Or would it cause too much wear on the internal SSD? Note, I am referring to downloading 20 GB torrents only once in a while (maybe a few times a month).
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Safe to download large torrents to internal SSD?
- Thread starter ProQuiz
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
With modern SSDs, the lifespan is long enough to not worry about downloading large files regardless of the source. Depending on the capacity of the SSD in your system, you could have a rating of anywhere between 150 and 600+ TBW (terabytes written). Even at the low end of 150 TBW, that would equate to 7500 20GB files being written to the SSD.
Is it true macOS has issues with downloading torrents to external HDDs? I have yet to try to download to the internal SSD but when downloading to an external HDD, the torrent starts downloading when added but then slows to a crawl and finally stalls. Then after a few minutes, it starts downloading again but at a slow speed (around 4 MB/sec) and starts fluctuating up and down. Note this is via Wi-Fi with a 1 Gbps connection.
Hmm, maybe the fact that it's an HDD is a bottleneck? I'm using an external SSD for exactly this purpose and not seeing any issues.
Again, you could always just use the internal SSD for the downloading part and then move it over to your external later if space is an issue.
What torrent client are you using? Also, are you downloading over Wi-Fi or Ethernet? If Wi-Fi, did you have to manually open any ports on your router? Lastly, what external SSD are you using?
What transfer speeds
None of these parameters should have any effect on anything that would be relevant for write speeds to an external drive compared to using an internal. Also, you would need to open the same ports regardless if you are using WiFi or Ethernet.
Do you get acceptable speeds copying a large file from the internal to the external?
Try this tool, what are the results?
None of these parameters should have any effect on anything that would be relevant for write speeds to an external drive compared to using an internal. Also, you would need to open the same ports regardless if you are using WiFi or Ethernet.
Do you get acceptable speeds copying a large file from the internal to the external?
Try this tool, what are the results?
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
Disk Speed Test is an easy to use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to...
apps.apple.com
I haven't copied any large files from internal to external because I don't keep any large files on the internal. However, coping large files from one external to another external is about as fast as it should be.What transfer speeds
None of these parameters should have any effect on anything that would be relevant for write speeds to an external drive compared to using an internal. Also, you would need to open the same ports regardless if you are using WiFi or Ethernet.
Do you get acceptable speeds copying a large file from the internal to the external?
Try this tool, what are the results?
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
Disk Speed Test is an easy to use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to...apps.apple.com
Yeah, you're not really giving us a lot of information here. People are happy to help, but you have to keep up your end if you expect to fix issues.
1. You're worried about wearing out your internal SSD with occasional 20GB downloads, and the consensus is that that's not likely. You're talking about downloading like 100 GB a month, and (if you're seeding at a 1:1 ratio) uploading that same amount. These are not big numbers for an SSD's rated lifetime.
2. You're experiencing stalls when downloading to an external HDD, but you haven't tried any troubleshooting steps. First step is to try directing your download to the internal SSD. If that works fine, the external HDD is a problem -- either the way its connected or an issue the with drive itself. In that case, you'll want to first check the connection speed per @Arctic Moose's suggestion. If on the other hand you're still seeing the stalling on the internal SSD, you know it's a network issue and you can start working on that.
I would also point out that download speeds for torrents vary wildly, even in a single session.
To answer your other questions, my external SSD is a basic Samsung SATA SSD in a generic USB 3.0 enclosure. Nothing fancy at all. I'm using Transmission for my transfers, and using the VPN from Private Internet Access. I have not changed any settings whatsoever on my router.
1. You're worried about wearing out your internal SSD with occasional 20GB downloads, and the consensus is that that's not likely. You're talking about downloading like 100 GB a month, and (if you're seeding at a 1:1 ratio) uploading that same amount. These are not big numbers for an SSD's rated lifetime.
2. You're experiencing stalls when downloading to an external HDD, but you haven't tried any troubleshooting steps. First step is to try directing your download to the internal SSD. If that works fine, the external HDD is a problem -- either the way its connected or an issue the with drive itself. In that case, you'll want to first check the connection speed per @Arctic Moose's suggestion. If on the other hand you're still seeing the stalling on the internal SSD, you know it's a network issue and you can start working on that.
I would also point out that download speeds for torrents vary wildly, even in a single session.
To answer your other questions, my external SSD is a basic Samsung SATA SSD in a generic USB 3.0 enclosure. Nothing fancy at all. I'm using Transmission for my transfers, and using the VPN from Private Internet Access. I have not changed any settings whatsoever on my router.
Last edited:
Some datapoints for you from my experience:
Transmission, with a VPN. Ethernet, 300mbps up and down, connected to a switch connected to the Ethernet port on my gateway eeroPro router. No changes to eeroPro mesh router network. 2017 iMac with 512gb internal SSD and 20TB attached HDDs. Torrents go to internal SSD first, then saved to HDD. Just under 1TB/month down/uploads, mostly down. SSD performing well after 7 years of this use.
If @ProQuiz downloads 80GB of torrents per month that's 1TB per year. Assuming a 1TB TLC SSD that would be about 1/3000th of the write endurance. That's truly nothing to worry about even though older SSDs with SLC or MLC would have higher endurance. Modern SSDs are primarily built to be cheap, not good, only TLC and really crappy QLC.
I have a quick question regarding writes to the internal SSD. I had my MacBook Pro running for 28 days straight without any restart or downloading any large files or any files in general. All I did was pretty much browse the Internet. After those 28 days, I nearly had 400-500 GB of writes according to Activity Monitor. Why does macOS write so much to the internal SSD without me doing anything significant or downloading any large files?
Right now, my MacBook Pro has been on for nearly 6 days straight without any restart and I have 71 GB of data written to the internal SSD. All I have done during this time is browse the Internet.
Isn't this going to harm the internal SSD with so much data being written to it without me doing anything significant?
Right now, my MacBook Pro has been on for nearly 6 days straight without any restart and I have 71 GB of data written to the internal SSD. All I have done during this time is browse the Internet.
Isn't this going to harm the internal SSD with so much data being written to it without me doing anything significant?
Browsing the internet produces many cached files, that might be the bulk of what you see. But that's not a lot of SSD endurance consumed. A modern TLC drive can do about 3000 cycles so if you have a 1TB drive you can write about 3000TB.
Seems like you have the answer you need, then, below. Unless you want to buy a faster (SSD) external drive.
True. But I wanted to know if the external SSD you are using for torrents is formatted as exFAT or APFS? Would it make any difference?
APFS. Unless you have to mount it on a PC, I can't imagine why you'd ever format a Mac drive with exFAT.
I've read that APFS works better on SSDs than it does on HDDs. I'm not sure whether APFS or Apple's previous standard, HFS+ works better on HDDs. Maybe someone else can weigh in on that.
I currrently have two HDDs in service myself. Both are newer Time Machine drives, which the OS automatically formats as APFS, and they're working just fine for that.
While true, I see no reason not to use it also for spinning disks. All my external drives have been exclusively APFS since around 2016, have never had any issues.