M1 Max MBP with 1TB storage, 32GB RAM. High SSD disk usage. I never even reach memory swap with my usage.

[BENCHPRESS]

Smartctl details

As you can see, I have 30TB of data written onto my SSD. I don't use this device for anything but web browsing and light programming. No professional production work or gaming. With my usage throughout the life of this device, I can confidently say that there is no way I would have done enough work to write up to 30TB of data.. so what the heck could it be?

I've had this device since Dec of 2021 only!

I currently have a device uptime of 13 hours and it's already written 58GB of data. What the heck is it writing? I'm only web browsing. According to the activity monitor, these processes seem to be the culprit. Why would corespotlightd and photolibraryd be writing so much information?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[smirking]

There are plenty of threads on this, but long story short... it's not a big deal. MacOS will use swap regardless of if it has memory available or not. You can disable it from using swap unless absolutely necessary, but the amount of swap you're seeing is entirely normal and you'll probably be dead by the time you wear out that SSD at your current pace.

 

[russell_314]

I currently have a device uptime of 13 hours and it's already written 58GB of data. What the heck is it writing? I'm only web browsing.

I don’t think you understand what web browsing is. You are downloading the webpage just like you would download any file. It downloads the page and then shows it on the screen. It’s not all going to be in RAM.

Many people don’t understand that browsing the web means you’re downloading something. As the poster above me said, don’t worry about it because it will outlive its useful life.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just took these screenshots.
Pay attention to how much swap is used:

How to "keep the numbers low"?

My answer:
TURN OFF virtual memory disk swapping, so that the OS can't "hit the disk" like it does when you leave this on.

I've done this on both my 2018 Mini (16gb) and 2021 MacBook Pro 14" (16gb), and they both run fine and NEVER crash.
I DO take care not to open too many apps at once.

How to do it:
To DISABLE virtual memory:

sudo launchctl unload -wF /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
(reboot necessary afterwards)

To REMOVE swap files:
sudo rm /private/var/vm/swapfile*

To check if VM is being used:
sysctl vm.swapusage

If VM is off, report should be:
vm.swapusage: total = 0.00M used = 0.00M free = 0.00M

Note:
All I've ever done is to DISABLE VM disk swapping.
I have NEVER turned it back on again, not sure if this is the right command, but here it is:

To enable swap, you need to boot in Single User Mode (Hold [CMD + S] at booting time) and run this command:
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

 

[smirking]

BTW, for contrast, if you want to see what a terrifying amount of swap looks like here you go:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-terabytes-written.2284893/page-116?post=30056347#post-30056347

I had 4 TERABYTES in just 9 days on a 500GB drive!

Anyone getting nervous, just take a second and exhale. I was doing some very unadvised things to rack-up this amount of swapping. I was trying to see if I could get an 8GB M1 MBP to grind to a halt under an artificially heavy workload.

Amazingly, it didn't, but the disk writes were terrifying!

BTW, keep in mind that the first hours/weeks/month of a new laptop tend to be very heavy disk access periods. It's going to be doing a lot of work setting up your system, adding programs, transferring data, and then indexing it all. It very well could be most of the swapping you saw came in the first month. Your numbers are already pretty light. The real daily numbers might be even lighter.

 

[Mike Boreham]

BTW, for contrast, if you want to see what a terrifying amount of swap looks like here you go:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-terabytes-written.2284893/page-116?post=30056347#post-30056347

I had 4 TERABYTES in just 9 days on a 500GB drive!

Anyone getting nervous, just take a second and exhale. I was doing some very unadvised things to rack-up this amount of swapping. I was trying to see if I could get an 8GB M1 MBP to grind to a halt under an artificially heavy workload.

Amazingly, it didn't, but the disk writes were terrifying!

BTW, keep in mind that the first hours/weeks/month of a new laptop tend to be very heavy disk access periods. It's going to be doing a lot of work setting up your system, adding programs, transferring data, and then indexing it all. It very well could be most of the swapping you saw came in the first month. Your numbers are already pretty light. The real daily numbers might be even lighter.

That's nothing I had 28TB in 31 hours.

In spite of this I am not worried. I have owned three Silicon Macs (which seem to experience this more) and have tracked SSD TBW on all. They are all at 3% used in DriveDx, two after two years of use and one after a year. As said above the SSD life will not be the limiting factor. 30% life used in 10 years.

The reason why this is talked about so much is that, unlike spinning drives, we now have a means of quantifying drive life. Everyone knew HDDs didn't last for ever, and many would say a 10 year old HDD was a risk.

 

[smirking]

That's nothing I had 28TB in 31 hours.

I followed your links to find out how you thought you managed to pull that off. Holy carp! Impressive!

Racking up 4TB in a bit over a week unnerved me enough that I returned the 8GB MBP since I was still within the return window. I had planned for it to be a test drive (albeit a heavy test drive) all along, while my actual MBP at the time was getting serviced.

I know people around here get way too panicky about things like this. Had it been my regular machine that racked up 4TB writes in a short period of time, I would have just shrugged, made sure my backup regimen was tight, and ignored it. I can't control what I can't control.