About 20-30 GB per day for my M1 Mac mini 16GB/2TB.
The only think I have done is do a TM backup manually only.
This thread has been very educational for me indeed.
Many thanks to everybody here! Thank you!!!
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ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written
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The only think I have done is do a TM backup manually only.
This thread has been very educational for me indeed.
Many thanks to everybody here! Thank you!!!
Intel MBP 2019, Big Sur 11.3...
9.5 TB (!!!) written in 3 days of uptime and I'm running nothing but Edge, OneNote, Bear, Spark... The memory pressure is rarely over 50% and Time Machine is completely off on this Mac. Even with most of the apps closed, these writes continue.
Following a reboot, kernel_task has now written 80 GB to the drive within 30 mins. These excessive writes also impact battery life and system temperature.
There is something wrong with Big Sur that is not limited to M1 Macs only (my M1 MBP is relatively fine regarding this, I have experienced high writes on occasion but not continuously like this).
9.5 TB (!!!) written in 3 days of uptime and I'm running nothing but Edge, OneNote, Bear, Spark... The memory pressure is rarely over 50% and Time Machine is completely off on this Mac. Even with most of the apps closed, these writes continue.
Following a reboot, kernel_task has now written 80 GB to the drive within 30 mins. These excessive writes also impact battery life and system temperature.
There is something wrong with Big Sur that is not limited to M1 Macs only (my M1 MBP is relatively fine regarding this, I have experienced high writes on occasion but not continuously like this).
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Running on 11.3.
Today I was using M1 for surfing. Opening 30-50-60 tabs in Safari. closing, opening again (other content).
Sending 20 mails.
I have on small workbook in excel running.
Running slack, Todoist and Edge - with 3-4 tabs. I use Edge for streaming only.
I noticed that SWAP file was at 6GB.
Today, with all this activity, Mac wrote 350GB to disk, according to stats.
Today I was using M1 for surfing. Opening 30-50-60 tabs in Safari. closing, opening again (other content).
Sending 20 mails.
I have on small workbook in excel running.
Running slack, Todoist and Edge - with 3-4 tabs. I use Edge for streaming only.
I noticed that SWAP file was at 6GB.
Today, with all this activity, Mac wrote 350GB to disk, according to stats.
I've got spotlight off.
after update to 11.3 I turned off tab discarding on Safari to see if there are changes in memory usage.
I haven't altered pmset settings.
AFAIK Safari doesn’t have tab discarding settings, and the one tab suspender that exists for safari doesn’t function too well either because the extension isn’t too great or because of restrictions Apple sets when developing safari extensions.
When I was testing out ‘Tab Suspender’ on safari it seemed to only decrease the memory usage by 10-20% when tabs were suspended so, even if helpful, given a large enough amount of tabs the issue could still persist.
Safari also does other things like writing closed tabs or even websites you leave when you go to a new website to Safari Web Content (Cached) which may be writing to your SSD in certain situations.
That’s why if you’re having problematic writes I definitely recommend the first step being atleast trying one of the browsers I mentioned with Auto Tab Discard to atleast see if Safari is a culprit or not. Then having that knowledge you can always make the decision whether you’d rather go back to safari anyway.
Spotlight disabled to prevent reindexing - I run it every hour to be sure! Plus only using Firefox and not Safari. Those appear to work for the M1 here as it's down to a few GB a day.
True, I expect even the smallest 256 ssds in these to last a minimum of 600TBW, but in reality i wouldn’t be surprised seeing these easily go to 2PB+ as studies from 2015 showed 256GB SSDs working just fine at these values and beyond
Precisely. The TBW values are simply what the manufacturer thinks is the warranted limit. Anything beyond that has a higher chance of failing, but it doesn't mean it will.
I just wished Apple would formally state what the TBW is and I feel this would calm down the concerned population.
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Indeed. The Fact they do get away with that is just outrageous. Actually is there any law in US to appeal manufactures to specify such a things?
Being at risk of losing all data in case of failure (mainboard failure or ssd), we are neither unable to recover all data in Apple Service, nor do it by ourself. Metaphorically it's living in post-purchase cage which limits us and our actions. We can not do much about that.
I do realize these drives would probably last for long time, but having all specs about SSD would make me calm down as user who owns MBP 256 GB and wants to keep sensitive data on SSD. This what PRO should stand for. That also means RELIABILITY. I can rely on things which deliver me full spec - I know what they are/what I might expect from them.
Just in case, for the record I'll link my little 'research' which I've carried out based on Kioxia tech brief.
ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written
This is short tech brief which I found on Kioxia website which says that they offer 3 types of NAND FLASH depending on clients they are adressed to https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/business/memory/asset/KIOXIA_SSD_NAND_Endurance_Tech_Brief.pdf Given that teardown...
forums.macrumors.com
It only refers to Kioxia SSDs which are soldiered in MBP. This leads me to conclusion that these drives (256 GB) may be rated at 1.4 petabytes or even higher.
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Apple has never been that talky about technical specs. They always just call it "magic".
There is still write amplification. It gets more of a problem the fuller your disk is. Neither TBW nor DWPD talk about that. This is probably also the case why manufacturers claim much lower TBW than the disk supports. They don't know how the users fills the disk up.
Most disk (like the Apple SSD) count the host writes. Not the NAND writes, which will almost always be higher.
Even if the SSD has no lifetime issue with the whole "write bug": It's still a bug.
There is still write amplification. It gets more of a problem the fuller your disk is. Neither TBW nor DWPD talk about that. This is probably also the case why manufacturers claim much lower TBW than the disk supports. They don't know how the users fills the disk up.
Most disk (like the Apple SSD) count the host writes. Not the NAND writes, which will almost always be higher.
Even if the SSD has no lifetime issue with the whole "write bug": It's still a bug.
Besides if one got 1% or higher in the percentage used calculating the TBW for the drive at 100% really high numbers as the rate the SSD is used is effectively linear as shown by the 2014 test. The only real hiccup was the HyperX 3K 240GB drive which got a second wind around 600 TBW
The TB*100/percentage = TBW crosscheck produces at worst 6827 (170*100/2.49) TBW for a drive that has 2% used for 170 TB. More over If 170TB written is 2% then 170TB x 50 would be 100% which is 8500 TBW,
The only issue is that percentage used is supposed to be on the warranted value and I cannot see Apple going for such high insured number which is why I have issues with the numbers even if the people using them are utilizing Xcode to build the tools.
Has Apple stated anywhere which TBW numbers they warrant?
Wouldn’t that be a requirement to be legally held accountable?
Anyway for my M1 Mac mini 16/2 that’s a moot point.
Applying a write rate of 3000 per cell it would last for more than 200 years at current TBW numbers.
So even if it lasted only for 300 writes per cell, that would be still more than 20 years.
So it won’t be the first thing to break supposedly.
I have never used a computer for even more than 10 years.
A moot point indeed for me.
Well, my M1 is utterly enjoyable to use for what I want it to do now with Big Sur 11.3.
Wouldn’t that be a requirement to be legally held accountable?
Anyway for my M1 Mac mini 16/2 that’s a moot point.
Applying a write rate of 3000 per cell it would last for more than 200 years at current TBW numbers.
So even if it lasted only for 300 writes per cell, that would be still more than 20 years.
So it won’t be the first thing to break supposedly.
I have never used a computer for even more than 10 years.
A moot point indeed for me.
Well, my M1 is utterly enjoyable to use for what I want it to do now with Big Sur 11.3.
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No.
The courts are weird especially civil courts. You would think common sense would have prevented the mess that was Liebeck v. McDonalds (1994).
I mean how did you make coffee at home back then? Odds are you used a kettle and those tell you they are ready by whistling ie the water inside them is boiling (212 °F; far above the 180–190 °F). More over, McMahon v. Bunn Matic Corporation (1998) effectively ignored Liebeck and today businesses and even hospitals still serve coffee that reach the temperature range that McDonalds did. So the lawsuit at the end of the day didn't change corporate behavior.
Not sure, but the first thing that comes to mind is, do you have any external drive (physical OR network) connected. Doesn't have to be a "literal" drive; have you turned on ANY backup procedure (iCloud, Time Machine, Google Drive/Sync, etc.). If so, Activity Monitor will be reporting writes to that/those drives, but smartmontools/drivedx will not. If not, then attach your current smartmontools/drivedx and Activity Monitor readings here and we will take a look.
Like they don't even need to list it on their main page. It can be in some obscure section in the papers in the packaging or in some corner on the box.
*Sigh*
Apple has never warranted any single component longer than the warranty of the overall system. So the warranty you have (possibly extended by AppleCare) is the warranty that you get on the SSD (which is essentially a couple of IC chips). The fact that Apple has given an implied life to the SSD by putting a relatively high usage to percent used ratio in the SMART "Percentage Used:" field is a bonus. If the SSD lasts less than that implied life, that may/may not hold them legally liable for and failures, may/may not pressure them to do a mass recall, or may/may not lead them to be "nice" on an individual basis to fix any failed systems. Either way, the existence of that implied life by virtue of the SMART entry that Apple put there/was responsible for putting there is a net positive. That, combined with the likelihood that in the vast amount of cases the SSD will likely outlast the other components, should make people rest easy about this issue.Has Apple stated anywhere which TBW numbers they warrant?
Wouldn’t that be a requirement to be legally held accountable?
Anyway for my M1 Mac mini 16/2 that’s a moot point.
Applying a write rate of 3000 per cell it would last for more than 200 years at current TBW numbers.
So even if it lasted only for 300 writes per cell, that would be still more than 20 years.
So it won’t be the first thing to break supposedly.
I have never used a computer for even more than 10 years.
A moot point indeed for me.
Well, my M1 is utterly enjoyable to use for what I want it to do now with Big Sur 11.3.
Ironically I’m seeing more writes after 11.3 but it is because of what I’ve been working on. Lots of legitimate writing to disk. I have written about 1 TB in just over a week. Anyway, it isn’t anything to worry about. Just normal high disk usage.
just a quick question of a casual guy.. Why do some people have 20+ tabs open? I feel uncomfortable if I have 3 or 4 Tabs open