ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[dragonfly1]

I'm seeing high writes and reads for these processes after a restart of my M1 MacBook Pro about 8 hours ago:

Using mainly Safari, Word, and PDF expert in the last 8 hours (all M1 native). Time Machine was also running. Maybe mds_stores is high due to Time Machine?

smartctrl reports:

Data Units Read: 31,340,309 [16.0 TB]
Data Units Written: 21,884,225 [11.2 TB]

 

[k-hawinkler]

I'm seeing high writes and reads for these processes after a restart of my M1 MacBook Pro about 8 hours ago:

View attachment 1740372

Using mainly Safari, Word, and PDF expert in the last 8 hours (all M1 native). Time Machine was also running. Maybe mds_stores is high due to Time Machine?

smartctrl reports:

Data Units Read: 31,340,309 [16.0 TB]
Data Units Written: 21,884,225 [11.2 TB]

I don't consider your restart writes as high.
My M1 Mac mini averages about 80 - 90 GB per day.

 

[VitoBotta]

I'm seeing high writes and reads for these processes after a restart of my M1 MacBook Pro about 8 hours ago:

View attachment 1740372

Using mainly Safari, Word, and PDF expert in the last 8 hours (all M1 native). Time Machine was also running. Maybe mds_stores is high due to Time Machine?

smartctrl reports:

Data Units Read: 31,340,309 [16.0 TB]
Data Units Written: 21,884,225 [11.2 TB]

Those are not high numbers IMO

 

[Maximara]

I'm seeing high writes and reads for these processes after a restart of my M1 MacBook Pro about 8 hours ago:

View attachment 1740372

Using mainly Safari, Word, and PDF expert in the last 8 hours (all M1 native). Time Machine was also running. Maybe mds_stores is high due to Time Machine?

"mds stands for “metadata server” and the mds process is part of Spotlight, the amazingly powerful and very useful search feature built directly into the foundation of Mac OS X." - mds – what MDS process is and why it uses CPU on the Mac

 

[daverdfw]

Has anyone tried downloading 11.3? If so....did it fix the issue? 😆

I am on the latest 11.3 beta, it has not fixed the issue.

 

[Fomalhaut]

OK, I guess it's not a Mini thing then.

Powernap is on the Mini as well...

I turned it off because I've seen quite a lot of disk activity during sleep...

 

[Joelist]

Seeing how erratic the reports of this are (the reports here are not showing identical behavior and indeed given the number of M1 Macs in the wild are a tiny minority) I have to suspect the underlying issue if there is one is with smartmon as some upthread have posited. In other words, the writes are not really high it is just reporting incorrectly (probably because the M1 architecture does not interact with the SSD the same way a traditional CPU does).

 

[Baff]

Seeing how erratic the reports of this are (the reports here are not showing identical behavior and indeed given the number of M1 Macs in the wild are a tiny minority) I have to suspect the underlying issue if there is one is with smartmon as some upthread have posited. In other words, the writes are not really high it is just reporting incorrectly (probably because the M1 architecture does not interact with the SSD the same way a traditional CPU does).

I had some hope that was the case, but I am seeing the same level of writes reported in Activity Monitor.

 

[Joelist]

I'm not. smartmon is saying 1.2 TB (which note is way lower than a lot of posters here) from Dec 20th to day. Activity Monitor shows only a quarter of that.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I had some hope that was the case, but I am seeing the same level of writes reported in Activity Monitor.

Same here. After a reboot I can see that increases to smartctl totals, iostat and Activity Monitor are are fairly close.

iostat does measure about 20% less than the combined Activity Monitor read+write figures though.

I can't say that I've noticed any particular pattern to usage other than the size of the swap in use. When I had 10-15GB swap (on a 16GB M1 Mini), I saw high levels of disk writing (2.6TB in 3 days). Keeping swap to a minimum ("a few GB") and closing unused apps / tabs frequently, seems to keep disk writes to about 50-100GB per day.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I'm not. smartmon is saying 1.2 TB (which note is way lower than a lot of posters here) from Dec 20th to day. Activity Monitor shows only a quarter of that.

Activity Monitor numbers reset when you reboot. (Same with iostat). Smartctl gives a running total for the life of the disk.

Presumably, you have rebooted your machine at least once since Dec 20th?

 

[ItWasNotMe]

I use the native M1 Photoshop Beta/Preview. Will check that during the week.

It's the Intel version that sends launchd crazy. My suspicions are:

• It's launchd that performs the Rosetta translations
• The volume of plug-in code and just-in-time compilations in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic get translated over and over again

Would be extremely interesting to see if the M1 version does fix the problem

 

[Dockland]

It's the Intel version that sends launchd crazy. My suspicions are:

• It's launchd that performs the Rosetta translations
• The volume of plug-in code and just-in-time compilations in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic get translated over and over again

Would be extremely interesting to see if the M1 version does fix the problem

One thing, how do i monitor the dlaunch? I've uninstalled xcode and homebrew so i don't have smartmontools due to the fact i'm not really affected of this issue.

 

[Forti]

Mac mini m1 16/256

1. Mar 7, 10:35 am: 5.47 TBW. (70 power-on-hours)
2. Logout (not sleep)
3. Mar 8 08:35 (22 hours later): 5.49 TBW (70 power-on-hours)

Even with logout the machine is doing something with the ssd

 

[vap3]

hey guys I tried installing the homebrew and I somehow bricked my terminal, how do I reset it? It looks like Google isn't helping me with this one =/


/Users/xxxx/.zprofile:3: command not found: brew


[Process completed]

I see this message and no matter how hard reset option I do, it won't reset the damn terminal I can't input any commands.. any ideas?

 

[ItWasNotMe]

One thing, how do i monitor the dlaunch? I've uninstalled xcode and homebrew so i don't have smartmontools due to the fact i'm not really affected of this issue.

Just look at Activity Monitor - the tab with Disk

In two and a half hours today it's written almost 24 GB

[Edit - Its not swap - this is currently zero.
At this rate it would write the whole disk size roughly every day and a half. Good job I bought a larger disk so it will take longer to wear out. /end sarcasm]

 

[Forti]

hey guys I tried installing the homebrew and I somehow bricked my terminal, how do I reset it? It looks like Google isn't helping me with this one =/


/Users/xxxx/.zprofile:3: command not found: brew


[Process completed]

I see this message and no matter how hard reset option I do, it won't reset the damn terminal I can't input any commands.. any ideas?

Try this one:

Broken terminal

I've got this message in Terminal.app at startup dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/gdbm/lib/libgdbm.4.dylib Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/zsh Reason: image not found [Process complet...

apple.stackexchange.com

It should help you out.

 

[frank-ger]

Open the .zprofile in a text editor and check/post the content. To show hidden files, press Command+Shift+Dot
You can delete the line where brew is called.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Mac mini m1 16/256

1. Mar 7, 10:35 am: 5.47 TBW. (70 power-on-hours)
2. Logout (not sleep)
3. Mar 8 08:35 (22 hours later): 5.49 TBW (70 power-on-hours)

Even with logout the machine is doing something with the ssd

I saw about 20GB written while my machine was supposedly sleeping...powernap is disabled, so I'm guessing it's local TimeMachine backup (to the SSD).

 

[m-a]

Are my stats normal? I have bought the MBP 13 M1 (8/512) in December and have used it occasionally (a few times with Windows 10 ARM VM) ...

 

[k-hawinkler]

Are my stats normal? I have bought the MBP 13 M1 (8/512) in December and have used it occasionally (a few times with Windows 10 ARM VM) ...

View attachment 1740581

2.36 TB written in several months looks excellent to me. 👍

 

[Dockland]

2.36 TB written in several months looks excellent to me. 👍

On my Win/*nix computer, a "heavy" editing machine, it writes ~3 TB/year.

 

[k-hawinkler]

On my Win/*nix computer, a "heavy" editing machine, it writes ~3 TB/year.

That’s excellent as well.
My 7 year old late 2013 Mac Pro wrote on average about 10 TB/year. Excellent as well.
I try to figure out how many TBW can an SSD take?
That number then puts the current actual TBW in proper perspective.

BTW, my 2 months old M1 Mac mini currently shows 4 TB written. Excellent as well. 👍

Going forward I’ll keep an eye on Activity Monitor and will take note of which app/process generates how many TB written or read. That’s the upshot for me reading this thread.

 

[Dockland]

That’s excellent as well.
My 7 year old late 2013 Mac Pro wrote on average about 10 TB/year. Excellent as well.
I try to figure out how many TBW can an SSD take?
That number then puts the current actual TBW in proper perspective.

BTW, my 2 months old M1 Mac mini currently shows 4 TB written. Excellent as well. 👍

Going forward I’ll keep an eye on Activity Monitor and will take note of which app/process generates how many TB written or read. That’s the upshot for me reading this thread.

Great. I'm not worrying my self. The discs i have will probably outlive som other components in my computers.
If it fails, well, I just buy a new *what ever*

 

[VitoBotta]

Powernap is on the Mini as well...

View attachment 1740496
I turned it off because I've seen quite a lot of disk activity during sleep...

Which command did you use to get that info?