I don't think disabling swapping is a good idea.
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ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written
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The Apple support page is quite unclear about this. It says that disabling time machine (unchecking automatic backup) deletes local snapshots, but it doesn't says whether doing so deactivates local backup.
My machine has automatic backups off, and lists no backups in the About This Mac Storage tab. Check yours.
I back up externally using time machine.
So to follow up, I spoke to Apple again today after they sent my data to the Technicians. In short, they didn't acknowledge an issue out right, but said they would like more data from me. They had me create a test account to see if it was account specific or not. I did so and I noticed less writing, but it also makes sense that with less apps running it would be so, but it still wrote a fair amount with some usage. I recorded the usage and added some notes and I should get a call back Tuesday with an update, and also if they believe this is normal use, what the SSD is rated for then, because I don't consider my machine potentially bricking in a year or two "normal use". So we shall see what answers I get.
That really depends. Yeah swap on would be better. But the current implementation is garbage.
If you have enough RAM for all your apps, then you can disable it. I wouldn't recommend it on any machine with less than 16GB RAM though. So if you have 16 or more GB RAM and you have issues with high write volume, you could disable it for now.
Just keep in mind that you might see the "Out of Memory" dialog or apps might crash when your RAM is full. In that case, you NEED swap.
For those who want to try it on Intel machines (yeah, we're in the Apple Silicon area but who knows):
Bash:
sudo nvram boot-args="vm_compressor=2"
You can check how many local snapshots exist or are being created using sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Delete them manually using sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots <date>. e.g. tmutil deletelocalsnapshots 2021-03-12-184729 or by disabling TM automatic backups
I have automatic backup enabled and I don't see backups listed in "About this Mac" nor in system profiler. I only see that the "other" category takes 256 GB, but I don't know if this includes the local snapshots.
EDIT: the terminal command above worked. I have 7 local snapshots corresponding to the last two days.
Apparently, time machine is not supposed to do that if automatic backup is disabled. Have you checked with the following command ?
Code:
sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /They never acknowledge issues unless they cannot deny it any further or fear a lawsuit. I mean: They only care about one thing: Maximum profits. And issues could be bad press. In worst case you say "a very small percentage of users was affected by this very rare and harmless little issue".
Otherwise... they just they won't say anything and might silently fix it in the next release.
So what can I do? I have been postponing purchasing a MBA M1 for a very, very long time because of this SSD issue.
According to what you said, perhaps it is wiser for me to wait? But there is no telling how long I have to wait though, thats why...
Well, I perfectly can understand that.
If you don't want to wait get 16GB and as large an SSD as you can afford.
That's what I did M1 Mac mini 16GB, 2TB.
That should serve me for at least a decade.
It's by far the best and cheapest Mac I ever bought over the last 30 years or so.
I have the 16/512 MBA M1 and don't have this issue or extreme TBW levels some people are experiencing. Hard to say how widespread it is but thankfully Im not affected. I didn't migrate however and started from scratch, only restoring documents / files from backups or cloud service so haven't ended up with any baggage the migration util might have missed or introduced. I've applied all BS upgrades and public beta's (11.3 Beta 3), rebuilt once and played around with disk benchmarks and running stupid workloads when I first got it - currently sitting at 4.16TBW since early Dec. and averaging 0.013 TBW per day with a fairly linear track putting me at around 10-13TBW per year based on current usage.
Well. If there is an issue with the SSDs that they will fail prematurely, then it will take 1-2 years for the first SSDs to actually fail. Either, Apple (silently) fixed that behavior until then, or there would be a repair program.
From what I've gathered in this thread, overuse of swap seams to be the main culprit of the excessive writes. And that is 99% a software issue and 1% not enough RAM (hardware wise).
If you don't need a new machine now and your current machine is perfectly able to get your work done, I would wait and see what happens. Otherwise, get the 16GB M1. You might want to disable swap there if your workload fits into 16GB RAM. That should eliminate the excessive write until there's a better fix.
They are likely trying to figure out what is causing it. It isn't like the bad OS update that turned everybody's computer into a snail - only a small amount of people are having this issue. It could be Apple, it could be people trying to run too many programs for the ram they have, it could be certain programs causing the issue, or a mixture of several factors.
Better to get more information then go off and make an incorrect statement that makes the problem worse or gets Apple sued for defamation.
Yeah, I have the 8 GB model and I had 4 TB written since December as well. Not overly concerned.
Just about everything I have read on this issue - a lot - leaves me with more questions, never answers! If we accept that all components, including SSDs, can fail, what are we left to be concerned about? A bunch of reports from people concerned about what Smart Monitor is telling them; these are not to be dismissed because most of those people appear to be well-informed and very far from stupid. But if I look at what Smart Monitor reports on my two in-service Macs I am immediately struck my some figures that are very obviously wrong. Because I am sat at my iMac just now I show its Smart Monitor report produced in the last few minutes.
Power On Hours 491? Rubbish, this machine is switched on eight hours per day seven days per week, and has been since 01/06/2019.
Power Cycles 4538? No siree.
Unsafe Shutdowns 37? Get outta here. I use a UPS precisely to prevent unsafe shutdowns.
So why should I believe anything Smart Monitor tells me? This is on an Intel Machine and it's producing gibberish, how much less is it to be trusted on Apple Silicon? As it happens, the most believable figure is what it gives for TBW, but that doesn't concern me.
I certainly believe M1 machines write a lot of data to SSD, probably more than their Intel predecessors, but does that mean they're doomed to early (within 10 years) failure? I rather think my M1 will be good for that long haul, and that you can buy with a reasonable level of confidence. After all, if there's a software problem than Apple will fix it (obviously without admitting there's an issue!) and if there's a hardware problem (affecting a small number or users...) Apple will similarly offer a fix.
Don't worry, be happy, give Apple your money.
Best place I found:
https://www.macworld.com/article/3609512/how-to-m1-intel-mac-ssd-health-terminal-smartmontools.html
or get DriveDx app
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