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ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

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pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,149
14,574
New Hampshire
tab0reqq said:
With all the respect, but that's just 🤦🏻‍♂️

I've been using in a similar way my 2014 MBP 13 8/256 for years, and now with Apple Silicone we should opt for RAM Upgrade option which is going to cost more than a base model of MacBook? :)

This supposed to be technological progress. Not step back :)
Click to expand...

That's why the only model I would consider right now is the iMac 27 which I could stuff 128 GB of RAM in.
 
I

ItWasNotMe

macrumors 6502
Dec 1, 2012
454
318
inversed said:
@ItWasNotMe I just re-tested. Launching LR Classic resulted in 4MB write with Launchd. Then if i send a file to PS Beta there is no more writes with Launchd (6 MB if i send the file to PS/Rosetta). Memory was around 10G between PS and LR and 680MB swap.
One thing, all my LR Catalogs are project/assignment based so i don't have large catalogs (at most 1000 files).
Click to expand...
Mine vary, they are split by which family member originally 'owned' the photographs. The one I'm current working on only has 70 images in it, some 35mm slides dating from 1960-1970. My own is c55,000.

I also see a small increment when I launch the apps, it's when I start doing anything to the image in PS, such as using the healing brush, that the launchd writes skyrocket and I'd estimate is a fairly consistent 8-10GB/hour but then all the raw files are roughly the same size given they are originally 35mm frames scanned using the same machine at the same resolution. There's only a minor variation on cropping so I'd expect similarity in the handling of the image.

Looking at the graphs in activity monitor, the writes are periodic rather than continuous so given I've had enough for one day, tomorrows test is to turn off auto-save.
 
H

Heindiabolo

macrumors newbie
Feb 26, 2021
5
1
Kraizelburg said:
The biggest culprit in my case is Kernel_task writing more than 1GB per hour even with just browsing and writing documents in Word.
Click to expand...
The same here. Was only surfing with safari 2hours on sunday and kerne_task wrote over 2GB in 2hours. I didnt start affinity photo or other productive apps.
 
F

Fomalhaut

macrumors 68000
Oct 6, 2020
1,993
1,724
BrettApple said:
Saw this thread and thought I'd go look. My 2013 MacBook pro that's been running, well, since Late 2013 when I got it was around 20TB maybe? In 7 years. I'm at 2TB after 34 hours of power on time. It's only been used for a few days - that's it. Yikes.

View attachment 1741083

For comparisons sake my work 2018 MacBook Pro that does all the heavy lifting 40hrs/week has 342 hours and 13 TB. It also has a 512GB SSD and 32GB of RAM, but also runs a Windows VM full time alongside macOS as well for what it's worth, but doesn't appear to swap much with the amount of memory it has.
Click to expand...
Your numbers are reassuringly low. My MBP16 (32GB/1TB) has 1550 power-up hours and 170TB written (in about 15 months of work-usage). That works out at 110GB/hour. smartctl reports 2% used. I'm going to start to be more rigorous about closing apps and keeping swap memory usage down.
 
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F

Fomalhaut

macrumors 68000
Oct 6, 2020
1,993
1,724
Kraizelburg said:
The biggest culprit in my case is Kernel_task writing more than 1GB per hour even with just browsing and writing documents in Word.
Click to expand...
I don't think that 1GB/hour is going to be a problem. I'm getting about 50-100GB written per day and at that rate, the 512SSD should last about 20 years.

However, I'm still curious about what it's doing!

I've found that keeping swap usage <5GB seems to help. I have a 16GB M1 Mini.
 
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L

LTE1985

macrumors newbie
Mar 9, 2021
1
2
Czechia
Hi,

it seems that kernel_task and launchd processes writes huge amount of data.
On my Intel based MBA with Mojave and latest Safari was written about 20GB/day.

It is possible check which data are written via terminal:
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio kernel_task
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio launchd

On Intel Mac is it for kernel_task mostly WrMeta (filesystem metadata, mostly atime attribute), PgOut (Page-Out, pages of virtual memory paged into swap) or WrData (data writes, mostly log files, some cache files in /private/var/folders...)
 
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P

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,149
14,574
New Hampshire
LTE1985 said:
Hi,

it seems that kernel_task and launchd processes writes huge amount of data.
On my Intel based MBA with Mojave and latest Safari was written about 20GB/day.

It is possible check which data are written via terminal:
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio kernel_task
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio launchd

On Intel Mac is it for kernel_task mostly WrMeta (filesystem metadata, mostly atime attribute), PgOut (Page-Out, pages of virtual memory paged into swap) or WrData (data writes, mostly log files, some cache files in /private/var/folders...)
Click to expand...

I have to try this out on my MacBook pros. Thanks for the commands. I’ll post what I find.
 
F

Fomalhaut

macrumors 68000
Oct 6, 2020
1,993
1,724
LTE1985 said:
Hi,

it seems that kernel_task and launchd processes writes huge amount of data.
On my Intel based MBA with Mojave and latest Safari was written about 20GB/day.

It is possible check which data are written via terminal:
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio kernel_task
sudo fs_usage -w -f diskio launchd

On Intel Mac is it for kernel_task mostly WrMeta (filesystem metadata, mostly atime attribute), PgOut (Page-Out, pages of virtual memory paged into swap) or WrData (data writes, mostly log files, some cache files in /private/var/folders...)
Click to expand...
That's a really useful command. I can see I'm getting quite of lot pageouts to the swapfiles.
 
P

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,149
14,574
New Hampshire
I found the activity monitor more useful. Data read is 55.77 GB, Data written is 140.23 GB and the system has probably been up for quite a while - I think 6-10 weeks. I seldom shut it down or reboot it.
 
SeanGold

SeanGold

macrumors newbie
Mar 2, 2021
9
12
So just to update, I reached out to Apple again tonight and didn't get much of an answer once again, but I did get a rep that came onto my computer to look at what I'm talking about. He collected my system data, and we took screenshots and he says they'll send it to the technicians and they should get back to me on Saturday. Hopefully he conveyed the context in his notes well enough, and maybe I'll finally get an answer as to what's going on with this issue. He was on while my machine wrote about 8GB's in about 6 seconds, and then proceeded to write another 50GBs or so in a few minutes while the machine was doing nothing and we were talking on the phone.
 
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C

chouseworth

macrumors 6502
Dec 3, 2012
299
833
Wake Forest, NC
SeanGold said:
So just to update, I reached out to Apple again tonight and didn't get much of an answer once again, but I did get a rep that came onto my computer to look at what I'm talking about. He collected my system data, and we took screenshots and he says they'll send it to the technicians and they should get back to me on Saturday. Hopefully he conveyed the context in his notes well enough, and maybe I'll finally get an answer as to what's going on with this issue. He was on while my machine wrote about 8GB's in about 6 seconds, and then proceeded to write another 50GBs or so in a few minutes while the machine was doing nothing and we were talking on the phone.
Click to expand...
Thank you for taking the time to do this. Every bit of customer feedback helps. But if Apple had not already had a team of techs already working on this, I would be quite amazed, and naturally quite disappointed in Apple.
 
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Fomalhaut

macrumors 68000
Oct 6, 2020
1,993
1,724
SeanGold said:
So just to update, I reached out to Apple again tonight and didn't get much of an answer once again, but I did get a rep that came onto my computer to look at what I'm talking about. He collected my system data, and we took screenshots and he says they'll send it to the technicians and they should get back to me on Saturday. Hopefully he conveyed the context in his notes well enough, and maybe I'll finally get an answer as to what's going on with this issue. He was on while my machine wrote about 8GB's in about 6 seconds, and then proceeded to write another 50GBs or so in a few minutes while the machine was doing nothing and we were talking on the phone.
Click to expand...
This will hopefully be a helpful input into the pool of questions for Apple . Writing 50GB in "a few minutes" should not be normal usage. What were your memory stats (especially swap used) during this period?
 
T

Tev11

macrumors member
Apr 1, 2017
60
42

Is this accurate? (Skip to 6:55)

He says that SMART % is an assumed number based on typical drives with much lower ratings, so the % is artificially high.

Is this also correct? Toshiba Nand Flash drives used in Macs are rated for complete drive write per day. That would mean if you have a 256 GB M1 Mac, you do:

256 x 365 = 93.4 TB x 8 years (I'm not quite sure where he got 8 from in the video, though) = ~750 TB as your TBW.
 
Fred Zed

Fred Zed

macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2019
5,827
6,519
Upstate NY . Was FL.
SeanGold said:
Hello, I thought I'd share my experience with this so far. I am a photographer and I see this issue mainly when running Lightroom Classic. My Brave browser writes a bit here and there, but when Lightroom is launched, Kernel begins writing sometimes like 10GB or more almost instantly. Even running in the background it's writing 10's of GBs. It's written about 4TB's in the 4 days it's been on with relatively light use and not much Lightroom compared to normal. I've had this machine for 1 month and according to DriveDx I've written 92TB and used up 9% of the SSD lifespan.

I called Apple today to talk about this and feel I made a little progress, but overall the people I spoke to seem to ultimately feel it's not an issue even though they can't tell me why it's not. A bit frustrated and concerned. But again to reiterate, I can see these writes happening pretty much whenever I open Lightroom.
Click to expand...
You have posted images of DriveDX screenshots but make reference to Kernel Task burning up GBs in activity monitor in a few short mins or hours. Any of those pics?
 
W

wirtandi

macrumors regular
Feb 3, 2021
179
179
Joelist said:
The Constant Geekery videos on the subject are excellent and one big reason is they are not clickbait-y and methodically go over the facts. Watch them both and you'll have a much more reasoned perspective.
Click to expand...
I did watch their videos. Basically my takeaway from those videos is that if you are not a heavy user, but only a casual user, you really should not worry about this. Furthermore, this whole issue only affects a small percentage of users.
 
Fred Zed

Fred Zed

macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2019
5,827
6,519
Upstate NY . Was FL.
Tev11 said:

Is this accurate? (Skip to 6:55)

He says that SMART % is an assumed number based on typical drives with much lower ratings, so the % is artificially high.

Is this also correct? Toshiba Nand Flash drives used in Macs are rated for complete drive write per day. That would mean if you have a 256 GB M1 Mac, you do:

256 x 365 = 93.4 TB x 8 years (I'm not quite sure where he got 8 from in the video, though) = ~750 TB as your TBW.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't trust YouTube opinions, best wait for the Forbes article ( cough cough LOL ).
 
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pistonpilot

pistonpilot

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2019
137
110
Bangkok, Thailand
Tev11 said:

Is this accurate? (Skip to 6:55)

He says that SMART % is an assumed number based on typical drives with much lower ratings, so the % is artificially high.

Is this also correct? Toshiba Nand Flash drives used in Macs are rated for complete drive write per day. That would mean if you have a 256 GB M1 Mac, you do:

256 x 365 = 93.4 TB x 8 years (I'm not quite sure where he got 8 from in the video, though) = ~750 TB as your TBW.
Click to expand...
The video chump can keep his opinion about who is a power user and who not. My son who is only playing Roblox now has 4TB written to a 256gb drive in 2 months. It's disgusting.
 
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