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Spindel

macrumors 6502a
Oct 5, 2020
521
655
That is true for mechanical hard disks. A solid state disk (SSD) is never defragmented as it offers little benefit (and wears the flash cells). Think of it as sequential reading (writing) + cost of moving the hard disk heads versus parallel reading (writing) in a SSD.
Even if it doesn't need it doesn't mean software doesn't try to do it.

I said in the rest of the post you quoted that I'm not sure if MacOS still does this tho.
 

deeddawg

macrumors G5
Jun 14, 2010
12,467
6,570
US
Imagine that ...

We can imagine all sorts of hand-wringing potential futures.

The question is what are you going to do about it today?

Option #1 - return/sell your M1 system and buy (keep) an Intel based machine
Option #2 - keep using your M1 system and ensure you have AppleCare coverage, see what happens over time, and have an expectation of trading/reselling as you approach the AC expiry.
Option #2a - same but without AC

Which are you choosing and why?
 
Last edited:
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Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,324
1,560
on the other hand this is my main external thunderbolt SSD (EVO 970) for the last two years

Code:
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        47 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    28,930,076 [14.8 TB]
Data Units Written:                 8,426,584 [4.31 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 188,565,396
Host Write Commands:                21,875,196
Controller Busy Time:               641
Power Cycles:                       5,356
Power On Hours:                     4,680
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   604
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      1
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Temperature Sensor 1:               47 Celsius
Temperature Sensor 2:               55 Celsius
 
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gank41

macrumors 601
Mar 25, 2008
4,350
5,021
There's this guy trying to gather some data points on this via this form.
I hope this person gets some traction on this and more people submit their info. I'm curious to see what kind of data he's able to get from this.

I posted that here, too, hoping to get more exposure and more data collected...
 
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featherlessbird

macrumors newbie
Feb 16, 2021
29
24
And this is my 1-month-old MBA. No heavy usage, it's just always on and connected to an external monitor. I asked Apple Support about this, they don't have any information, but promised to forward it to engineers and asked to fill the feedback form on Apple.com.

Code:
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        41 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    5%
Data Units Read:                    201,514,070 [103 TB]
Data Units Written:                 182,741,648 [93.5 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 770,543,859
Host Write Commands:                582,865,444
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       188
Power On Hours:                     395
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   10
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
 

ambient_light

macrumors member
Feb 23, 2021
59
65
MBA, is used for work daily for around 1 month. The kernel_task with the swapping is the main contributor here, but also I see that launchd, photolibraryd and backupd are adding up as well. Rather likely that the bug in the paging algorithm is to blame...


Code:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        39 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    1%
Data Units Read:                    100,354,020 [51.3 TB]
Data Units Written:                 91,361,467 [46.7 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 605,164,793
Host Write Commands:                313,685,234
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       95
Power On Hours:                     297
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   4
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
 
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Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
We can imagine all sorts of hand-wringing potential futures.

The question is what are you going to do about it today?

Option #1 - return/sell your M1 system and buy (keep) an Intel based machine
Option #2 - keep using your M1 system and ensure you have AppleCare coverage, see what happens over time, and have an expectation of trading/reselling as you approach the AC expiry.
Option #2a - same but without AC

Which are you choosing and why?

This is what I'm doing:

1. Keep using it for my job and monitor all kind of tools. From yesterday I'm not using a few programs (more details on page 8: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ssd-swap-high-usage-of-terabytes-written.2284893/post-29631912)
2. Wait couple of months, and see what's going.
3. Decide what to do just before the 1-year warranty expires.

There is high chance I will keep this one, as this Mac mini do the job (I've never said it don't ;P ) and just see next generations Macs.

If the TBW will be extremely high after 8-10 months I will either try to replace it via warranty or just sell it, before the SSD die (Actually I don't like selling something that may die soon.)

ps: with all the closed tools I post yesterday, today, after another 9-10 hours of work I have another 300GB written.
- nothing downloaded, not even node.js node_modules ;)
- working on one project, the same as always
- not using slack, music etc.

300GB - I have no idea where it came from and this makes me sad :D
 

Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
I've heard a few people mention possibly bugged tools. To likely rule that out, what are all of you getting from iostat?

iostat -Id disk0

EDIT: My bad, iostat is uptime only.
 
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gank41

macrumors 601
Mar 25, 2008
4,350
5,021
I've heard a few people mention possibly bugged tools. To likely rule that out, what are all of you getting from iostat?

iostat -Id disk0
That's showing me the following:

disk0
KB/t xfrs MB
39.63 21982640 850711.91
 

Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,324
1,560
Code:
              disk0
    KB/t xfrs   MB
   28.01 1555493 42544.60

but then again, since ~3 hours ago my TBW went up only 0.01TB
 

slvrscoobie

macrumors 6502a
Mar 24, 2013
664
207
NJ
I have 2 M1 (MBA 256/16 and Mac mini 256/8) and 2 2018 intel MBP - I ve 3.9TBW on my mini I opened on Xmas day (63 hours?) , but my MacBook Pro ive had for 3 years has 113TBW with 2950 power on hours
interesting my activity monitor shows far less writes (not sure if only since logged in)
 

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Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
I have 2 M1 (MBA 256/16 and Mac mini 256/8) and 2 2018 intel MBP - I ve 3.9TBW on my mini I opened on Xmas day (63 hours?) , but my MacBook Pro ive had for 3 years has 113TBW with 2950 power on hours
interesting my activity monitor shows far less writes (not sure if only since logged in)

Yes, activity monitor is showing data from last start up (as far as I know).

For example my, yesterday kernel_task shows ~~400 GB. Today it's 781 GB.
 

gank41

macrumors 601
Mar 25, 2008
4,350
5,021
So is it a good idea to add AppleCare especially for this issue?
I would recommend getting AppleCare for any Apple device, really. Accept maybe things like the HomePods or maybe their headphones.. Paying for insurance is only frustrating when you don't use it. But if you do.... I had my 2015 MBP bottom case replaced in the last month of my AppleCare and it helped me get it to last a little longer. You never know what can go wrong.
 
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slvrscoobie

macrumors 6502a
Mar 24, 2013
664
207
NJ
I would recommend getting AppleCare for any Apple device, really. Accept maybe things like the HomePods or maybe their headphones.. Paying for insurance is only frustrating when you don't use it. But if you do.... I had my 2015 MBP bottom case replaced in the last month of my AppleCare and it helped me get it to last a little longer. You never know what can go wrong.
same, I had a logic board replaced in dec after it kept rebooting. I had them check it out in March and they returned it with 'no issues' just as the warranty was expiring. got apple care before they looked at it. didnt have many issues till oct again, then it just got worse again.. finally sent it back and they replaced the entire logic board under warranty, $700+ repair and I have 2 more years of coverage too. its expensive up front but pays for itself with one issue now that everything is non-user-servicable
 
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Wolff Weber

macrumors member
Nov 18, 2020
55
36
Nov 27, 2020
since Dec 7th
17993.54 MB, 19.84 KB/t, 928723 xfrs
MBA 8|8|512
normal use ca 2-3 hrs a day, mainly MS Word, Mendeley Desktop, Safari, Horos, three cloud services, iStat Menus
system migrated from 15" MBP late 2013, about 70 GB of used space on ssd, swap file up to 1.2 GB
MacOS 11.2.1
kernel_task writing about 1 GB a day (2.81 for last 3 days for kernel, 5.55 total writes).
So that ssd of mine is to last for(ever) ca thousand years?
 
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Aggedor

macrumors 6502a
Dec 10, 2020
799
939
No, we have a policy of not merging to news threads because bad things can happen and I don't want to mess up a news thread :)
Oh sorry, I meant more that you had closed the other one, so could close this one. Don't mind me, mistype!
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
Oh sorry, I meant more that you had closed the other one, so could close this one. Don't mind me, mistype!
Our policy is to keep well established threads like this open, even in the event of a news thread covering the same topic. Given that there's 10 pages of discussions, there's no issue in keeping this thread open and active.
 
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Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
I've heard a few people mention possibly bugged tools. To likely rule that out, what are all of you getting from iostat?

iostat -Id disk0



Code:
              disk0
    KB/t xfrs   MB
   44.56 52170934 2270206.28

Code:
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    7,219,728 [3.69 TB]
Data Units Written:                 5,803,539 [2.97 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 102,276,031
Host Write Commands:                38,831,905
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       69
Power On Hours:                     44

Today is 16th day of using Mac mini m1 16/256. 3TB may not be much, but like I said many times before - it's growing ~~300 GB per day, and Macbook i5/16/256 has 47.5 TBW after 2 years and 3-4 months
Both machines to the same job, same tasks, same programs. Intel MacBook is running with BigSur for couple of months now (I was using beta for at least 3-4 moths)
 
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