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ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written
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I'm really interesting why some people have ~~1-2 TBW after few weeks, and some other have ~~1-2 TBW after 1-2 week.
There must be something that I'm missing
There must be something that I'm missing
Different use and amount of memory installed will be the key differentiators in my opinion. Some users may be creating 50 GB video files each and every day. Some users may be installing and deleting 80 GB games every day. These data points are pretty hard to compare and correlate because there is little control in terms of the parameters, but , in general, it does seem that the M1 system is writing more to the drive than Intel based Macs.
Have you read my posts?
M1 Mac is wrtiting 2-3 more data than intel.
This is a fact. And Its all related to ram swap.Currently have 330 GB free.
Initially restored from a TM backup from my old iMac (that had a 256 GB SSD).
As I said in another forum about this topic to me this still is a nothing burger.
My old iMac with a 256GB SSD was from 2013 and I retired it when I got my M1. That 256 SSD has many hundreds (if not over 1000) TB of writes (not going to go into details but one culprit is big compressed archives that when uncompressing causes several writes for the "same" data actually multiplying the amount written compared to the actual data stored). And no problems after 7 years of use.
And still I don't trust these tools, the power on time reported is one factor that stands out as unrealistically low in all cases I've seen.
Sure, of course I have. Your two data points are very compelling.Have you read my posts?
M1 Mac is wrtiting 2-3 more data than intel.
Check post from yesterday, page 3.
MacBook Air m1, 8gb ram. after 21 days this guy has 61.5 TBW. SSD Lifespan is 96%. After just 3 weeks.
edit:
just about "I don' trust these tools" <-- it's S.M.A.R.T. sensor, build into the ssd. It has nothing to do with intel/m1 processor. I'm pretty sure those data are accurate.
i don't think we have the necessary inner knowledge to make assumptions about the life expectancy of the ssd. but i do think, that apple won't make a hardware (macs are known for rubustness and longevity) that will fail around the 2 years mark.
Ye, I totally agree. Especially after all the 2014 screens issue (I had it, the 4-year repair program fixed it) or the 2016+ keyboards (apple fixed my once, right now I have to give my MacBook once again because of that).
Or all the MacBook Pro 16" issues with with radeon and external monitors
?♂️ don't get me wrong - I love apple machines, way more than anything that have windows, but those devices are not "known for robustness and longevity" anymore in my opinion.
And how do you know said software accesses the SMART sensor directly?Check post from yesterday, page 3.
MacBook Air m1, 8gb ram. after 21 days this guy has 61.5 TBW. SSD Lifespan is 96%. After just 3 weeks.
edit:
just about "I don' trust these tools" <-- it's S.M.A.R.T. sensor, build into the ssd. It has nothing to do with intel/m1 processor. I'm pretty sure those data are accurate.
There is something off with these numbers.
I'm not worried about this, and if reported numbers by DriveDx are true I only have 1,5 TB of writes since november so definitely not worried for my computers amount of writes to disk.
But as for instance I get reported only 95 power on hours on my SSD, that's about 1 h/day since I got it. That is impossible. I work on this computer, and normal operations means there is constant reading and writing to the hard drive it can not go into hibernation mode that often.
Here are some other screens I posted on another forum.
First of, computer has been on for about 5 hours at this point, some might worry about 34 GB written in this time, hmm there is something going on here:
Secondly:
Why has install deamon written 11,5 GB?
There has been some app updates today but nowhere near that size.
Why is backup reported to have written 8,72 GB?
I backup through TM to my NAS, the number itself probably is correct but not a chance it has written it to the SSD.
Why has OneDrive written 6,5 GB to disk?
I only run on-demand, so files are offline until I need them, I have not worked on that many documents today.
Why has Outlook written almost 900 MB?
For reference I have my personal mail accounts through the default mail app and it has only written about 3 MB to disk.
Thirdly for reference ("växelfil" = swap)
There is absolutely something going on on an OS level. And I'm pretty sure no one in all of these tech forum threads actually have a clue to what it is or how it is effecting the SSDs lifespan.
As I said I'm not worried, but when I started to look at these things I'm becoming really intrigued about what is really happening.
I've been doing some reading elsewhere and have seen proof that M1 Macs do indeed swap memory to the SSD a lot more readily than Intel Macs. I still expect these drives to last longer than the typical user will keep the machine for. Whether the actual numbers we are seeing (multiple terabytes in weeks and the numbers that @Spindel is questioning) are correct is a different matter.
as someone whose been on the fence about getting a new M1 setup, and really wants to, this has been the major hurdle for me. I saw this issue pop up initially when looking into how lightroom classic worked on M1 through rosetta (and it seems solid overall), but the one thing that started to pop up was massive SSD write numbers. Now seeing it across general use and not exclusively to adobe suite has me wondering if this is a general issue Apple needs to address.
Mine is the 8GB model and it says i am at 2.3TB after around 3 months of use doing broad design work in Photoshop, Affinity Designer and Publisher, Blender, Substance, Unity, some VisualStudio, some light use of Apple Motion and DaVinci Resolve, and some casual gaming on WoW which is a memory hog and writes to swap even while idle.
I haven't gotten the task to work on some of my bigger 1GB+ Photoshop files yet but those aren't the norm and shouldn't affect the average by much.
I do keep my internal drive around half-full and got most of the apps on a Samsung T7, no idea if that makes a difference.
That doesn't say much without knowing his workflow though, if he is trying to simulate the universe or something then he qualifies for a mainframe, it would be very helpful if people with high registers shared their workflow.
I haven't gotten the task to work on some of my bigger 1GB+ Photoshop files yet but those aren't the norm and shouldn't affect the average by much.
I do keep my internal drive around half-full and got most of the apps on a Samsung T7, no idea if that makes a difference.
MacBook Air m1, 8gb ram. after 21 days this guy has 61.5 TBW. SSD Lifespan is 96%. After just 3 weeks.
That doesn't say much without knowing his workflow though, if he is trying to simulate the universe or something then he qualifies for a mainframe, it would be very helpful if people with high registers shared their workflow.
I agree that the Apple Silicon macs are more swap happy, and you should expect more swapping if you run memory heavy workloads (specially with the 8 GB version). But performance wise this is actually OK since the computer doesn't grind to a halt like it did back in the days with spinning disks.
What I'm questioning is the numbers reported by all these tools, as I can point out one number that is impossible for my own system I do question the rest of the numbers reported.
But there also is the factor with how stuff like this is handled on an OS level outside of swap that is interesting that I tried to point to in my previous post. I have a hell of a lot writes to disk reported by macOS and that is without any swapping at all.
what number exactly? "Power on hours" is telling you only about time when disk is working, not when disk is "running".
Most of the time computers are using RAM memory, not SSD/HDD. You can use your computer for 8 hours and see only 1 hour on "power on hours" in SMART sensor.
If I'm wrong - correct me, but this is what I can read on the web.
How long has it been since you last restarted? Also could you open terminal and run vm_stat and paste the results here? In the name of science.
I shut the computer off every day and restart in the morning.
Started today at around 06:30 and it's now almost 14:00.
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 16384 bytes)
Pages free: 4541.
Pages active: 386219.
Pages inactive: 379985.
Pages speculative: 5351.
Pages throttled: 0.
Pages wired down: 106788.
Pages purgeable: 11418.
"Translation faults": 118783193.
Pages copy-on-write: 1131243.
Pages zero filled: 44031354.
Pages reactivated: 752476.
Pages purged: 183780.
File-backed pages: 283559.
Anonymous pages: 487996.
Pages stored in compressor: 254681.
Pages occupied by compressor: 126732.
Decompressions: 193858.
Compressions: 522135.
Pageins: 2724176.
Pageouts: 6952.
Swapins: 0.
Swapouts: 0.
Any modern OS more or less constantly writes or reads from disk.
A pure storage disk might go into hibernation. But a disk that carries the OS and/or other programs will almost constantly read and write data to the disk. Just having a journaling file system means a lot of constant small read and writes.
I work on my computer, programs autosave, the indexer updates these changes, programs call for different libraries and resources all the time, I open files save files, move them around.
Thanks. Your pageouts are basically nothing in the grand scheme of things, so memory writing to SSD is inconsequential today to the total data written as reported in your activity monitor .
That was what I was trying to get at with my previous posts.
There is a lot of disk activity, but it's not connected to RAM management as far as I can see.
The thing is I don't know how this was on my old iMac because I never bothered to look at it befor these panic ridden discussions came up. And currently the iMac is stowed away on the attic.
But I still stand by the opinion that I do not trust these disk reporting "tools". And that there is something outside of swap/ram management creating a lot of disk activity. But as I said, I'm not worried (not currently at least).
On hand I agree with you
but on the other hand - on my MacBook with intel I can see a bit over 1 month of "Power on hours". I have it for over 2 years and using it almost every day.Still a lot less TBW than what my Mac mini has
Yes, I know that the TBW will grow and grow and this is fine. What's not fine is that when are using both computers for exactly the same stuff (work, visual studio, iOS simulator, browser, slack, music) and my MacBook have ~~1.7-1.8 TBW / month., while my Mac mini have 1.2 TBW after just 8 days
Like I said - for now I probably don't have anything to be worry about. I will se how those numbers will grow in future.
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and once again - Whether some of us like it or not, there is a problem. At least for some of us. And don't tell me it's because of the way we are using it - I'm using Mac mini exactly (1:1) the same way as I did with my MacBook
theoretically though, we do have something to worry about do we not? The lifespan of these drives have to be impacted by a massive increase in writing?On hand I agree with you
Still a lot less TBW than what my Mac mini has
Yes, I know that the TBW will grow and grow and this is fine. What's not fine is that when are using both computers for exactly the same stuff (work, visual studio, iOS simulator, browser, slack, music) and my MacBook have ~~1.7-1.8 TBW / month., while my Mac mini have 1.2 TBW after just 8 days
Like I said - for now I probably don't have anything to be worry about. I will se how those numbers will grow in future.
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and once again - Whether some of us like it or not, there is a problem. At least for some of us. And don't tell me it's because of the way we are using it - I'm using Mac mini exactly (1:1) the same way as I did with my MacBook
It’s up to you if you find these figures accurate or not. Personally, I don’t. You and another mentions it’s pulling that information from SMART. I’d say it’s not pulling it accurately.Check post from yesterday, page 3.
MacBook Air m1, 8gb ram. after 21 days this guy has 61.5 TBW. SSD Lifespan is 96%. After just 3 weeks.
edit:
just about "I don' trust these tools" <-- it's S.M.A.R.T. sensor, build into the ssd. It has nothing to do with intel/m1 processor. I'm pretty sure those data are accurate.
Data written in Activity Monitor reports the same numbers (e.g. 50GB increase in DriveDx/smartctl = 50GB Activity Monitor Data written) so after verifying, I'm inclined to believe it.
Just today, I booted up my MacBook Air and Activity Monitor reports 18GB Data written. The only thing I did was view photos and create a short Memories clip for my aunt's birthday.
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