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Machspeed007

macrumors member
Nov 8, 2018
53
59
Romania
In short: for me it was Safari that caused trouble, possibly in combination with some Big Sur swapping issue.
This correlates with my usage pattern at least: I only use Edge Browser on the M1 and have no swap issues. Could be nothing more than a coincidence, but worth mentioning.
 

Dockland

macrumors 6502a
Feb 26, 2021
968
8,944
Sweden
Just wanna say, many people like me appreciate your help and experiment in this. Please keep it up.

If only Apple would just release a statement.....would make things so much easier for everyone

The fact that Apple does not respond does not necessarily mean that they are not aware of the problem and that they are not working on a fix. It may take a while.
If I remember correctly, a "statement" usually comes in connection with the release of a fix, not before.
I'm so new to the "Mac world/ecosystem" that I might remember incorrectly.
Just like the latest fix, about charging via dock, i didn't know about it until Apple released 11.2.2
 
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ItWasNotMe

macrumors 6502
Dec 1, 2012
454
318
Well, we do have some commonalities. Adobe Lightroom Classic is a memory hog (as reported above), and 528 tabs open in any browser are nice pigs too. Things for these users, at least, go back to normal when not using these memory abusers.

These two cases seems to point to the swapping management.

As far as I can see my Mini M1 (16/512) generally 'behaves' until I start Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. Then, for me, it's launchd that goes berserk. 3GB/hour just for that process is not unusual with little use of swap.

[Edit - Somedays its more, a lot more, e.g. launchd has written 20GB in 2 hours... and there is only 256KB, that's KB of swap used]

[Edit 2 - launchd wrote 16GB is the last hour... only apps I started in that time was the App Store and Reminders]
 
Last edited:

Agrailag

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2020
24
15
The fact that Apple does not respond does not necessarily mean that they are not aware of the problem and that they are not working on a fix. It may take a while.
But silence isn't better. That's a big problem with Apple at all, because other companies rather fast write about such issues. With Apple i have to always talk to support, which suggest to put my mac to their service and they will look.
 

Dockland

macrumors 6502a
Feb 26, 2021
968
8,944
Sweden
But silence isn't better. That's a big problem with Apple at all, because other companies rather fast write about such issues. With Apple i have to always talk to support, which suggest to put my mac to their service and they will look.

My experience is that the only somewhat similar announcements from big tech companies is the same. The only exception, perhaps, is about zero day vulnerabilities. But these are usually anchored to the companies in question before they are published.
What are the options? A company announcing several bugs but can't estimate when a solution/update is going to be published?
 

Agrailag

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2020
24
15
What are the options? A company announcing several bugs but can't estimate when a solution/update is going to be published?
Yes, its much better, because at least we have info that company doing smth on this way.

For now for me its not clear, is it issue, that Apple will approve and will replace HW for those users, who is not satisfied with big TBW. No info, maybe they think "Hah, no matter on this".
 

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
none
Some interesting theories about sleep images etc in the last few pages. Safari does write info to the SSD as it puts tabs to "sleep" as well and puts them back into memory when you click on them. We could basically be seeing a "perfect storm" of the virtual memory, sleep images and possibly other factors all contributing to this problem.
 

k-hawinkler

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2011
260
88
From what has been identified so far as potential TBW issues in this thread - memory hog apps and sleep issues, e.g. 528 tabs open in Safari while sleeping - that cause excessive SSD writing, what recommendations can be formulated right now that minimize the issue and are under user control?

My preliminary take from posts in this thread, more questions than answers:

* Shutdown M1 instead of letting it go to sleep?
* Or is keeping the M1 awake and screen saver on sufficient?
* Turn off Spotlight?
* Turn off iCloud backup and/or syncing?
* Turn off iPhone and iPad backup to M1 via wi-fi, backup only when directly connected?
* Minimize number of apps, windows and tabs open at the same time?
* Only manual Time Machine backups, not automatically?
* Boot from an external SSD and keep mass data like images stored externally only?
* Mount external storage drives and media only when needed?

* What else might be helpful before Apple addresses this potentially disastrous issue?

Please criticize the above (no offense taken) and formulate your own recommendations. Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:

Dockland

macrumors 6502a
Feb 26, 2021
968
8,944
Sweden
Yes, its much better, because at least we have info that company doing smth on this way.

For now for me its not clear, is it issue, that Apple will approve and will replace HW for those users, who is not satisfied with big TBW. No info, maybe they think "Hah, no matter on this".

From what has been identified so far as potential TBW issues in this thread - memory hog apps and sleep issues, e.g. 528 tabs open in Safari while sleeping - that cause excessive SSD writing, what recommendations can be formulated right now that minimize the issue and are under user control?

My preliminary take from posts in this thread, more questions than answers:

* Shutdown M1 instead of letting it go to sleep?
* Or is keeping the M1 awake and screen saver on sufficient?
* Turn off Spotlight?
* Turn off iCloud backup and/or syncing?
* Turn off iPhone and iPad backup to M1 via wi-fi, backup only when directly connected?
* Minimize number of apps, windows and tabs open at the same time?
* Only manual Time Machine backups, not automatically?

* What else might be helpful before Apple addresses this potentially disastrous issue?

Please criticize the above (no offense taken) and formulate your own recommendations. Thanks in advance.

I can't reproduce the issue. I turned off Spotlight the other day, but enabled it again.
I never turn off the Mini, have all the iCloud bells & whistles on all the time, sync, ipad, iphone, laptop, you name it.
I use apps somewhat extensively, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop Beta, Safari with approx 20 tabs open, Apple music on all the time except when watching some YT video. Playing World of warcraft. It's on from 4-12 h per day.
So it's still averaging between 10-15 GB / Day in writes.
I'm not running any apps via Rosetta though, only native M1-apps as far as I know at least.
 
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k-hawinkler

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2011
260
88
I can't reproduce the issue. I turned off Spotlight the other day, but enabled it again.
I never turn off the Mini, have all the iCloud bells & whistles on all the time, sync, ipad, iphone, laptop, you name it.
I use apps somewhat extensively, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop Beta, Safari with approx 20 tabs open, Apple music on all the time except when watching some YT video. Playing World of warcraft. It's on from 4-12 h per day.
So it's still averaging between 10-15 GB / Day in writes.
I'm not running any apps via Rosetta though, only native M1-apps as far as I know at least.
Many thanks. That's good to know.
I am running currently at about 10x your rate, 4TB written in 50 days while not disabling anything.
 
Last edited:

ovenbakedlies

macrumors newbie
Feb 25, 2021
27
32
I have not had time to start narrowing down my range of apps t see if one in particular is the worst offender (I do suspect an electron app under rosseta though).

But I did install smartmontools on my 2013 Mcbook Pro. (500GB / 16GB). I use a subset of the Apps on my new base mini that I use on the MacBook.

For comparison :
2013 Mackook. Power On - 12,300 hours. 32 TB written. 100% lifetime remaining.
2021 Mac mini. Power On - 276 hours. 47 TB written. 98% lifetime remaining.

Glad I'm still in my Covid extended return window.......
 
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colinzim

macrumors newbie
Jan 12, 2021
12
6
I bought a Samsung x5 Thunderbolt 3 open box for $200 for boot/OS drive and will let MacOS beat the crap out of it.
Will test to see if matches internal drive speed. Will use internal for static read files.

also,

G-Technology are fast
 
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jochenb

macrumors newbie
Sep 18, 2009
13
1
I noticed this serious issue as well on my M1 Mac Mini (16GB/512GB ssd).
Almost 17TB written to the SSD in only 2 months time.

I mostly blame it on Adobe Lightroom (classic). Whenever I'm using that the amount of data that's being written to SSD is completely insane. Hundreds of GB's in only a fairly short time (kernel task). Even when you're not using all the memory + you're not doing anything in Lightroom (but have it openend) a lot of data keeps being written to SSD. It almost looks like a memory leak.
The only workaround is to make smart previews of all your photos and disconnect the drives that have the original files on them. So annoying.
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
Every single day new people are reporting their issue with this.
A lot of people have comparison to Mac with Intel and they cleary can see the issue.

This is good :)

My another tests:


yesterday at evening, just before I wen to sleep my Mac mini m1 has 5.04 TBW. Today, after just 2-3 hours I can see 5.20 TBW. This is with 76 power-on-hours and yes, there is al ot of people with waaay higher numbers.

I was trying to keep closed most of my job-tools like:
- slack
- rectangle
- debuggers (flipper, react-native-debugger)
- figma
- Spotify / Apple Music
- unnecessary tabs in safari (Im using only safari)
- email client (spark)

most of those apps I move to my phone, some of them I was using only from time to time and tried to keep them closed.

After another one week I can see no different at all. So in my opinion this still looks like a pure-apple issue and some particular apps only make it works because of high-RAM usage.

Here you can see some small tests I did last week:
 

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
I never use more than a very few browser tabs at the same time (Safari and Chrome) yet I have one of the worst cases of this issue so far with 149 TB written in just 67 days.

Since I disabled Spotlight completely the average data written per day went from 2.225 TB to "just" 483 GB, so there seems to be a big difference there. Still high, but there is indeed the difference.

As for the sleep theory, I am not convinced yet that the problem is with the sleep itself because it's not like hibernate so it's not supposed to write much to disk when activated. It should just keep the content it already has in memory and the virtual memory (swap) as is.

Having said that, I put the computer to sleep at 0:44 yesterday and woke it today at 13:10, so 12 hours and 26 minutes. In this period of time, a whopping 230 GB of data have been written to the SSD (I am monitoring and tracking all the numbers constantly in a spreadsheet to calculate/estimate stuff).

So it's a ridiculous amount of data written during sleep and it shouldn't happen. But I don't think it's because of the sleep itself, but because of "something" that is triggered during sleep and writes to disk.

Besides Spotlight, I am now wondering if TimeMachine's local snapshots also play a role in all of this. AFAIK, TimeMachine does a partial wake up from sleep (without activating the screens) in order to perform its backups. Even when using an external drive for backups, by default TimeMachine keeps local snapshots on the main drive too, so it has to write something there. But the only process I am aware of related to TimeMachine is backupd, which for me has written only 9.85 GB so far since I rebooted yesterday. I am not sure of whether something in kernel_task is also involved in TimeMachine backups. Does anyone know?

According to my calculations, 10% of lifetime used at 149 TB for my 256 GB equals to a 100% lifetime of 1.488 PB.

If the computer continued to write an average 2.225 TB / day as it has done in 66 days, the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 27, 2022.

If it continues to write around 483 GB / day as it's doing since disabling Spotlight completely (estimation based on almost 15 hours so far so this might change), the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 5, 2028, which is a massive difference.

Can anyone confirm that the 100% lifetime for a 256 GB drive would be 1.488 PB? The way I have calculated it is simple: 291990055 units have been written so far at 10% of used lifetime for a total of 149 TB. So each unit is around 510-511 KB.

So 100% lifetime would be around 2919900550 units * 511 KB = 1.49 PB.

Am I calculating this wrongly?

Thanks.


Is there some reason not to use the mdutil command instead?

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/<Data>

I haven't needed to do this but it seems like disabling a system daemon is overkill when there is a standard way to do the same thing.

With the mdutil thing only the mds process was still running for me, while it has disappeared after disabling the daemon.
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
I never use more than a very few browser tabs at the same time (Safari and Chrome) yet I have one of the worst cases of this issue so far with 149 TB written in just 67 days.

Since I disabled Spotlight completely the average data written per day went from 2.225 TB to "just" 483 GB, so there seems to be a big difference there. Still high, but there is indeed the difference.

As for the sleep theory, I am not convinced yet that the problem is with the sleep itself because it's not like hibernate so it's not supposed to write much to disk when activated. It should just keep the content it already has in memory and the virtual memory (swap) as is.

Having said that, I put the computer to sleep at 0:44 yesterday and woke it today at 13:10, so 12 hours and 26 minutes. In this period of time, a whopping 230 GB of data have been written to the SSD (I am monitoring and tracking all the numbers constantly in a spreadsheet to calculate/estimate stuff).

So it's a ridiculous amount of data written during sleep and it shouldn't happen. But I don't think it's because of the sleep itself, but because of "something" that is triggered during sleep and writes to disk.

Besides Spotlight, I am now wondering if TimeMachine's local snapshots also play a role in all of this. AFAIK, TimeMachine does a partial wake up from sleep (without activating the screens) in order to perform its backups. Even when using an external drive for backups, by default TimeMachine keeps local snapshots on the main drive too, so it has to write something there. But the only process I am aware of related to TimeMachine is backupd, which for me has written only 9.85 GB so far since I rebooted yesterday. I am not sure of whether something in kernel_task is also involved in TimeMachine backups. Does anyone know?

According to my calculations, 10% of lifetime used at 149 TB for my 256 GB equals to a 100% lifetime of 1.488 PB.

If the computer continued to write an average 2.225 TB / day as it has done in 66 days, the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 27, 2022.

If it continues to write around 483 GB / day as it's doing since disabling Spotlight completely (estimation based on almost 15 hours so far so this might change), the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 5, 2028, which is a massive difference.

Can anyone confirm that the 100% lifetime for a 256 GB drive would be 1.488 PB? The way I have calculated it is simple: 291990055 units have been written so far at 10% of used lifetime for a total of 149 TB. So each unit is around 510-511 KB.

So 100% lifetime would be around 2919900550 units * 511 KB = 1.49 PB.

Am I calculating this wrongly?

Thanks.




With the mdutil thing only the mds process was still running for me, while it has disappeared after disabling the daemon.


> Can anyone confirm that the 100% lifetime for a 256 GB drive would be 1.488 PB?


Probably life time for 256 ssd is just ~~700 TBW. There are already some posts on twitter about first dead m1 ssd with ~~700 TBW.

edit: the calculation about life-time % are saying something different. To be honest the only way to "solve" the issue right now Is just keep Apple Care and backups. And let's keep hope for fast Apple reaction on that.
 

k-hawinkler

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2011
260
88
I never use more than a very few browser tabs at the same time (Safari and Chrome) yet I have one of the worst cases of this issue so far with 149 TB written in just 67 days.

Since I disabled Spotlight completely the average data written per day went from 2.225 TB to "just" 483 GB, so there seems to be a big difference there. Still high, but there is indeed the difference.

As for the sleep theory, I am not convinced yet that the problem is with the sleep itself because it's not like hibernate so it's not supposed to write much to disk when activated. It should just keep the content it already has in memory and the virtual memory (swap) as is.

Having said that, I put the computer to sleep at 0:44 yesterday and woke it today at 13:10, so 12 hours and 26 minutes. In this period of time, a whopping 230 GB of data have been written to the SSD (I am monitoring and tracking all the numbers constantly in a spreadsheet to calculate/estimate stuff).

So it's a ridiculous amount of data written during sleep and it shouldn't happen. But I don't think it's because of the sleep itself, but because of "something" that is triggered during sleep and writes to disk.

Besides Spotlight, I am now wondering if TimeMachine's local snapshots also play a role in all of this. AFAIK, TimeMachine does a partial wake up from sleep (without activating the screens) in order to perform its backups. Even when using an external drive for backups, by default TimeMachine keeps local snapshots on the main drive too, so it has to write something there. But the only process I am aware of related to TimeMachine is backupd, which for me has written only 9.85 GB so far since I rebooted yesterday. I am not sure of whether something in kernel_task is also involved in TimeMachine backups. Does anyone know?

According to my calculations, 10% of lifetime used at 149 TB for my 256 GB equals to a 100% lifetime of 1.488 PB.

If the computer continued to write an average 2.225 TB / day as it has done in 66 days, the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 27, 2022.

If it continues to write around 483 GB / day as it's doing since disabling Spotlight completely (estimation based on almost 15 hours so far so this might change), the 100% lifetime would be reached on around October 5, 2028, which is a massive difference.

Can anyone confirm that the 100% lifetime for a 256 GB drive would be 1.488 PB? The way I have calculated it is simple: 291990055 units have been written so far at 10% of used lifetime for a total of 149 TB. So each unit is around 510-511 KB.

So 100% lifetime would be around 2919900550 units * 511 KB = 1.49 PB.

Am I calculating this wrongly?

Thanks.




With the mdutil thing only the mds process was still running for me, while it has disappeared after disabling the daemon.

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

Your experience looks darn awful.
Which apps are you using that stay up during sleep?
Have you contacted Apple ?
If so what is their reaction and advice?
 

tab0reqq

macrumors newbie
Feb 25, 2021
25
36
Warszawa, Polska
Another update from me.

Code:
jarek@MacBook-Air-Jarosaw ~ % uptime     
13:57  up 2 days, 19:55, 2 users, load averages: 3,38 1,91 1,71
jarek@MacBook-Air-Jarosaw ~ % last reboot
^[[Areboot    ~                         Tue Mar  2 18:02 
reboot    ~                         Fri Feb 26 19:42 

wtmp begins Fri Feb 26 19:42 
jarek@MacBook-Air-Jarosaw ~ % vm_stat    
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 16384 bytes)
Pages free:                               61794.
Pages active:                            335980.
Pages inactive:                          329247.
Pages speculative:                         5665.
Pages throttled:                              0.
Pages wired down:                        124113.
Pages purgeable:                           1559.
"Translation faults":                 279004791.
Pages copy-on-write:                    5117141.
Pages zero filled:                    149960192.
Pages reactivated:                     61671044.
Pages purged:                           4050878.
File-backed pages:                       229146.
Anonymous pages:                         441746.
Pages stored in compressor:             1448480.
Pages occupied by compressor:            149950.
Decompressions:                        47792587.
Compressions:                          58248468.
Pageins:                                7651972.
Pageouts:                                208420.
Swapins:                               87012247.
Swapouts:                              88720918.
jarek@MacBook-Air-Jarosaw ~ %

After 1 day I noticed bigger spike in data written. After night. Today after another night (sleep mode) on my MBA M1 i grow from around 500-600GB over 1.1 TB. And after another 5-6 hours right now it's 1,35 TB. So over 250GB in 5-6h.

Right now:
Zrzut ekranu 2021-03-5 o 13.58.24.png

Zrzut ekranu 2021-03-5 o 13.57.59.png
Zrzut ekranu 2021-03-5 o 14.01.54.png

And update of all my readings from the beginning I started to use trial of DriveDx.

From 6,9TB to 12,8TB since 2021-02-26 (to 2021-03-05). That's 5,9TB.
Zrzut ekranu 2021-03-5 o 14.04.06.png
 

robjulo

Suspended
Jul 16, 2010
1,623
3,159
From what has been identified so far as potential TBW issues in this thread - memory hog apps and sleep issues, e.g. 528 tabs open in Safari while sleeping - that cause excessive SSD writing, what recommendations can be formulated right now that minimize the issue and are under user control?

My preliminary take from posts in this thread, more questions than answers:

* Shutdown M1 instead of letting it go to sleep?
* Or is keeping the M1 awake and screen saver on sufficient?
* Turn off Spotlight?
* Turn off iCloud backup and/or syncing?
* Turn off iPhone and iPad backup to M1 via wi-fi, backup only when directly connected?
* Minimize number of apps, windows and tabs open at the same time?
* Only manual Time Machine backups, not automatically?
* Boot from an external SSD and keep mass data like images stored externally only?
* Mount external storage drives and media only when needed?

* What else might be helpful before Apple addresses this potentially disastrous issue?

Please criticize the above (no offense taken) and formulate your own recommendations. Thanks in advance.

You forgot, just turn the machine off and leave it off. 😀
 

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
> Can anyone confirm that the 100% lifetime for a 256 GB drive would be 1.488 PB?


Probably life time for 256 ssd is just ~~700 TBW. There are already some posts on twitter about first dead m1 ssd with ~~700 TBW.

edit: the calculation about life-time % are saying something different. To be honest the only way to "solve" the issue right now Is just keep Apple Care and backups. And let's keep hope for fast Apple reaction on that.

If it's just 700 TBW, why would it show 10% used for 149 TB? How is the lifetime calculated then?

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

Your experience looks darn awful.
Which apps are you using that stay up during sleep?
Have you contacted Apple ?
If so what is their reaction and advice?

I wrote here the list of apps I keep running all the time https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n.2284893/page-26?post=29658458#post-29658458

I haven't contacted Apple because I have some issues with phone calls because of hearing so it wouldn't be easy. Maybe I should try to find out if I can contact them via email. I will take a look.
 

k-hawinkler

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2011
260
88
If it's just 700 TBW, why would it show 10% used for 149 TB? How is the lifetime calculated then?



I wrote here the list of apps I keep running all the time https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n.2284893/page-26?post=29658458#post-29658458

I haven't contacted Apple because I have some issues with phone calls because of hearing so it wouldn't be easy. Maybe I should try to find out if I can contact them via email. I will take a look.

Thanks indeed.
I have bad hearing as well, so I used chat to get in touch with Apple on some other issues. You start out at Apple support online and take it from there. They will want to know the serial number or something like it.
Good luck to you.
 

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
Thanks indeed.
I have bad hearing as well, so I used chat to get in touch with Apple on some other issues. You start out at Apple support online and take it from there. They will want to know the serial number or something like it.
Good luck to you.

Awesome, thanks. I will try the chat as soon as I can then.
 

ItWasNotMe

macrumors 6502
Dec 1, 2012
454
318
I noticed this serious issue as well on my M1 Mac Mini (16GB/512GB ssd).
Almost 17TB written to the SSD in only 2 months time.

I mostly blame it on Adobe Lightroom (classic). Whenever I'm using that the amount of data that's being written to SSD is completely insane. Hundreds of GB's in only a fairly short time (kernel task). Even when you're not using all the memory + you're not doing anything in Lightroom (but have it openend) a lot of data keeps being written to SSD. It almost looks like a memory leak.
The only workaround is to make smart previews of all your photos and disconnect the drives that have the original files on them. So annoying.

Other than the application itself I've got everything to do with Lightroom Classic on external disks. When I'm running it I notice launchd writing huge amounts each hour. I'm wondering whether its to do with how Rosetta handles just-in-time compilation for Intel architecture apps, i.e. complies the code, writes it to disk, throws it away, compiles the code, writes it to disk, throws it away, ... repeat until disk wear out
 

inversed

macrumors newbie
Mar 4, 2021
16
6
Switzerland
Other than the application itself I've got everything to do with Lightroom Classic on external disks. When I'm running it I notice launchd writing huge amounts each hour. I'm wondering whether its to do with how Rosetta handles just-in-time compilation for Intel architecture apps, i.e. complies the code, writes it to disk, throws it away, compiles the code, writes it to disk, throws it away, ... repeat until disk wear out
There is something very wrong with LR Classic (not tried the non-classic). I'm not sure if it is related to Rosetta or Metal+Rosetta. I do not see the same amount of SSD write when i stay in the library panel.

The fact that i can work on 100Mpix files with Capture One without any excessive disk write is also really puzzling.
 
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