ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[Fomalhaut]

A little late to the party, but here I am.

I dont think this issue is isolated to m1 macs. Below are my intel macbookpro 15" 2018 (MacBookPro15,1) with 256gb ssd and 16gb ram over 2-3 yr of use:

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 37 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 40%
Data Units Read: 743,338,279 [380 TB]
Data Units Written: 715,290,167 [366 TB]
Host Read Commands: 9,288,221,844
Host Write Commands: 4,718,218,103
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 198
Power On Hours: 3,309
Unsafe Shutdowns: 73
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0

not too big considering 2-3 yrs of use, but still I think it's a lot.


Frequently using:
Docker
Safari
Slack
MS Edge
Adobe Creative Suite
VSCode
Figma
Time Machine Backups enable
Icloud drive
Google drive FS

Interesting. Your "percentage used" is really high for the amount of data written. Here is mine for my 2019 MBP with 32GB and a 1TB SSD:

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)


Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 36 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 2%
Data Units Read: 379,455,231 [194 TB]
Data Units Written: 383,589,992 [196 TB]
Host Read Commands: 3,331,928,964
Host Write Commands: 1,661,969,086

I've written half what you have, and let's assume that the 1TB SSD has 4 times the TDW of your 256GB model, but even so that should result in your "percentage used" being up to 8 times mine, i.e. 16%. No idea why it report 40%?

Obviously they are different SSDs, and maybe the percentage is not linear.

It does highlight the benefits of having a larger SSD and (probably) having more RAM results is less swapping to virtual memory.

 

[Maximara]

A little late to the party, but here I am.

I dont think this issue is isolated to m1 macs. Below are my intel macbookpro 15" 2018 (MacBookPro15,1) with 256gb ssd and 16gb ram over 2-3 yr of use:

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 37 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 40%
Data Units Read: 743,338,279 [380 TB]
Data Units Written: 715,290,167 [366 TB]
Host Read Commands: 9,288,221,844
Host Write Commands: 4,718,218,103
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 198
Power On Hours: 3,309
Unsafe Shutdowns: 73
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0

not too big considering 2-3 yrs of use, but still I think it's a lot.

Frequently using:
Docker
Safari
Slack
MS Edge
Adobe Creative Suite
VSCode
Figma
Time Machine Backups enable
Icloud drive
Google drive FS

I agree that 40% is a very high for 3 years of use (never mind 2) but some of those programs are write happy in the form of temp files (Edge was nearly tied with Firefox for second write happy browser; Chrome was of course was number 1). It also depends on how you use the programs. How full the drive is is another factor especially with small drives.

Perhaps it is because I am somewhat of a digital packrat but I wouldn't get a drive under 1TB and even then I would put all my documents on an external drive. Doing this and getting rid of stuff I hadn't looked in a long time resulting in 300 GB SSD + 300 GB external. I also set my download folder to the external drive further extending my SSD's lifespan.

I also turned off Time Machine's automatic backup and do periodic manual backups (TM really likes to do snapshots which eat up SSD lifetime)

 

[EuroChilli]

My god, I hate Teams on my M1 Air. Nuisance of an app.

Me too. I have to have it for a temp job until end of next week, but by god I’ll be getting rid of it before I even get home on my last day. I’ve been avoiding looking at the resources it’s using.

 

[harman_s]

My M1 8GB/256GB MacBook Pro has written over 800TB!! to disc in 11 months and Smart data showing 29% SSD life left. Currently at Apple Store.

Hey it seems i have a similar problem.Mine is 8GB/512GB MPA, and now 320 TB written in ~10 months and 10 percent of the SSD life is used up.
Were you able to resolve it by going to the apple store? and can we claim anything in this case?
I do have apple care +

Also My computer is pretty laggy, Rebooting helps, but idk, that's not how it should work with apple devices. Pretty bad experience in general.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Hey it seems i have a similar problem.Mine is 8GB/512GB MPA, and now 320 TB written in ~10 months and 10 percent of the SSD life is used up.
Were you able to resolve it by going to the apple store? and can we claim anything in this case?
I do have apple care +

Also My computer is pretty laggy, Rebooting helps, but idk, that's not how it should work with apple devices. Pretty bad experience in general.

View attachment 1917814

What's your memory usage like? In particular typical swap size, memory pressure and numberl/volume of writes to swap?

The only time my M1 Mini has ever felt laggy is when my swap got to close to the same size as my 16GB RAM - i.e. somewhere north of 10-15GB swap used with frequent trips into "yellow" memory pressure.

Insufficient RAM is going to result in more reads/writes to swap.

 

[Maximara]

What's your memory usage like? In particular typical swap size, memory pressure and numberl/volume of writes to swap?

The only time my M1 Mini has ever felt laggy is when my swap got to close to the same size as my 16GB RAM - i.e. somewhere north of 10-15GB swap used with frequent trips into "yellow" memory pressure.

Insufficient RAM is going to result in more reads/writes to swap.

Not only insufficient RAM but programs with insanely poor memory management. Some of these include Chrome, anything involving Electron, any browser that caches videos to the disk rather than RAM before playing, and many others.

 

[telo123]

Me too. I have to have it for a temp job until end of next week, but by god I’ll be getting rid of it before I even get home on my last day. I’ve been avoiding looking at the resources it’s using.

... the noticeable lag in the animations and crap, just one big mess of an app. Even Zoom and Cisco WebEx have been universalized. Luckily, most of my school is now moving to Zoom, which is buttery smooth for my intents and purposes when there's nearly 300 people on the call. I do have internet lag, but that's not a M1 problem.

 

[EuroChilli]

... the noticeable lag in the animations and crap, just one big mess of an app. Even Zoom and Cisco WebEx have been universalized. Luckily, most of my school is now moving to Zoom, which is buttery smooth for my intents and purposes when there's nearly 300 people on the call. I do have internet lag, but that's not a M1 problem.

yea, the M1 still 'handles' Teams, and then some, but it is still the most annoying app I've ever had to use. Other than that, I've looked a bit more into resource usage across the board and find nothing to worry about. This little beast is a keeper, for travel and general daily use.

What I think is the main problem in this thread is some folks don't seem to realise that as good as these M1 machines are, they still have their limitations, they might not handle feature length 4k video finalising so well. Same goes for your car. Just because my 1 Litre 3 cylinder Ford Fiesta can exceed 160kph, it does not mean it is a good idea to actually go that fast. I get up to 140 on the Autobahn and keep it there, but my foot is still only 2/3 to the floor. The car only weighs in at 950kg, so it's basically not heavy enough to stay on the road. Now a 2 ton Bentley, that's another story.

 

[pshufd]

yea, the M1 still 'handles' Teams, and then some, but it is still the most annoying app I've ever had to use. Other than that, I've looked a bit more into resource usage across the board and find nothing to worry about. This little beast is a keeper, for travel and general daily use.

What I think is the main problem in this thread is some folks don't seem to realise that as good as these M1 machines are, they still have their limitations, they might not handle feature length 4k video finalising so well. Same goes for your car. Just because my 1 Litre 3 cylinder Ford Fiesta can exceed 160kph, it does not mean it is a good idea to actually go that fast. I get up to 140 on the Autobahn and keep it there, but my foot is still only 2/3 to the floor. The car only weighs in at 950kg, so it's basically not heavy enough to stay on the road. Now a 2 ton Bentley, that's another story.

It's why I have a Windows desktop, and two M1 systems. If you have a task that requires Windows but want to enjoy M1 systems, then a solution may be to have both.

 

[ambient_light]

As a heads up, the macOS swapping is abusing SSD again in Monterey, including 12.1 RC (Air M1, 16gb), similar to early versions of Big Sur first half of 2021. Stay away from upgrade if possible, until solved.

 

[Thistle41]

As a heads up, the macOS swapping is abusing SSD again in Monterey, including 12.1 RC (Air M1, 16gb), similar to early versions of Big Sur first half of 2021. Stay away from upgrade if possible, until solved.

I'm not sure it ever went away TBH. The main conclusion I've come to is this:

Using Firefox browser v95.0 leaving the browser active and closing the lid will, eventually after a couple of days, send SSD writes soaring.

The solution so far: Close Firefox down before shutting the lid. Logging off has the same effect.
The attached graph shows the horror when I tried 2 days of just shutting the lid, 1TBW over a 2 day period.

 

[ambient_light]

I'm not sure it ever went away TBH. The main conclusion I've come to is this:

True, but it's way worse than Big Sur 11.4+ for the same daily workload (50-100gb vs 0.5-1Tb writes per day). Also Monterey feels noticeably slower... I expect will take few more mon to stabilize, but vocal complaining from users is required )

 

[Mike Boreham]

I had pretty much switched off this issue and have only occasionally checked my usage. Last time was Nov 12th when TBW was 13.6TB on M1 MBA new in April 2021. Fine...

Just looked again, and it is 47.9TB !

No change in my usage, which is mainly surfing email light office stuff some light photo editing. I do use Devonthink which uses memory but it has been there since the machine was new.

I am still only 1% usage, so not greatly concerned at this point but most of that 1% has been in the last 40 days.

This issue may not be as serious as once thought, but it has not gone away and is very puzzling.

 

[CMMChris]

Did you upgrade to Monterey during that timeframe??

 

[Mike Boreham]

Did you upgrade to Monterey during that timeframe??

This machine has always been on release versions of macOS, and always on the latest. So it was on Big Sur from April to initial Monterey release on 25th Oct. Updated to Monterey 12.1 on 13th Dec etc.

 

[jdb8167]

This machine has always been on release versions of macOS, and always on the latest. So it was on Big Sur from April to initial Monterey release on 25th Oct. Updated to Monterey 12.1 on 13th Dec etc.

So the big increase in TBW seems to correspond to installing Monterey almost exactly. I have almost the exact same MBA as you but i haven’t seen any increase in TBW with Monterey. So it must be something to do with the software you are using. I suspect it is related to the many reported memory leaks which I also haven’t seen personally.

 

[CMMChris]

@Mike Boreham So 12.1 might have triggered the issue again for you. My suggestion is watching your WindowServer process. There is a memory leak bug in it, which could potentially be at least one of the causes. So check memory tab in activity monitor regularly and look out for WindowServer consuming >1GB of RAM. If it does, do a reboot. Maybe that will bring SSD writes down a bit. If you indeed have this issue, you should also submit feedback to Apple.

 

[Mike Boreham]

@Mike Boreham So 12.1 might have triggered the issue again for you. My suggestion is watching your WindowServer process. There is a memory leak bug in it, which could potentially be at least one of the causes. So check memory tab in activity monitor regularly and look out for WindowServer consuming >1GB of RAM. If it does, do a reboot. Maybe that will bring SSD writes down a bit. If you indeed have this issue, you should also submit feedback to Apple.

Thanks...just had a quick look at Activity Monitor:

Note....no Swap. Will be keeping a close eye for a while.

 

[Mike Boreham]

So the big increase in TBW seems to correspond to installing Monterey almost exactly. I have almost the exact same MBA as you but i haven’t seen any increase in TBW with Monterey. So it must be something to do with the software you are using. I suspect it is related to the many reported memory leaks which I also haven’t seen personally.

I have a near duplicate M1 MBA with nearly exactly same software which has shown no sudden changes in TBW rate. New in Nov 2020 (so five months older) and currently 35TBW. But it has been on seed builds. It is also at this moment showing 1.12GB Memory for Windowserver.

Apart from the above the only differences between the two M1 MBAs are that:

TBW runaway one is near permanently in Clamshell mode and connected to an LG 23.7 Ultrafine.
TBW runaway one has a 4TB SSD Data drive connected most of the time.

 

[CMMChris]

@Mike Boreham 1.xxGB still is fine but the problem is that in this state it already has started leaking some memory and sometimes it can grow much much larger than this. I have seen fully maxed out RAM + large swap file caused by WindowServer on my 32GB M1 Max.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I had pretty much switched off this issue and have only occasionally checked my usage. Last time was Nov 12th when TBW was 13.6TB on M1 MBA new in April 2021. Fine...

Just looked again, and it is 47.9TB !

No change in my usage, which is mainly surfing email light office stuff some light photo editing. I do use Devonthink which uses memory but it has been there since the machine was new.

I am still only 1% usage, so not greatly concerned at this point but most of that 1% has been in the last 40 days.

This issue may not be as serious as once thought, but it has not gone away and is very puzzling.


View attachment 1932313

I have discovered something very significant about this.

I looked at the 7 day history of write data to the boot drive in iStat Menus, see below.

From the tooltip data that big spike starts at 1705h on 19th Dec and ends at 22:53h on 20th Dec. Eyeball averaging the height of the spike leads to a rough calculation that 28TB was written in that 31 hrs in a continuous burst.

Needless to say I was not writing 28TB of data to my internal drive, and have no idea what caused that.

Thus explains nearly all of the unexpected jump of 34.3TB between Nov12th and Dec22.

I have observed similar small short spikes in the past but nothing on this scale.

The only unusual activity I have done recently was two days previously when I transferred 3.2TB of data from one external drive to another. BackBlaze might have still been de-duping this data.

 

[osplo]

I have discovered something very significant about this.

I looked at the 7 day history of write data to the boot drive in iStat Menus, see below.

From the tooltip data that big spike starts at 1705h on 19th Dec and ends at 22:53h on 20th Dec. Eyeball averaging the height of the spike leads to a rough calculation that 28TB was written in that 31 hrs in a continuous burst.

Very strange, but a nice discovery. If the spike happens when you are there you could see in Activity Monitor (or other utility) which process is causing the writes. That could be a good hint to find the culprit.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

Not only insufficient RAM but programs with insanely poor memory management. Some of these include Chrome, anything involving Electron, any browser that caches videos to the disk rather than RAM before playing, and many others.

I have a MBP 14" with only 16GB of RAM, however Electron based apps completely kill my RAM.

- What's App
- Facebook Messenger
- MS Teams

These are the major culprits for most of the people I talked to.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Very strange, but a nice discovery. If the spike happens when you are there you could see in Activity Monitor (or other utility) which process is causing the writes. That could be a good hint to find the culprit.

Yes keeping a closer watch. Since the event TBW has increased by only 0.2TB in five days.

 

[Maximara]

I have a MBP 14" with only 16GB of RAM, however Electron based apps completely kill my RAM.

- What's App
- Facebook Messenger
- MS Teams

These are the major culprits for most of the people I talked to.

This is why when this first came to light I was saying it many not be Apple's fault using the logic if it was due to Apple then the majority who checked rather than a very small minority would have had the write problem. More over the percentages and TB values didn't make much sense as the only real world example we had (2014) shows a linear degradation.