ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[mrwuf]

Came back here after 3 years to look for all the mass failures that were supposed to happen with these M1/Apple silicone ssds.

So much outrage…and then nothing happened.

You must be fun at parties. "I was right!" There are many reasons for why that happened. Two are that Apple has optimized and that worried users upgraded.

On early versions of Sonoma, 8 Safari tabs would still cause memory pressure. Now on Sequoia beta, 30 tabs are fine. I was writing 30 TB/mo on an 8 GB M1 Air. At that rate, I would've reached the duty cycle for typical 3D TLC NAND in 26 months. I have 67 TB on a 16 GB M1 Pro after 18 months. At that rate, I have 403 months.

 

[Queen6]

You must be fun at parties. "I was right!" There are many reasons for why that happened. Two are that Apple has optimized and that worried users upgraded.

On early versions of Sonoma, 8 Safari tabs would still cause memory pressure. Now on Sequoia beta, 30 tabs are fine. I was writing 30 TB/mo on an 8 GB M1 Air. At that rate, I would've reached the duty cycle for typical 3D TLC NAND in 26 months. I have 67 TB on a 16 GB M1 Pro after 18 months. At that rate, I have 403 months.

Don't look or care to look. I have a 13" M1 and still a 13" Intel MBP that dates to 2014, it's SSD has never been less than 90% of capacity, hammered professionally and miraculously it still runs. So not remotely concerned about the M1 as it has over 100GB free space

TBH is just a load of nonsense driven by those that dont know better. My M1 MBP will be replaced by a newer model far before the SSD is an issue and I expect a good ten years of use, likely a good deal more... Still have a 2011 15" running 24/7 as a media server and they too were all doomed according to the experts.

Q-6

 

[Biscotti]

You must be fun at parties. "I was right!" There are many reasons for why that happened. Two are that Apple has optimized and that worried users upgraded.

On early versions of Sonoma, 8 Safari tabs would still cause memory pressure. Now on Sequoia beta, 30 tabs are fine. I was writing 30 TB/mo on an 8 GB M1 Air. At that rate, I would've reached the duty cycle for typical 3D TLC NAND in 26 months. I have 67 TB on a 16 GB M1 Pro after 18 months. At that rate, I have 403 months.

I don't know how much you have been around this noise, but I was here when this thread was opened. And so many "apple professional experts" were so certain that these SSDs were going to die within months, that they were scaring a lot of "Netflix watchers" who were buying 8gb into selling them for losses and upgrading to 16gb. Some sensible people were trying to tell them not to throw money away...

And I actually am VERY fun at parties. You are correct good sir.

 

[Adora]

I have already almost 28TB written on a four month old Mac with 24GB of RAM (what never is full). Mostly used for watching YouTube or Twitch and the Telegram App, where all automatic downloads are turned off. Browsers are also set to prevent videos to start automatically, what is working more or less.

But I download some videos (720p max) from YouTube for watching later almost every day.

Is this normal?

 

[mr_roboto]

I have already almost 28TB written on a four month old Mac with 24GB of RAM (what never is full). Mostly used for watching YouTube or Twitch and the Telegram App, where all automatic downloads are turned off. Browsers are also set to prevent videos to start automatically, what is working more or less.

But I download some videos (720p max) from YouTube for watching later almost every day.

Is this normal?

Do you use Chrome to watch Youtube? Back when this issue was new the Youtube channel Constant Geekery reported that Chrome was writing every video viewed on Youtube (and possibly other video streaming sites) to its web content cache on disk. Chrome is also well known for using lots of RAM, which can lead to swapping, and that's more disk writes.

 

[Biscotti]

I have already almost 28TB written on a four month old Mac with 24GB of RAM (what never is full). Mostly used for watching YouTube or Twitch and the Telegram App, where all automatic downloads are turned off. Browsers are also set to prevent videos to start automatically, what is working more or less.

But I download some videos (720p max) from YouTube for watching later almost every day.

Is this normal?

Check mr_roboto above - I agree with that as well - use safari (most efficient), Firefox, or even Microsoft Edge over Chrome. There are other browsers too - Orion, Arc, etc...

That may be your source of high disk writing. I have 2TB in 20 days but I have not installed chrome.

Lastly, don't stress the TB written too much - again your SSD will be fine. But also, switch browsers and see if that changes anything.

 

[topcat001]

If you use Chrome especially consider moving the cache (or even the profile) to a RAM disk. However, Safari is by far the best for media in my experience. Chrome has severe, almost pathological, disk abuse problems.

 

[Adora]

Check mr_roboto above - I agree with that as well - use safari (most efficient), Firefox, or even Microsoft Edge over Chrome. There are other browsers too - Orion, Arc, etc...

That may be your source of high disk writing. I have 2TB in 20 days but I have not installed chrome.

Lastly, don't stress the TB written too much - again your SSD will be fine. But also, switch browsers and see if that changes anything.

I don't have Chrome even installed and don't use any Chromium based Browser, just Firefox most of the time and sometimes Safari and Safari Technology Preview, or a lightweight Firefox Fork.

I think I am just updating too often because this Mac has been updated to a Developer Beta on day one. Also some apps are getting updated very often because they are betas or even nightlys.