ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[Maximara]

That bank would have been fine if they booted off a cheap $200 2 TB SSD. They could just replace the SSD when it wore out. I imagine that they saved a ton of money on that system and that the cost of the system was a throwaway anyways.

But the bank did not do that, Here is what their actions resulted in:
"failing M1 disk. 4mo old, 2% spare, 10% thresh, 98% used, 600TB write 500TB read, 200h "on", 10,000 "Media and Data Integrity Errors". Machine had an inconsistent glitch in my app. 16/512GB machine, typical RAM use 9GB."

I have used consumer hardware in a professional development setting before. I had to buy some additional hardware because of the lack of drivers for some consumer parts but it got the job done.

It's not using consumer hardware in a professional development setting but incorrectly using entry level consumer hardware in a professional development setting. The bank messed up and effectively trashed their M1's SSD because they used the internal SSD rather than booting up from a cheap external SSD.

 

[pshufd]

But the bank did not do that, Here is what their actions resulted in:
"failing M1 disk. 4mo old, 2% spare, 10% thresh, 98% used, 600TB write 500TB read, 200h "on", 10,000 "Media and Data Integrity Errors". Machine had an inconsistent glitch in my app. 16/512GB machine, typical RAM use 9GB."


It's not using consumer hardware in a professional development setting but incorrectly using entry level consumer hardware in a professional development setting. The bank messed up and effectively trashed their M1's SSD because they used the internal SSD rather than booting up from a cheap external SSD.

Why don't they just attach an external drive now and just keep on running? That would be a simple solution.

Apple markets it as more than entry level. If you do a proper analysis, it is entry-level. One of the complaints on this thread is Apple's marketing.

 

[staypuftforums]

The complaint here is high SSD writes. The i5-4570 has Geekbench 5 scores of 840/2,724 at 85 watts the M1 1,700/7,500 so your Optiplex isn't going to be as good an experience.

The point is that the people who try to defend Apple by claiming a $1,000 M1 laptop isn't up to the task of... web surfing... make the Optiplex sound much better.

 

[pshufd]

The point is that the people who try to defend Apple by claiming a $1,000 M1 laptop isn't up to the task of... web surfing... make the Optiplex sound much better.

The Optiplex, Precision and a few other Dell desktops can provide good bang for the buck. If you know what you need and are handy and have spare parts, you can put together some good stuff cheap. If you're willing to run in a cluster, then you can buy a couple of really old systems and have good performance overall by spreading programs to multiple machines.

The M1's are $1,000 for a reason though.

Optiplex is a little heavy to carry to Starbucks too.

 

[snakes-]

I tested Bug Sur 11.4 five days without restart and I found no bugs error messages or too many written data.

 

[Maximara]

Why don't they just attach an external drive now and just keep on running? That would be a simple solution.

The bank didn't do the obvious of attach an external drive now and just keep on running because their IT department is run by people who are clueless, morons, idiots, or some combination of those three.

Apple markets it as more than entry level. If you do a proper analysis, it is entry-level. One of the complaints on this thread is Apple's marketing.

Who, these days, considers 512GB more than entry level?!

I can't see any bank using a portable for their postgres server which leaves the Mac Mini and last I checked, even though companies may use it in other ways, the MacMini has always been aimed at the transition/entry level market. The only Mini it would consider entry level would have a 1TB or higher SSD with 16 GB RAM and even then I would have it booting off an external SSD from day one.

 

[Maximara]

The Optiplex, Precision and a few other Dell desktops can provide good bang for the buck. If you know what you need and are handy and have spare parts, you can put together some good stuff cheap. If you're willing to run in a cluster, then you can buy a couple of really old systems and have good performance overall by spreading programs to multiple machines.

And how well will that PC compare to any M1? The hard truth is in terms of price per performance the M1 kicks any similarly price PC into a garbage can and then down the stairwell of a 100 story building.

A fully blinged out M1 mini runs US$1,799.00 and you can cut out $400 of that out by getting a far cheaper external 2TB SSD. No PC matches that, none. Heck, real world tests (not benchmarks) have shown that kind of M1 kickef the pants off of home built PC in $5000 range. And this is assuming something doesn't go horrible wrong with your efforts to built the PC.

Regarding the video Basically watch as $10,000 goes bye bye when the same thing could have been down M1 MacBook Pro which was (and is) £2,598.99 with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM and Final Cut Pro. If the poor guy already had a monitor and keyboard then a M1 MacMini with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM for £1,998.99 . Tying that into the old PC would have been saner (and cheaper) then what that poor sod went through.

 

[pshufd]

The bank didn't do the obvious of attach an external drive now and just keep on running because their IT department is run by people who are clueless, morons, idiots, or some combination of those three.

Who, these days, considers 512GB more than entry level?!

I can't see any bank using a portable for their postgres server which leaves the Mac Mini and last I checked, even though companies may use it in other ways, the MacMini has always been aimed at the transition/entry level market. The only Mini it would consider entry level would have a 1TB or higher SSD with 16 GB RAM and even then I would have it booting off an external SSD from day one.

Apple customers because the base is lower.

I disagree that it's an entry-level product. Mozilla has used Mac mini farms for development builds and regression test farms since at least 2008. You can run with 512 GB if you use external storage or network storage.

 

[pshufd]

And how well will that PC compare to any M1? The hard truth is in terms of price per performance the M1 kicks any similarly price PC into a garbage can and then down the stairwell of a 100 story building.

A fully blinged out M1 mini runs US$1,799.00 and you can cut out $400 of that out by getting a far cheaper external 2TB SSD. No PC matches that, none. Heck, real world tests (not benchmarks) have shown that kind of M1 kickef the pants off of home built PC in $5000 range. And this is assuming something doesn't go horrible wrong with your efforts to built the PC.

Regarding the video Basically watch as $10,000 goes bye bye when the same thing could have been down M1 MacBook Pro which was (and is) £2,598.99 with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM and Final Cut Pro. If the poor guy already had a monitor and keyboard then a M1 MacMini with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM for £1,998.99 . Tying that into the old PC would have been saner (and cheaper) then what that poor sod went through.

I disagree.

The post I was responding to was talking about $100 used machines with Core i7 4th generation processors. Stack three of those together and you get more compute power than the M1. You have to be able to partition your workload across multiple machines though.

My 2008 Dell XPS Studio, probably worth about $100 - $150, has 48 GB of RAM. What would the equivalent M1 device cost? Oh, that's right, there is no equivalent. I could slap 2 TB in there for $200. What's 2 TB cost in an M1?

 

[Thistle41]

Latest results where I've logged out/in overnight. You can see the difference in comparison with the date where I simply closed the lid (assuming that went into 'sleep' mode) on 09/07/2021 which shows 2.1 TBW overnight. But what's it doing writing 300gb typically anyway? That seems like a lot of housekeeping. Oh, and the usage also reached 3%.

For now, I can live with that minor disruption of logging out but dearly wish/hope the next iteration of Big Sur fixes this issue.

08/07/2021	88,822,530	45.40	21.71191859	Logout/in
09/07/2021	89,313,090	45.70		Sleep only
10/07/2021	93,435,321	47.80		Logout/in
11/07/2021	93,459,637	47.80		Logout/in
12/07/2021	93,479,401	47.80		Logout/in
13/07/2021	94,607,138	48.40		Logout/in
14/07/2021	95,161,423	48.70

 

[staypuftforums]

And how well will that PC compare to any M1? The hard truth is in terms of price per performance the M1 kicks any similarly price PC into a garbage can and then down the stairwell of a 100 story building.

A fully blinged out M1 mini runs US$1,799.00 and you can cut out $400 of that out by getting a far cheaper external 2TB SSD. No PC matches that, none. Heck, real world tests (not benchmarks) have shown that kind of M1 kickef the pants off of home built PC in $5000 range. And this is assuming something doesn't go horrible wrong with your efforts to built the PC.

Regarding the video Basically watch as $10,000 goes bye bye when the same thing could have been down M1 MacBook Pro which was (and is) £2,598.99 with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM and Final Cut Pro. If the poor guy already had a monitor and keyboard then a M1 MacMini with a 2 TB SSD, 16GB unified RAM for £1,998.99 . Tying that into the old PC would have been saner (and cheaper) then what that poor sod went through.

According to some in this thread, M1 machines are entry-level products that are not capable of demanding tasks, like visiting web pages.

A $100 Optiplex running a 6-year old Intel chip can positively fly through those tasks that apparently cripple these M1 machines.

 

[ZebedeeG]

According to some in this thread, M1 machines are entry-level products that are not capable of demanding tasks, like visiting web pages.

A $100 Optiplex running a 6-year old Intel chip can positively fly through those tasks that apparently cripple these M1 machines.

🤣

Been using my M1 iMac for over a week now, and frankly it's insanely fast for everyday use..!

Thankfully my new machine's behaving in much the same way as my 5k intel iMac with regards to swap / ssd writes.

But it would be nice if Apple reassured its customers and showed a little more customer care towards those worried that their expensive purchases will fail early through no fault of their own. At least saying they're looking into the issue would be a start... (I don't think they have - have they?)

 

[pshufd]

🤣

Been using my M1 iMac for over a week now, and frankly it's insanely fast for everyday use..!

Thankfully my new machine's behaving in much the same way as my 5k intel iMac with regards to swap / ssd writes.

But it would be nice if Apple reassured its customers and showed a little more customer care towards those worried that their expensive purchases will fail early through no fault of their own. At least saying they're looking into the issue would be a start... (I don't think they have - have they?)

My new M1 mini has comparable responsiveness to my 10700 system though the 10700 can get more overall work done with all of the cores/threads. I was a bit surprised at this given the M1 having a much higher single-core Geekbench 5 score.

I would guess that Apple has looked at it as there have been a number of articles on the tech sites about it and a ton of reviewer videos and even some studies and analysis. I think that the best approach would be for someone that has it to do some research on the problem. Basically starting with a fresh install and then adding their applications a day at a time and measuring the writes. It may be that there are certain applications or certain combinations that result in excess writes.

I think that a system being used for office stuff with 16 GB of RAM shouldn't see this problem at all. That's my current case. I think that most of these systems are used for casual home use, maybe some Zoom conferences and light office stuff. Many of the people here have higher use cases which is why so many here are itching for bigger systems.

 

[leman]

But it would be nice if Apple reassured its customers and showed a little more customer care towards those worried that their expensive purchases will fail early through no fault of their own. At least saying they're looking into the issue would be a start... (I don't think they have - have they?)

It’s certain that they are looking into it (after all, they have mostly fixed the issue in a recent update). As to publicly acknowledging the issue… it’s always a double-edged blade. Customers can be irrational. Quite often, acknowledging issues like you suggest will backfire and scare customers off. It probably makes more business sense for Apple to silently fix the issue and replace the devices of the few people who have suffered from excessive writes. Note that so far we have not had any reports of an actual SSD failure - not that I can remember at any rate.

 

[ZebedeeG]

It’s certain that they are looking into it (after all, they have mostly fixed the issue in a recent update). As to publicly acknowledging the issue… it’s always a double-edged blade. Customers can be irrational. Quite often, acknowledging issues like you suggest will backfire and scare customers off. It probably makes more business sense for Apple to silently fix the issue and replace the devices of the few people who have suffered from excessive writes. Note that so far we have not had any reports of an actual SSD failure - not that I can remember at any rate.

Yeah... Thinking about it, that's fair comment!

 

[ZebedeeG]

My new M1 mini has comparable responsiveness to my 10700 system though the 10700 can get more overall work done with all of the cores/threads. I was a bit surprised at this given the M1 having a much higher single-core Geekbench 5 score.

It's no wonder my M1 iMac feels fast coming from an i5 6600

 

[pshufd]

It's no wonder my M1 iMac feels fast coming from an i5 6600

That's comparable to my 2015 MacBook Pro and there's a big difference between my laptops and the M1s. I can generally just look at the Geekbench 5 scores for a CPU and predict how it's going to feel when I use it.

 

[swrdl]

It seems like, for now, they could bury an option deep in the settings, for people who are concerned about SSD lifespan, to disable swapping. And then if things slow down for me because my ram is full then that's just too bad for me isn't it..

 

[drdudj]

the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

 

[pshufd]

It seems like, for now, they could bury an option deep in the settings, for people who are concerned about SSD lifespan, to disable swapping. And then if things slow down for me because my ram is full then that's just too bad for me isn't it..

You can disable swapping in Windows. I don't recall how you do it as I probably did it last in Windows 7 or 8. Maybe you just don't specify a page file and swapfile. When you run out of memory, you get a warning that the program can't start or it can't allocate more memory.

 

[jdb8167]

It seems like, for now, they could bury an option deep in the settings, for people who are concerned about SSD lifespan, to disable swapping. And then if things slow down for me because my ram is full then that's just too bad for me isn't it..

I don’t think disabling swap would be a good idea for most people. If MacOS is operating properly, then swap shouldn’t be an issue just as it hasn’t been for previous versions of MacOS.

It seems much more likely that Apple needs to keep tuning their memory management algorithms to be less aggressive at swapping when not absolutely necessary. It is likely that this is an ongoing process—needing to weigh the desire for speed against early degradation of the SSD. They have apparently already done so.

 

[pshufd]

I don’t think disabling swap would be a good idea for most people. If MacOS is operating properly, then swap shouldn’t be an issue just as it hasn’t been for previous versions of MacOS.

It seems much more likely that Apple needs to keep tuning their memory management algorithms to be less aggressive at swapping when not absolutely necessary. It is likely that this is an ongoing process—needing to weigh the desire for speed against early degradation of the SSD. They have apparently already done so.

 

[Maximara]

I disagree.

The post I was responding to was talking about $100 used machines with Core i7 4th generation processors. Stack three of those together and you get more compute power than the M1. You have to be able to partition your workload across multiple machines though.

My 2008 Dell XPS Studio, probably worth about $100 - $150, has 48 GB of RAM. What would the equivalent M1 device cost? Oh, that's right, there is no equivalent. I could slap 2 TB in there for $200. What's 2 TB cost in an M1?

This raises the question of why the guy in the video didn't go that route...perhaps because it wasn't viable for what he needed to de while the M1 would fit the bill.

 

[pshufd]

This raises the question of why the guy in the video didn't go that route...perhaps because it wasn't viable for what he needed to de while the M1 would fit the bill.

I think that it was written to make a point.

Not everyone has the skill to mix and match hardware, upgrade old systems and partition their workflow, or have an understanding of the relative power of computers and their components. It is possible and it can be cheap but skillset matters.

 

[satcomer]

the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Welcome to MacRumors Forums? The people whom visit here are trouble posters or crazies that constantly say the Sky is falling or something along that tangent!