBook Pro. Don’t confuse base model with good for everyone.
When did I call you an apologist? I said that since Apple go on and on about how environmentally friendly they are, they need to be doing more to make their products last longer. How is that calling you an apologist?
This is not a trivial issue.
It is not something affecting a small number of people.
And its not something to take the view, "oh professionals get 16 GB anyway" (and I suspect that has the same issue anyway) or just get another one when the time comes.
I have had my base 256/8gb Mac mini M1 machine since December. It has only been used for email, browsing, and trading using apps that store no local data. Nothing that should use the SDD even moderately.
I have attached my stats. Its written an incredible 35 Terabytes to the SSD so far. I've been keeping an eye on this, and its pretty consistent rate over time even when he machine is basically idle. Its the O/S that's causing this , and its a concern. I've expended 2% of the SSD lifetime in 2 months with very light use. My (still working fine) windows desktop with a 128 SSD and 4gb ram has been running for 10 years without these issues.
These things are not cheap, I can't afford to treat them as disposable but I have no confidence this will last anything like 10 years before the non-replaceable SSD will have problems that force me to replace the whole machine. I can understand why that would not concern Apple, but it does concern me.
Due to Covid and my Apple store being closed, I''m still in the replacement period. If there is no resolution to this then regrettably its going back before that period is up.
It is not something affecting a small number of people.
And its not something to take the view, "oh professionals get 16 GB anyway" (and I suspect that has the same issue anyway) or just get another one when the time comes.
I have had my base 256/8gb Mac mini M1 machine since December. It has only been used for email, browsing, and trading using apps that store no local data. Nothing that should use the SDD even moderately.
I have attached my stats. Its written an incredible 35 Terabytes to the SSD so far. I've been keeping an eye on this, and its pretty consistent rate over time even when he machine is basically idle. Its the O/S that's causing this , and its a concern. I've expended 2% of the SSD lifetime in 2 months with very light use. My (still working fine) windows desktop with a 128 SSD and 4gb ram has been running for 10 years without these issues.
These things are not cheap, I can't afford to treat them as disposable but I have no confidence this will last anything like 10 years before the non-replaceable SSD will have problems that force me to replace the whole machine. I can understand why that would not concern Apple, but it does concern me.
Due to Covid and my Apple store being closed, I''m still in the replacement period. If there is no resolution to this then regrettably its going back before that period is up.
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because it’s directed at me when I haven’t argued otherwise
in fact the whole “eco friendly absence of chargers” thing was a scam with the latest iPhones. It was a way to ship more units per pallet and get people to fork over for fast charging and for fast chargers to come with their own packaging
it also doesn’t have anything to do with the subject of quick SSD wear on m1 machines, really
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But we both know Apple has never done anything like that for an invisible issue like premature SSD wear. Come on... They'd get sued and lose. And you're wrong about the repair program, there have been programs implemented for issues most people (other than the ones experiencing the issue) haven't even heard of.
1) DriveDx (I just used the 2 week free trial). you can just download and run this.
2) a command line tool smartctl. This requires a little bit more to install, see
How do I get detailed SMART disk information on OS X (Mavericks or later)
I'm trying to get a detailed SMART status report on the drives in my Mac. I'm not talking about "Verified," I'm talking about the detailed report that's about 100 lines long listing all the vital
scratching my head on what is written to the SSD? and i guess that laptops have seen less problem that mini because they have to preserve the power. If so, then this should be very easy to fix.
Over 100TB on my side for a 2 month-old M1 Air with 500GB. I'm mostly using Safari and Mail all day.
YAML:
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 35 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 3%
Data Units Read: 198,971,277 [101 TB]
Data Units Written: 185,328,586 [94.8 TB]
Host Read Commands: 756,005,113
Host Write Commands: 477,646,879
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 185
Power On Hours: 327
Unsafe Shutdowns: 15
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0The "claim" is unconfirmed either way, but is serious enough it absolutely is having me hold off until it is answered. Not sure what is so hard about that. Again, it's my money, mind your own business and worry about your money.
wonder if your M1 is mini or macbook? 3.6T over two month is in line with the numbers of intel macs that i have.
totally true, on my 2010 mac pro books occupies 500M of RAM when the app is not even running.
A Better analogy would be that you could see Windows 10 accessing your bank account, but not being sure if you’re losing your money. Waiting for the Bank to let you know it’s fine.
Have iPhone drives failed after several years of use? I imagine that would be the biggest comparison if the M1s use similar technology?
But if it's happening to Intel Macs as well, then it sounds like it's not an M1 issue.
But if it's happening to Intel Macs as well, then it sounds like it's not an M1 issue.
Here’s a great article with more about smartmontools
www.macworld.com
How to check your Mac’s SSD health using Terminal
Learn how to set up the Terminal in macOS so you can install and run smartmontools, a utility that provides data on the health of your SSD.
www.macworld.com
I've known about this since the moment I got my M1 Macbook Pro, and fixed it in the first few days.
People need to get more familiar with using the Activity Monitor to check their new setups, especially after restoring from a backup, to make sure everything is working correctly before the laptop is used.
In my case the fix was to switch from Safari to Edge with The Great Suspender 7.1.6. I now average SSD writes of 5GB per hour, which amounts to an approximate SSD lifetime of 50+ years for me.
People need to get more familiar with using the Activity Monitor to check their new setups, especially after restoring from a backup, to make sure everything is working correctly before the laptop is used.
In my case the fix was to switch from Safari to Edge with The Great Suspender 7.1.6. I now average SSD writes of 5GB per hour, which amounts to an approximate SSD lifetime of 50+ years for me.
I'm guessing safari is the culprit just like it was for me. Switching from Safari to Edge with The Great Suspender 7.1.6 fixed all my issues months ago.
These are my stats, I've owned this M1 MBP since 25th November, so around 4 months of use now. As you can see my stats are a lot more healthy.
I'd be happy to making a write up of my whole process of fixing this issue if people wanted. But it really mainly was switching from Safari to Edge with TGS, after very extensive Activity Monitor monitoring and averaging over long periods of time.
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 34 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 1%
Data Units Read: 45,508,765 [23.3 TB]
Data Units Written: 37,838,140 [19.3 TB]
Host Read Commands: 371,721,390
Host Write Commands: 251,134,943
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 171
Power On Hours: 215
Unsafe Shutdowns: 2
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
There was someone earlier in the thread who said they had been running only default apps, so that is certainly possible. The only thing they had transferred over was a ton of photos.
Over in the other thread, someone thinks the problem might be with Spotlight. Disabling it dropped their read/writes drastically. That could also be an issue with a ton of photos, especially if it is re-indexing over and over (I've had problems like that with Spotlight in the past, though not recently.)
It would certainly be good to get the culprit(s) nailed down so that affected people can find a workaround until there is a more permanent solution. It would also allay the concerns of those of us looking to buy an M1 soon.
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Probably nothing, but one thing I noticed is that your firmware is 1161.60. A couple people not having this issue have firmware 1161.80. It is possible this is just an issue of the firmware sending the wrong info to DriveDX/etc (certainly a best case scenario, easily fixed.) Not enough data points to draw any real conclusion. Perhaps other people having this issue could post their firmware version and we can rule this out.
No, that was what YOU said.
My point was people, mostly people filled to the brim with teh dumb, create issues that don't exist because they don't know how software or hardware works. I illustrated this point by repeating the truth that Apple had the "throttling" software on the iPhone for over a year, and NOBODY NOTICED until a very incompetent in-DUH-vidual came along.
That was my point, and it is one you have not refuted and cannot refute. That's the reason you suddenly made the conversation about iPhone 6 losing power, which was a completely separate issue.
You made that strawman, not me.
Again - why are you here?
I'm calling BS. I abuse my 16GB M1 Mini pretty badly with tons of software builds, a couple VMs and a ridiculous amount of apps open all the time.
Code:
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [Darwin 20.3.0 arm64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number: APPLE SSD AP1024Q
Serial Number: 0ba01111e2c0f80a
Firmware Version: 1161.80.
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID: 0x106b
IEEE OUI Identifier: 0x000000
Controller ID: 0
Number of Namespaces: 3
Local Time is: Thu Feb 25 12:26:36 2021 CST
Firmware Updates (0x02): 1 Slot
Optional Admin Commands (0x0004): Frmw_DL
Optional NVM Commands (0x0004): DS_Mngmt
Maximum Data Transfer Size: 256 Pages
Supported Power States
St Op Max Active Idle RL RT WL WT Ent_Lat Ex_Lat
0 + 0.00W - - 0 0 0 0 0 0
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 30 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 48,780,983 [24.9 TB]
Data Units Written: 15,081,947 [7.72 TB]
Host Read Commands: 920,364,588
Host Write Commands: 215,205,943
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 79
Power On Hours: 294
Unsafe Shutdowns: 17
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
Read Error Information Log failed: NVMe admin command:0x02/page:0x01 is not supported