Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

Status
The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
Burebista

Burebista

macrumors regular
Oct 8, 2019
221
231
Hey guys, is there a consensus now that the figures Activity monitor reports correspond to the data from Smartmontools? Cause I'd rather not fiddle with installing xcode, homebrew and smartctl just to check TBW figures if it could be helped.

I've been using a base M1 Air for close to a month now (first Mac, yay - I'm def still a noob). The Activity monitor shows 115 GB written to disk with uptime of 10 days 2 hours (as per Terminal). biggest contributors are kernel task with 58 gigs and launchd 11 gigs. Could this be reliably projected to equal roughly 350 GB per month written (115x3) with the same usage?
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,243
13,317
"That's risky IMO."

I turned off VM disk swapping on my 2012 Mini years ago.
It NEVER crashed.

I turned off VM disk swapping on my 2018 Mini as soon as I took it out of the box.
It NEVER crashes.
 
VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
Not sure if it's still too early to celebrate, but I am seeing a MASSIVE difference since I excluded the main drive from TimeMachine. It's now writing around 20GB per hour with exactly the same apps open, which is wow compared to before. So right now it seems that TimeMachine might be the culprit at least for me. Fingers crossed!
 
  • Like
Reactions: gank41 and daverdfw
VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2020
888
347
Espoo, Finland
Is it a coincidence that since I excluded the main drive from TM, apart from smaller writes, the swap used is A LOT less? I am doing my usual work with the same stuff running as usual, and the swap has been at less than 4 GB for hours. Before it was jumping to 20 GB very often. WTF Can there be a link between TM and swap too? I haven't changed anything else other than reinstalling the OS yesterday, so maybe it's that. Boh.
 
IceStormNG

IceStormNG

macrumors 6502a
Sep 23, 2020
517
676
Burebista said:
Hey guys, is there a consensus now that the figures Activity monitor reports correspond to the data from Smartmontools?
Click to expand...

No. Activity Monitor resets after ever reboot. smartmontools reads the data that the disk controller reports. This data does never reset and reflects the state over the whole lifetime.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gank41
TheSynchronizer

TheSynchronizer

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2014
443
729
VitoBotta said:
Is it a coincidence that since I excluded the main drive from TM, apart from smaller writes, the swap used is A LOT less? I am doing my usual work with the same stuff running as usual, and the swap has been at less than 4 GB for hours. Before it was jumping to 20 GB very often. WTF Can there be a link between TM and swap too? I haven't changed anything else other than reinstalling the OS yesterday, so maybe it's that. Boh.
Click to expand...
It could be a coincidence, but you, me, and others here are all reporting a improvement on their M1 systems.

I’m a firm believer that Big Sur is unfortunately buggy in strange, invisible ways, and it may not make sense that excluding the drive from TM would improve this situation, but it doesn’t have to make sense, as long as it helps and works 😌
 
motoitalia

motoitalia

macrumors member
Mar 7, 2021
37
31
Perhaps a stupid question from a non-technical person, but if I exclude my main drive from Time Machine, how will I get it to back things up? I don't want to mess with having to remember to do manual backups
 
Quackers

Quackers

macrumors 68000
Sep 18, 2013
1,938
708
Manchester, UK
motoitalia said:
Perhaps a stupid question from a non-technical person, but if I exclude my main drive from Time Machine, how will I get it to back things up? I don't want to mess with having to remember to do manual backups
Click to expand...
You can run it manually and for that time remove your main drive from the exclusions then when the backup has finished exclude it once again.
Not pretty but should work.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheSynchronizer
TheSynchronizer

TheSynchronizer

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2014
443
729
motoitalia said:
Perhaps a stupid question from a non-technical person, but if I exclude my main drive from Time Machine, how will I get it to back things up? I don't want to mess with having to remember to do manual backups
Click to expand...
my solution is i’ve set myself a recurring reminder to backup, by removing the drive from the exclusion list and going through it as normal, then putting it back on the list. i backup only weekly so my reminder is on a weekly basis
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quackers
M

Mac... nificent

macrumors 6502a
Nov 20, 2012
943
498
I was a little bit concerned about this issue, but after having watched this video and doing my own research, I feel much more comfortable with my M1. Having said that I will be buying a 16 Gig version for my next computer.

 
  • Like
Reactions: gank41, souko and Queen6
T

Tev11

macrumors member
Apr 1, 2017
60
42
I'm going to stop worrying about this and use the Mac as I intended it to. If too many people complain about SSD failure in sometime before my AppleCare expires, I would think Apple would launch a free repair program, just as they did for the anti-reflective coating issues from the 2013-2016 Mac's. I'm going just ensure my data and stuff are backed up to Google Drive or an external SSD. I'm sure their engineers or someone from Apple have seen these threads regarding this issue.

I'm going with the belief that excessive writes are due to Rosetta 2 (but not limited to) running in the background for non-universal apps that most workloads are not yet updated to. I have read posts of Safari aggressively caching, but 1-2 GB of SWAP is basically nothing. macOS (and maybe linux and windows?) preemptively create SWAP to ensure free RAM is always there so there is no kernal-panics/crashes from what I understand.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to buy a new Mac once my Apple Care expires in late 2023.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jdb8167
TheSynchronizer

TheSynchronizer

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2014
443
729
IceStormNG said:
Maybe a tool like this is of use for you. https://tclementdev.com/timemachineeditor/
Click to expand...
Thank you for this, but regardless I have to remove the disk from the list manually every week, which really is not an issue at all as its 2 clicks, so I'll just stick to my manual way.

Currently at 29 hours of uptime, 76GB written, 750MB in swap, and I'm just happy I can go back to enjoying my mac instead of worrying about the SSD chewing itself.

Thanks everyone!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quackers
K

Kung gu

Suspended
Oct 20, 2018
1,379
2,434

the lg uses more swap than m1
he lg is using 16gb swap while m1 is using 6gb swap
 
Last edited:
J

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
dmr727 said:
Yep. Just realized from your reply that I typed it wrong - /usr/local/sbin is what I meant. I fixed it! :)
Click to expand...
If you use smartmontools under Homebrew and the M1 it is /opt/homebrew/sbin and /opt/homebrew/bin. Not sure if this applies to the downloaded version or not. Really anyone wanting to use command line tools like this is better off just following the brew.sh installation instructions and using brew install smartmontools. It is easier than trying to explain command lines and shell variables and PATH to people.
 
  • Like
Reactions: gank41
A

Argon_

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2020
425
256
dmr727 said:
Worked fine for me. Are you looking in /usr/local/sbin ?
Click to expand...

It doesn't run. I'm talking about the exact same commands that I used in the Homebrew version.

The uninstall command wouldn't work either. I ended up removing it manually, so the Homebrew version would work. It also required sudo to edit or remove.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom