ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[gank41]

Just uninstalled homebrew, smartmotools & Xcode and it freed up around 30GB of disk space. Will install some other tool like drivedx if it's M1 native.

While Xcode on my end is (obviously) taking up some space, I don't have a large folder of actual content used with Xcode. And my Homebrew folders aren't nearly that large, either (less than 2GB total). I'm going to stick to using Terminal to get that info instead of paying for an app to see that same into in a GUI. At least I know what I'm seeing in Terminal is accurate. Well, as accurate as the data is that's being reported by SMART.

 

[tollickd]

OK these are my stats! I am a very light use. I got the Mac on January 29th

 

[Dockland]

While Xcode on my end is (obviously) taking up some space, I don't have a large folder of actual content used with Xcode. And my Homebrew folders aren't nearly that large, either (less than 2GB total). I'm going to stick to using Terminal to get that info instead of paying for an app to see that same into in a GUI. At least I know what I'm seeing in Terminal is accurate. Well, as accurate as the data is that's being reported by SMART.

For me it's slightly to much "cost" for the benefit

 

[gank41]

On March 1st I found my drive's TBW to be at 24.0, and now today I'm at 24.6 TBW after 666 Power On Hours. When I first saw this issue in the forums and checked on Feb 27 I was at 22.7 TBW (Received Nov 27, 2020). I'm honestly not sure what it could have been to slow that TBW process down some like this, but that's fine by me! I'm literally doing as much as I normally would (Recording a lot w/ LPX, some video work w/ FCPX, some downloading of random videos) and there seems to be no major increase in TBW overall for me. I have gone thru and cleared out some iOS apps I've side loaded and decided not to use. I do still have a few others, though. I do see a relatively high GB Written for kernel_task and backups processes (145.55 GB and 264.90 GB) after 2½ days of uptime. But even that's not too bad. I'm sure Time Machine's local snapshots have something to do with that...





EDIT: Also of important note here is that on Feb 27 it showed 25 Unsafe Shutdowns. Today it's showing 27. Progress!

 

[flopticalcube]

OK these are my stats! I am a very light use. I got the Mac on January 29th

View attachment 1738492 View attachment 1738493

You have nothing to worry about.

On March 1st I found my drive's TBW to be at 24.0, and now today I'm at 24.6 TBW after 666 Power On Hours. When I first saw this issue in the forums and checked on Feb 27 I was at 22.7 TBW (Received Nov 27, 2020). I'm honestly not sure what it could have been to slow that TBW process down some like this, but that's fine by me! I'm literally doing as much as I normally would (Recording a lot w/ LPX, some video work w/ FCPX, some downloading of random videos) and there seems to be no major increase in TBW overall for me. I have gone thru and cleared out some iOS apps I've side loaded and decided not to use. I do still have a few others, though. I do see a relatively high GB Written for kernel_task and backups processes (145.55 GB and 264.90 GB) after 2½ days of uptime. But even that's not too bad. I'm sure Time Machine's local snapshots have something to do with that...


View attachment 1738505


EDIT: Also of important note here is that on Feb 27 it showed 25 Unsafe Shutdowns. Today it's showing 27. Progress!

Some people have said that 11.2.2 stopped the high SSD writing for them. Maybe that is when yours stopped? The timing looks right.

 

[gank41]

Some people have said that 11.2.2 stopped the high SSD writing for them. Maybe that is when yours stopped? The timing looks right.

Yes, that timing looms to be on target For me. I’ve been holding off on reinstalling macOS until I can really confirm I’m no longer seeing that TBW number climb up there in a short amount of time. I’m REALLY curious to know what that number was at after I first turned the machine on out of the box! I’ve got the 2TB M1 MBP model with 16 GB of RAM, and am currently using 1.46 TB of that drive.

 

[VitoBotta]

From looking at your numbers it seems that my case is among the worst ones

I am now at 149 TB written in three months, with 10% of the lifetime of the drive gone already. This is ridiculous and I have no idea of what to do.

Edit: M1 Mini 16/256.

 

[ManicMarc]

For comparison, Windows 10 with a 2 day, 19 hour uptime has written 100.033GB. I spend most of my time in Outlook/Teams/Web browser. The antivirus software seems to be writing the most data.

MacBook Air on macOS Catalina - light browsing but mostly idle with mail running in the background. Uptime 21 hours, data written 3.69GB.

 

[VitoBotta]

I forgot to mention that a big chunk of those hours the computer has been "sleeping".

 

[chouseworth]

From looking at your numbers it seems that my case is among the worst ones

I am now at 149 TB written in three months, with 10% of the lifetime of the drive gone already. This is ridiculous and I have no idea of what to do.

Edit: M1 Mini 16/256.

Just wondering, what apps do you typically run? Have you ever powered down the computer, or are you in the habit of letting it sleep each night? Are you running Big Sur 11.2.2? Any changes since updating? Are you regularly monitoring the TBW stats and are you seeing consistent writing, or does it seem to spike? If spikes, can you tie it to any type of usage? Just trying to help. The 159 TB is indeed astronomical for three months usage.

 

[BacioiuC]

It's almost impossible. Would mean he writes 1.7 TB / day, give or take. On a 256 GB ssd. 1700 GB / day or 6 times the total capacity of the drive.
Curious @VitoBotta: did you migrate your data from another mac or did you set it up as a new mac?

Edit: Also, I keep seeing a pattern between people using SLEEP instead of turning off their computer AND the amount of TB written.

 

[VitoBotta]

Just wondering, what apps do you typically run? Have you ever powered down the computer, or are you in the habit of letting it sleep each night? Are you running Big Sur 11.2.2? Any changes since updating? Are you regularly monitoring the TBW stats and are you seeing consistent writing, or does it seem to spike? If spikes, can you tie it to any type of usage? Just trying to help. The 159 TB is indeed astronomical for three months usage.

yeah I am on 11.2.2 and I let the computer sleep at night. And most of today it was also sleeping because I wasn't feeling well so I wasn't working. So I have no clue as to what is writing the disk even while sleeping lol.

I haven't seen any improvements with 11.2.2 and I also have Spotlight disabled altogether (following someone's suggestion). It is writing to disk constantly basically.

Apps I have running right now, for example:

Native:
- Docker (configured with 4GB of RAM, but the actual memory usage is low at the moment)
- Chrome, a couple of tabs
- Safari, a couple of tabs
- Notes
- Typora (a Markdown notes app)
- Todoist (task management)
- 1Password
- VS Code
- Messages
- Slack
- Twitter
- Carbon Copy Cloner
- iStat Menus
- Rocket (a small app for emojis)
- Alfred
- CleanShot X (screenshots etc)
- DisplayMaid (to save/restore position of windows on the screens)
- Amphetamine (to keep the computer awake during the day)
- iTerm2


Electron based apps built by myself for ARM using nativefier:
- Semaphore CI
- Rancher
- My CMS


Under Rosetta:
- Spark (email client)
- OnlyOffice
- SourceTree (Git client)
- Whatsapp
- Facebook Messenger
- Nextcloud
- Skype
- Tunnelblick (OpenVPN client)
- Backblaze
- zsh


Current swap: 7.88 GB (it was over 20 GB yesterday, then it went down after closing and reopening the same apps). Remember I have 16 GB of RAM in the Mini.

Processes that are using most REAL memory:
- kernel_task, 1.79 GB
- gopls, 1.32 GB (I think it's a Go/VS Code related thing but I am not sure)
- Twitter, 507 MB

And all the other apps less or much less than 500 MB real memory.

Processes that are using most total memory (real + virtual I think):
- virtualization for Docker, 4.98 GB
- Window Server, 3.43 GB (!)
- Nextcloud, 1.35 GB
- Chrome process, 718 MB
- iTerm, 643 MB
- VS Code, 518 MB

And the rest using less or much less than 500 MB.

Processes that have written the most to disk in 6 days that are still running (current uptime):
- kernel_task, 6.03 TB
- backupd / TimeMachine, 106 GB
- mds_stores, 104 GB (not sure why it's running even though Spotlight is disabled)
- launchd, 50 GB
- Nextcloud, 25.75 GB.

Note that Nextcloud had written well over 1 TB until I restarted it yesterday. That client has known issues but that's a different story, it's not the main culprit here for sure.



I would be very helpful if other people who are having the same issue could take the time to list apps and memory usage, data written like I did.

We may be able to find some common apps etc.

 

[VitoBotta]

It's almost impossible. Would mean he writes 1.7 TB / day, give or take. On a 256 GB ssd. 1700 GB / day or 6 times the total capacity of the drive.
Curious @VitoBotta: did you migrate your data from another mac or did you set it up as a new mac?

Edit: Also, I keep seeing a pattern between people using SLEEP instead of turning off their computer AND the amount of TB written.

Well, that's what's happening So I guess it's possible.

I didn't migrate from my Intel iMac, I set everything up from scratch because I figured migrating from a different architecture could cause more problems.

The sleep thing is weird, clearly something is writing to the drive even during sleep for me, as shown by Activity Monitor and iostat which is also running all the time for me to monitor things.

 

[VitoBotta]

For example I checked iostat at 19:55 and then again at 20:51 (a minute ago) and it has written a whopping 137 GB in just 56 minutes. WTF

 

[Machspeed007]

So I have the M1 Mac Mini with 16GB Ram and 256GB SSD, Big Sur 11.2
In the past 2 days smartctl reports +60GB written, I'm using the mac everyday for at least 4 hours/day, doing web browsing (edge browser), light photo editing (capture one), movie watching (iina), streaming from a windows pc (parsec), listening to podcasts (apple's podcast app), tv watching (hdhomerun). When I'm done, I put the mini to sleep (no shutdown). All-time data written 371GB.
So far, heavy ssd writing doesn't seem to happen to me.

Are you guys using safari for browsing? Can't seem to find anything different on my setup..

 

[BacioiuC]

I didn't migrate from my Intel iMac, I set everything up from scratch because I figured migrating from a different architecture could cause more problems.

That rules out my idea of migrating from an intel mac copies over some configurations settings that causes the write controller to go mad and log everything.


So sleep is the next part. One thing I didn't mention si that I sorta have my mac set to sleep never when on battery (I did this in the first day just so I can stress test to see how long the battery would last with videos running or idling). The screensaver kicks in after a while and goes to sleep when I have it plugged in, but I only keep it plugged in when turned off to charge.

Can you try my power settings, from the battery settings, to see if it still happens?

And here are my power settings:

Maybe something fishy is happening during sleep.

Edit: Apply the same battery settings, reboot the mac and check back after an hour, like you did before.

 

[VitoBotta]

That rules out my idea of migrating from an intel mac copies over some configurations settings that causes the write controller to go mad and log everything.


So sleep is the next part. One thing I didn't mention si that I sorta have my mac set to sleep never when on battery (I did this in the first day just so I can stress test to see how long the battery would last with videos running or idling). The screensaver kicks in after a while and goes to sleep when I have it plugged in, but I only keep it plugged in when turned off to charge.

Can you try my power settings, from the battery settings, to see if it still happens? View attachment 1738593

And here are my power settings:

View attachment 1738594

Maybe something fishy is happening during sleep.

I have the mini, so no battery here

 

[VitoBotta]

these are my current settings

 

[BacioiuC]

Right, can you set sleep to never? And maybe uncheck put hard disk to sleep when possible? I'll take some screens on my end and set my macbook to sleep and do the same.

Current status:

 

[VitoBotta]

Right, can you set sleep to never? And maybe uncheck put hard disk to sleep when possible? I'll take some screens on my end and set my macbook to sleep and do the same.

Current status:
View attachment 1738608

How would disabling sleep help?

 

[chouseworth]

yeah I am on 11.2.2 and I let the computer sleep at night. And most of today it was also sleeping because I wasn't feeling well so I wasn't working. So I have no clue as to what is writing the disk even while sleeping lol.

I haven't seen any improvements with 11.2.2 and I also have Spotlight disabled altogether (following someone's suggestion). It is writing to disk constantly basically.

Apps I have running right now, for example:

Native:
- Docker (configured with 4GB of RAM, but the actual memory usage is low at the moment)
- Chrome, a couple of tabs
- Safari, a couple of tabs
- Notes
- Typora (a Markdown notes app)
- Todoist (task management)
- 1Password
- VS Code
- Messages
- Slack
- Twitter
- Carbon Copy Cloner
- iStat Menus
- Rocket (a small app for emojis)
- Alfred
- CleanShot X (screenshots etc)
- DisplayMaid (to save/restore position of windows on the screens)
- Amphetamine (to keep the computer awake during the day)
- iTerm2


Electron based apps built by myself for ARM using nativefier:
- Semaphore CI
- Rancher
- My CMS


Under Rosetta:
- Spark (email client)
- OnlyOffice
- SourceTree (Git client)
- Whatsapp
- Facebook Messenger
- Nextcloud
- Skype
- Tunnelblick (OpenVPN client)
- Backblaze
- zsh


Current swap: 7.88 GB (it was over 20 GB yesterday, then it went down after closing and reopening the same apps). Remember I have 16 GB of RAM in the Mini.

Processes that are using most REAL memory:
- kernel_task, 1.79 GB
- gopls, 1.32 GB (I think it's a Go/VS Code related thing but I am not sure)
- Twitter, 507 MB

And all the other apps less or much less than 500 MB real memory.

Processes that are using most total memory (real + virtual I think):
- virtualization for Docker, 4.98 GB
- Window Server, 3.43 GB (!)
- Nextcloud, 1.35 GB
- Chrome process, 718 MB
- iTerm, 643 MB
- VS Code, 518 MB

And the rest using less or much less than 500 MB.

Processes that have written the most to disk in 6 days that are still running (current uptime):
- kernel_task, 6.03 TB
- backupd / TimeMachine, 106 GB
- mds_stores, 104 GB (not sure why it's running even though Spotlight is disabled)
- launchd, 50 GB
- Nextcloud, 25.75 GB.

Note that Nextcloud had written well over 1 TB until I restarted it yesterday. That client has known issues but that's a different story, it's not the main culprit here for sure.



I would be very helpful if other people who are having the same issue could take the time to list apps and memory usage, data written like I did.

We may be able to find some common apps etc.

Thank you, sir. Very complete. And I am sorry for what you are going through. Let us all chew on this for a bit. Thanks again.

 

[VitoBotta]

30.6 GB written in 15 minutes

 

[BacioiuC]

@VitoBotta: It's the only thing that I don't do on my M1's that other people who have the WRITES happening do. I'm an old time Linux user and Sleep has always been a problem on all my linux laptops. So I learned to not use sleep.

Thinking it might be a problem due to sleep. I already have my M1 sleeping at this point so I'll wait for 40-60m and see if any write activity happened. It's a quick way to figure out if this causes the problem.

 

[VitoBotta]

@VitoBotta: It's the only thing that I don't do on my M1's that other people who have the WRITES happening do. I'm an old time Linux user and Sleep has always been a problem on all my linux laptops. So I learned to not use sleep.

Thinking it might be a problem due to sleep. I already have my M1 sleeping at this point so I'll wait for 40-60m and see if any write activity happened. It's a quick way to figure out if this causes the problem.

It doesn't cost me anything to try so I will turn it off now and see.

 

[Quackers]

@VitoBotta: It's the only thing that I don't do on my M1's that other people who have the WRITES happening do. I'm an old time Linux user and Sleep has always been a problem on all my linux laptops. So I learned to not use sleep.

Thinking it might be a problem due to sleep. I already have my M1 sleeping at this point so I'll wait for 40-60m and see if any write activity happened. It's a quick way to figure out if this causes the problem.

That's a fair point imho. Sleep/wake has been a problem on Linux systems in the past.
We think of sleep and wake as a simple enough process but it is far from that.
It's just idle wonderment on my part but couple these read/write actions with complaints of monitors not waking properly from sleep and other complaints of ports not waking properly and it might suggest that there are sleep or wake problems with M1's.