ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[mrwuf]

I've had a MBA M1 256/8 for 2 months and it's at 50.6 TBW with only 282 power on hours. I got an M2 MBA also 256/8 to see if it would fare any better, but it was reporting similar amounts each day. The swap file starts growing as soon as I exceed 15 tabs. My budget $500 Windows PC with 16 GB RAM and a Ryzen 5can do 200+ Edge tabs before a hint of slow-down, but the MBA begins to chug after only 60 tabs.

At my usage rate, I'll burn through this drive in ~3.3 years (5% usage thus far = 30 %/year). Given my usage is no different than my 2015 MBP or 2012 MBA that were able to do similar amounts of tabs when new, Apple is falling behind by acting like 8 GB is enough. I'll be returning both of these and trying out a refurb M1 Pro 16/512. But if that still sees huge TBW, I might be done with Mac.

I've found by reviewing many topics such as this that the people who do fine with this spec are not multitaskers. Some talk about not using multi-tabbed browsing at all, yet having 16+ GB of RAM. What's the point of the latest machine then?

 

[osplo]

11 TBW is nothing actually. Did you reduce swap by changing settings?

Well it is low, I know, I admit that I only use it lightly, mostly for browsing and Office, but also it means that there are not shenanigans writing on their own during the night or something. But now I use my new Studio like crazy and it doesn't show much more writes than the Air (5 TB in six months).

The Air has 16 GB of RAM (which helps) and I never have more than 20 or so open tabs at the same time. But basically I did nothing to "prevent" disk writes. I watch videos on it, edit some clips using FinalCut or photos using Lightroom, engage in long Zoom sessions, and use Time Machine all the time. I'm running Monterey (latest version) on both.

 

[Queen6]

I've had a MBA M1 256/8 for 2 months and it's at 50.6 TBW with only 282 power on hours. I got an M2 MBA also 256/8 to see if it would fare any better, but it was reporting similar amounts each day. The swap file starts growing as soon as I exceed 15 tabs. My budget $500 Windows PC with 16 GB RAM and a Ryzen 5can do 200+ Edge tabs before a hint of slow-down, but the MBA begins to chug after only 60 tabs.

At my usage rate, I'll burn through this drive in ~3.3 years (5% usage thus far = 30 %/year). Given my usage is no different than my 2015 MBP or 2012 MBA that were able to do similar amounts of tabs when new, Apple is falling behind by acting like 8 GB is enough. I'll be returning both of these and trying out a refurb M1 Pro 16/512. But if that still sees huge TBW, I might be done with Mac.

I've found by reviewing many topics such as this that the people who do fine with this spec are not multitaskers. Some talk about not using multi-tabbed browsing at all, yet having 16+ GB of RAM. What's the point of the latest machine then?

Don't see why people worry about this so much. I treat my base 2020 13" M1 MBP the same as this PC with 32GB of RAM, just use and abuse it. IMO Apple's base models are pretty robust and definitely serve majority of users.

If you have applications that demand extensive RAM usage it makes sense to upgrade the RAM. If not save the $$$ and don't throw money at Apple needlessly due to the worry wardens as that's their game to some extents.

Least of my concerns is my M1 Mac burning out it's SSD anytime soon...

Q-6

 

[gank41]

Don't see why people worry about this so much. I treat my base 2020 13" M1 MBP the same as this PC with 32GB of RAM, just use and abuse it. IMO Apple's base models are pretty robust and definitely serve majority of users.

If you have applications that demand extensive RAM usage it makes sense to upgrade. If not save the $$$ and don't throw money at Apple needlessly due to the worry wardens as that's their game to some extents.

Least of my concerns is my M1 Mac burning out it's SSD anytime soon...

Q-6

I’ve always found myself checking how much free memory is available at random times, I’ve usually got less than 300MB of free memory available out of 16GB, regardless of what apps I use. Sometimes recording in Logic, sometimes with 20 tabs open in Safari and the Mail app and my RSS app and and and… I just use it for what I want it to. I do remember my old 2010 and 2015 MBP (8GB & 16GB respectively) and on both being able to open every single app installed and then still see “some” available memory, still. I’m not able to open EVERY app I’ve got installed now, but I have a lot more installed now than I did back then. Either way, my next machine will still have the maxed out capacity. I can only imagine what it’d be like having 96GB of memory! I’d probably run my Windows VM a lot more.

 

[Queen6]

I’ve always found myself checking how much free memory is available at random times, I’ve usually got less than 300MB of free memory available out of 16GB, regardless of what apps I use. Sometimes recording in Logic, sometimes with 20 tabs open in Safari and the Mail app and my RSS app and and and… I just use it for what I want it to. I do remember my old 2010 and 2015 MBP (8GB & 16GB respectively) and on both being able to open every single app installed and then still see “some” available memory, still. I’m not able to open EVERY app I’ve got installed now, but I have a lot more installed now than I did back then. Either way, my next machine will still have the maxed out capacity. I can only imagine what it’d be like having 96GB of memory! I’d probably run my Windows VM a lot more.

For the performance & battery efficiency modern Mac's are unbeatable as long a your SW aligns. I keep my Mac's lean, only install what I know works, what I need to get the job done preferably native to the OS...

Q-6

 

[eshroom]

What eventually worked on my M1/Big Sur 11.3 Beta:

1. Boot into the recovery mode
2. From the Terminal, Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) via csrutil disable
3. Add boot args NVRAM parameter for VM no-swap mode 2 using command :
   nvram 40A0DDD2-77F8-4392-B4A3-1E7304206516:boot-args="vm_compressor=2"
4. Enable back SIP via csrutil enable
5. reboot

After the reboot, you could check that parameters worked by sysctl -a vm.compressor_mode, it should return 2 (no swap), instead of default 4.

Does this still work with Ventura?

 

[David Hassholehoff]

My Mac mini M1 (16/512) has been on pretty much constantly since I got it in December 2020. (I have shut it down twice, both times to clean and rearrange wires and devices in the room.) I use emacs, Firefox and iTerm daily, Affinity Photo+Designer, Photos, Xcode, Microsoft Excel and a few Windows 11 virtual machines occasionally, and sometimes play a game of Battletech, Cities: Skyline, Civilization VI, Divinity: Original Sin/2, Stellaris and War for the Overworld. Overall I would say I am very kind to my SSD, but I have not turned off swap or anything else related to disk use. I keep my photos on a mechanical USB disk, music and video are kept on a network drive or USB disks.

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        38 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    2%
Data Units Read:                    577 455 746 [295 TB]
Data Units Written:                 108 366 368 [55,4 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 17 119 075 747
Host Write Commands:                1 059 749 006
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       253
Power On Hours:                     1 639
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   41
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Regarding the Firefox use; I currently have 4 windows and about 50 tabs in total over those 4 windows open. Here is the memory info on Firefox.

 

[osplo]

My Mac mini M1 (16/512) has been on pretty much constantly since I got it in December 2020. (I have shut it down twice, both times to clean and rearrange wires and devices in the room.) I use emacs, Firefox and iTerm daily, Affinity Photo+Designer, Photos, Xcode, Microsoft Excel and a few Windows 11 virtual machines occasionally, and sometimes play a game of Battletech, Cities: Skyline, Civilization VI, Divinity: Original Sin/2, Stellaris and War for the Overworld. Overall I would say I am very kind to my SSD, but I have not turned off swap or anything else related to disk use. I keep my photos on a mechanical USB disk, music and video are kept on a network drive or USB disks.

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        38 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    2%
Data Units Read:                    577 455 746 [295 TB]
Data Units Written:                 108 366 368 [55,4 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 17 119 075 747
Host Write Commands:                1 059 749 006
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       253
Power On Hours:                     1 639
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   41
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Regarding the Firefox use; I currently have 4 windows and about 50 tabs in total over those 4 windows open. Here is the memory info on Firefox.

View attachment 2168547

That's reporting about 1% of "Percentage Used" per year. So your SSD is good for another 98 years.

 

[Queen6]

That's reporting about 1% of "Percentage Used" per year. So your SSD is good for another 98 years.

Exactly, a non issue generated by the uninformed...

Q-6

 

[Queen6]

I’ve always found myself checking how much free memory is available at random times, I’ve usually got less than 300MB of free memory available out of 16GB, regardless of what apps I use. Sometimes recording in Logic, sometimes with 20 tabs open in Safari and the Mail app and my RSS app and and and… I just use it for what I want it to. I do remember my old 2010 and 2015 MBP (8GB & 16GB respectively) and on both being able to open every single app installed and then still see “some” available memory, still. I’m not able to open EVERY app I’ve got installed now, but I have a lot more installed now than I did back then. Either way, my next machine will still have the maxed out capacity. I can only imagine what it’d be like having 96GB of memory! I’d probably run my Windows VM a lot more.

Dont, just use as you see fit. If any issue you will see first hand. All this SSD worry is a load of BS, Mac's are robust and designed to be abused. Fragile flowers they are not, far too many here are upselling RAM & storage where's there's absolutely no need for it.

I've still a 2014 13" MBP and it's been thrashed into the ground and see no reason to treat the current M1 MBP any different. The stock 2011 15" MBP at the corner of the desk has been our media server for closing on a decade with 30TB strapped to it. It's never been clean installed since the factory, runs like a Trojan to this day, nor does it throttle.

The 2011 15" was utilised in an engineering role, went to my daughter who used it as a PlayStation. Came back to me as DOA due the SW image. Fixed that and It's run without issue ever since. Least of my concerns with the M1 MBP is the longevity of the SSD...

Q-6

 

[gank41]

Dont, just use as you see fit. If any issue you will see first hand. All this SSD worry is a load of BS, Mac's are robust and designed to be abused. Fragile flowers they are not, far too many here are upselling RAM & storage where's there's absolutely no need for it.

I've still a 2014 13" MBP and it's been thrashed into the ground and see no reason to treat the current M1 MBP any different. The stock 2011 15" MBP at the corner of the desk has been our media server for closing on a decade with 30TB strapped to it. It's never been clean installed since the factory, runs like a Trojan to this day doesn't throttle.

The 2011 15" was utilised in an engineering role, went to my daughter who used it as a PlayStation. Came back to me as DOA due the SW image. Fixed that and It's run without issue ever since. Least of my concerns with the M1 MBP is the longevity of the SSD...

Q-6

Oh absolutely.. I do for sure! These things are amazing. I might have maybe 9-10 random apps open at a time including Chrome & Safari, both with a number of tabs open. I'll close a few apps when I need to launch Windows 11 in Parallels, and I'll see initially that I've got maybe 300MB of free memory available and then Windows 11 runs just fine. I quit Parallels and I've got 6GB of free memory.. Just because I've been watching it a lot more lately doesn't mean I'm still not driving it like I stole it 🤣 For real, though.. I haven't had real memory issues with this thing. There have been times where the Music App or something else has some runaway process that chews up a ton of memory, but that's not the machine's fault.

 

[DaKKs]

My 2021-March M1 Air 8/256 has, according to dxdrive, 28.0TB written to it. 566 hours of use. Reported as 98% health.

^ This was Sep 9, 2022.

Today, March 18, 2023, DriveDx reports: 70.4TB written, 94% health and 776 hours of use.

Admittedly i have run heavy workloads on this. Probably more than the 8GB base model should be used for, but this is quite a lot for 6 months. I need to chill out with the swap or I'm gonna kill this thing.

 

[jdb8167]

^ This was Sep 9, 2022.

Today, March 18, 2023, DriveDx reports: 70.4TB written, 94% health and 776 hours of use.

Admittedly i have run heavy workloads on this. Probably more than the 8GB base model should be used for, but this is quite a lot for 6 months. I need to chill out with the swap or I'm gonna kill this thing.

It looks like at your current usage it’ll last for about 34 years. I don’t think you have much to worry about.

 

[DC41]

I've seen this topic in the forum since its creation but never bothered to click on it. Today I thought, "Why not?"

The thread got me curious enough to check my M1 Max 32GB 1TB MacBook. Instead of installing Homebrew and smartmon I just bought DriveDX.

Well, the verdict is 24.6TB in 16 months with 1,407 hours of use. So that would be 1.5TB per month? Not bad considering it's used daily for 6-10 hours with numerous apps and tabs open. I wonder if that will go up when I switch from GarageBand to Logic Pro later this year.

 

[DaKKs]

It looks like at your current usage it’ll last for about 34 years. I don’t think you have much to worry about.

True, assuming the lifetime scaling is correct and it doesnt randomly die at 40-60% like every other consumer SSD in existence. Should still be out of usable age, so not a serious issue, just retarded we rely so much on a drive that is non replaceable.

 

[jdb8167]

True, assuming the lifetime scaling is correct and it doesnt randomly die at 40-60% like every other consumer SSD in existence. Should still be out of usable age, so not a serious issue, just retarded we rely so much on a drive that is non replaceable.

Apple has no reason to fudge the numbers on their SSDs. They don’t warranty based on TBW. You can almost certainly rely on Apple’s reported percent used number.

 

[verm]

Turning off virtual memory completely would be overkill. I only need a terminal command to clear the swap without rebooting the machine. Just for my peace of mind, I want swap to be gone when memory pressure is green again. Otherwise I must learn to ignore it.

I have an old intel 2012 MBA and just bought a new refurbished Mac Mini 2020 M1 16GB/1TB variant. I used to often run into memory swap on my old MBA and had to restart the computer to clear the swap. I read your comment and didn't know there was a terminal command to clear it? I tried searching the forum / online but couldn't find it, can you share the command? Appreciate it.

 

[pshufd]

I have 3 Macs with 32 GB of RAM, and 3 with 16 GB (and a couple of others with less). In general, the Macs with 32 GB of RAM never swap but I can partition my workloads on different Macs if it is an issue. I'm not aware of a way to run without swap on Macs though that doesn't mean that there is a way to do it.

It is very easy to do on Windows - you just set the page and swap file size to 0.

 

[gank41]

I have an old intel 2012 MBA and just bought a new refurbished Mac Mini 2020 M1 16GB/1TB variant. I used to often run into memory swap on my old MBA and had to restart the computer to clear the swap. I read your comment and didn't know there was a terminal command to clear it? I tried searching the forum / online but couldn't find it, can you share the command? Appreciate it.

I find just running

sudo Purge

in Terminal works well..

 

[verm]

I find just running

sudo Purge

in Terminal works well..

Thanks @gank41 for the quick reply. I tried that on my MBA running Catalina 10.15.7, but it didn't work. I quit and restarted Activity Monitor...

 

[ChrisA]

My solution to this... I use the 512GB SSD for storing apps and other system files. All my data and code and design files and video goes on a Synology NAS that connects with 10GBE Ethernet.

The NAS is continuously backed up to one local place and one cloud service.

 

[Feek]

Wasn't this sorted back in an update to macOS Big Sur?

 

[mr_roboto]

I have an old intel 2012 MBA and just bought a new refurbished Mac Mini 2020 M1 16GB/1TB variant. I used to often run into memory swap on my old MBA and had to restart the computer to clear the swap. I read your comment and didn't know there was a terminal command to clear it? I tried searching the forum / online but couldn't find it, can you share the command? Appreciate it.

Why do feel you need to 'clear the swap'? If the computer isn't actively swapping data (meaning: reading and writing swap files on disk), there is no reason to worry or take action. If it is actively swapping, that robs you of some performance. If that gets to be too much for you, there is no terminal command to clear it other than the 'kill' command, AKA very rudely quitting processes until the computer stops swapping. But you could just do that in a gentler and safer way by quitting programs and closing browser tabs.

I find just running

sudo Purge

in Terminal works well..

purge clears disk cache, not swap.

 

[topcat001]

Clearing inactive swap actually reduces the available memory for new applications, unless the programs which have been swapped out are killed. It’s better in that case to just turn swap off.

 

[osplo]

Wasn't this sorted back in an update to macOS Big Sur?

What do you mean? SSD usage is not a problem anymore, this is an old thread. For most of us the SSD will last for many years after we are all dead.