ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[Ningj]

I've also disabled by OneDrive client sync app. The main reason is because it simply doesn't appear to handle syncing large sets of files (I have over 400,000), even with "offline files" enabled. It tries to process my 400,000+ files at the rate of about 1 per 5 seconds (> 23 days). It also seems to do a lot of disk writing (500GB per day?) that I can do without....

I have no idea what OneDrive is trying to process, when it should not be downloading or uploading any files with "offline files" enabled. I suppose it's just scanning every file to crate meta-data for its sync process, but this might involve actually downloading the file temporarily to scan it? Who knows, but it's a incredibly frustrating piece of software on both Mac and Windows, but especially on Mac.

I have 1TB storage with my MS business account, but I'm going to use it for long term archive only rather than real-time syncing. Dropbox and Google Backup & Sync are *way* faster for the actual sync. OneDrive is quite fast if you up/download directly to the browser or use a 3rd party file transfer tool like Cyberduck.

Sounds good. Those of us in the 20-50+ Tab Camp will have to wait for one of our kind to bravely try out beta 5.

I must say that all the 11.3 betas have proven to be really stable. On 11.3 B6 now and havent had any bluetooth issues or other silliness for months (apple mouse, trackpad, Logi keyboard, wifi 6, external USB-C SSD). I have also been tracking TBW figures on a daily basis for around a month now and havent wittnessed excessive writes others have reported. That said I do use bookmarks in preference to keeping lots of tabs open (< 15) and have recently switched back to Firefox from Safari but not for the reasons cited in this thread (i hate the back/previous page behavour).

Mini 16G/512G. Small blip in the chart was a refresh of onedrive which Ive now basically given up on and currently only use it for archiving using rclone to sync files (think rsync for cloud storage). Since getting the mini early dec, I have installed every beta and GA release of Big Sur....all up probably around 13 upgrades. Music and other documents / files are stored on external USBC SSD.

Based on this I have no concerns about TBW levels for my personal workload. Might be interesting to start a poll to guage how many users on this forum are affected by this issue, their system configuration, and importantly browser and tab behavour.

 

[Aggedor]

I’ve switched to Firefox from Edge myself even after being a big fan of edge So far its a great experience!

Best part is tab discard works just as well on Firefox, as well as all the other tweaks. You can even export the tab discard settings from the extension options inside Edge and import them on the firefox extension.

Im not sure how I could go about getting an admin to sticky a post, but if anyone knows I’d be happy to write up a summary of all tweaks to try with credits to all the others here that helped too

I’m glad we were able to help! Enjoy your mac

Thanks!

Must admit, I use Edge on my Windows PC and quite like it, so perhaps that's a better option than Firefox on my M1 Macbook Air (I've never really liked Firefox).

Of course I've also just realised that I bought a sub for 1Blocker, which is Safari only. Dare I ask what ad blocker you use in Edge?

 

[Aggedor]

It's beyond my paygrade to "sticky", but here it is in detail:

type in the address bar about:config

then press the button i'll be careful i promise

then type in the bar browser.cache.disk.enable

then double click on it, to make it false

exit firefox and restart-it.

do the same with browser.cache.memory.enable

Can you post the instructions for Edge too, please?

 

[wyk126]

Yes. Sleeping tabs is a lot less aggressive and a passive process - the tab isn't actually discarded so it doesn't need to be reloaded when you click on it. But the memory savings are a lot smaller compared to complete discarding of the tabs. Maybe if you don't use a large amount of tabs then the built in sleeping tabs will be sufficient enough to reduce your memory useage slightly, which can still help prevent unnecessary swapping.

In my case I always used a large (50+) amount of tabs pretty much daily on Edge, with many other apps running all the time, so I went the Auto tab discard route. I also found that having them both enabled sometimes seemed to interfere with the function of ATD, so be careful of that.

Everyone's use case is different and so naturally everyone's needs will be different. Some people may not require full tab discarding on their browser to maintain healthy rates of SSD writing, due to only running limited number of tabs / apps.

Personally I'm very happy with full tab discarding with ATD because I never have to worry about how many apps I'm running and I can focus on my work instead. I rarely check my writes in activity monitor now, but when I do, they're always in the range of 0.7-2GB per hour, which puts me at many many years of SSD life.

Thank you so much for your insights

 

[Ektachrome]

Just a heads-up to those new to the thread and only scanning the last few pages - be aware that although the browser tweaks seem to solve a good many users' issues, if you use specific software like Adobe Lightroom, there are still problems which require workarounds in workflow and performance which you may or may not be prepared to make.

Be sure to check into those before you assume this is essentially a thing of the past.

 

[gank41]

Just a heads-up to those new to the thread and only scanning the last few pages - be aware that although the browser tweaks seem to solve a good many users' issues, if you use specific software like Adobe Lightroom, there are still problems which require workarounds in workflow and performance which you may or may not be prepared to make.

Be sure to check into those before you assume this is essentially a thing of the past.

Absolutely. I'm using almost all of the apps mentioned here accept Lightroom. I record a large amount of audio in Logic Pro & create some videos in FCPX. I use Safari often (maybe 1-3 tabs to anywhere between 7-15 tabs), along with Edge for "installed" web apps (Teams, OWA, & ServiceNow), Firefox & Opera (about the same usage as Safari). I tend to have 7-10 apps open almost all the time. Reading RSS feeds or going thru Twitter, Email, Messages, Photos, RAW Power, some other audio converting apps. I use the Parallels Tech Preview with 4 VM's (not all running at the same time)..

When I started checked my TBW in late Feb thinking it was high and then found this post, seeing everyone's reports of much higher TBW over the same or even a shorter amount of time, I was worried about swap/RAM management like seemingly everyone else first perusing these pages. I've been getting screen captures of the smartmontools in Terminal almost every day or so to go back and compare over the last couple months. Everything looks great! I've even reinstalled macOS 11.2.3 on my M1 MBP (16GB/2TB model) from my older MBP via Apple Configurator 2. I did stop using iStat Menus and have started using Menubar Stats instead. I found that iStat Menus was crashing too often. Menubar Stats has been great, seems very lightweight. I've never once had a slowdown issue or crash with that app since I started using it. There could have been excessive writing to the drive because of crashes and logging, I'm showing 38(!) unsafe shutdowns in my M1 MBP's 4 month lifespan, which is a lot. I'm sure there's some logging or something happening there, too, from that. Although those crashes seemed to have cleared up with the recent 11.3 betas. I'm sure Time Machine local snapshots have something to do with it (Read about how that works here).

My point is that the potential causes for this issue that people have reported don't seem to be universal. This is hands down the best computer I've ever owned. I have zero buyers remorse knowing there will be a much more powerful (and expensive) MBP and other M1 Macs sometime in the near future. If you need to buy a new Mac now for whatever reason, and you can afford it at the moment, you'll be very happy.

 

[leons]

Absolutely. I'm using almost all of the apps mentioned here accept Lightroom. I record a large amount of audio in Logic Pro & create some videos in FCPX. I use Safari often (maybe 1-3 tabs to anywhere between 7-15 tabs), along with Edge for "installed" web apps (Teams, OWA, & ServiceNow), Firefox & Opera (about the same usage as Safari). I tend to have 7-10 apps open almost all the time. Reading RSS feeds or going thru Twitter, Email, Messages, Photos, RAW Power, some other audio converting apps. I use the Parallels Tech Preview with 4 VM's (not all running at the same time)..

When I started checked my TBW in late Feb thinking it was high and then found this post, seeing everyone's reports of much higher TBW over the same or even a shorter amount of time, I was worried about swap/RAM management like seemingly everyone else first perusing these pages. I've been getting screen captures of the smartmontools in Terminal almost every day or so to go back and compare over the last couple months. Everything looks great! I've even reinstalled macOS 11.2.3 on my M1 MBP (16GB/2TB model) from my older MBP via Apple Configurator 2. I did stop using iStat Menus and have started using Menubar Stats instead. I found that iStat Menus was crashing too often. Menubar Stats has been great, seems very lightweight. I've never once had a slowdown issue or crash with that app since I started using it. There could have been excessive writing to the drive because of crashes and logging, I'm showing 38(!) unsafe shutdowns in my M1 MBP's 4 month lifespan, which is a lot. I'm sure there's some logging or something happening there, too, from that. Although those crashes seemed to have cleared up with the recent 11.3 betas. I'm sure Time Machine local snapshots have something to do with it (Read about how that works here).

My point is that the potential causes for this issue that people have reported don't seem to be universal. This is hands down the best computer I've ever owned. I have zero buyers remorse knowing there will be a much more powerful (and expensive) MBP and other M1 Macs sometime in the near future. If you need to buy a new Mac now for whatever reason, and you can afford it at the moment, you'll be very happy.

Great, helpful post. My experience is similar to yours except I am a Tab Abuser (79 open at this moment). I am also one of the worst (previously) affected. At its peak, I was approaching 1.5TBW/day. Now, it's down to such a small fraction of that, I've stopped checking. But, the most important part of your post is at the end. "This is hands down the best computer I've ever owned. I have zero buyer's remorse knowing there will be a much more powerful (and expensive) MBP and other M1 Macs sometime in the near future. If you need to buy a new Mac now for whatever reason, and you can afford it at the moment, you'll be very happy." This machine has changed my computing life for the better unlike any other. Not evolutionary but revolutionary!

 

[leons]

Can you post the instructions for Edge too, please?

1. Go to ~/Library/Caches/Microsoft Edge/Default/
2. Select the Cache folder
3. Click Get Info
4. Under Sharing & Permissions set your admin/user account to Read-only so that it says 'You can only read'
5. Bye-bye TBW

 

[leons]

Thanks!

Must admit, I use Edge on my Windows PC and quite like it, so perhaps that's a better option than Firefox on my M1 Macbook Air (I've never really liked Firefox).

Of course I've also just realised that I bought a sub for 1Blocker, which is Safari only. Dare I ask what ad blocker you use in Edge?

TheSynchronizer will chime in soon, but AFAIK when he was last using Edge it was with Ublock Origin.

 

[Thistle41]

Looking at the YouTube discussions this link SSD info has an interesting point made about how Apple were early adopters of SSD technology and bought up an Israeli SSD controller company - anobit. The conclusion is that they know what they are doing. There are also some interesting points about repurposing some cells as a single layer to give more lifetime. Basically, Apple could be doing many things to avoid lifetime issues, we just don't know.

However, I did think that OTOH, Apple did foist on us the Butterfly keyboard that is now subject to a class-action lawsuit in some states of the USA. So they do get things wrong and I am still smarting from my experience of the 2020 intel MBA which was a lemon. I sold at a massive loss but then bought this one off a guy who also had a pretty big loss. I ended up paying a £250 premium to get this M1 MBA and don't regret it for a minute!

 

[Aggedor]

1. Go to ~/Library/Caches/Microsoft Edge/Default/
2. Select the Cache folder
3. Click Get Info
4. Under Sharing & Permissions set your admin/user account to Read-only so that it says 'You can only read'
5. Bye-bye TBW

TheSynchronizer will chime in soon, but AFAIK when he was last using Edge it was with Ublock Origin.

Excellent, thank you!

 

[telo123]

As the video points out, there seems to be an experimental flag that I have never noticed on Chrome, Brave and Opera, that will prevent caching to the disk when streaming video:

#turn-off-streaming-media-caching-always

and

#turn-off-streaming-media-caching-on-battery

If you enable and restart the browser, it should resolve disk writes because of video streaming. As the video points out, this behaviour is not exclusive to M1 Mac's. It is common amongst browsers (not Safari) and is seen in Windows as well.

Not available on Edge, I don't think.

 

[telo123]

TheSynchronizer will chime in soon, but AFAIK when he was last using Edge it was with Ublock Origin.

Ublock origin is legit the best ad blocker for chromium browsers. Literally the first extension I download whenever I re-install a chromium browser lmao.

 

[leons]

Ublock origin is legit the best ad blocker for chromium browsers. Literally the first extension I download whenever I re-install a chromium browser lmao.

I'm using Ublock Origin very effectively in Firefox, but have not been able to ascertain whether or not it is running natively on the M1. Does anyone know for sure?
Also (information only) FWIW, Opera just announced M1 support.

 

[kubilaydem]

First day without Safari and Onedrive. Results with; Firefox + iCloud.

I use mainly (also today) for browsing, ms office, mail, youtube, whatsapp web, forums.

Uptime : 13 hours 55 min (including 2 hours, 40 min sleep)

Total wrote : 14.47 gb (including 4 gb write for davinci resolve update).

Sleep wrote : 0.46 gb (so its about 0,17 gb per hour)

Use time wrote : 14.01 gb (its about 1,24 gb per hour)

I will inform you tomorrow too. In my opinion so far so good results for now.

 

[leons]

Looking great. Without actually crunching the numbers, I estimate your SSD should be good for well over 200 years!

 

[daverdfw]

I moved to firefox, and did the cache tweaks, still have a lot of writes. 26hr uptime 212Gb written.

 

[leons]

I moved to firefox, and did the cache tweaks, still have a lot of writes. 26hr uptime 212Gb written.

Depends on your perspective. I'm sure we can analyze and find out what you might be running to make it higher than some others. However, if you do that 365 days/year, you're still good for 20 years+

 

[daverdfw]

Depends on your perspective. I'm sure we can analyze and find out what you might be running to make it higher than some others. However, if you do that 365 days/year, you're still good for 20 years+

this is a mac mini, so its always on as well.

 

[leons]

this is a mac mini, so its always on as well.

If you DO want to try to reduce it (and maybe have your SSD last 100 years), give us a list of all the applications that you ran, how many tabs you regularly have open, and what things you did over that 26 hours.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

I moved to firefox, and did the cache tweaks, still have a lot of writes. 26hr uptime 212Gb written.

Install and configure Auto Tab Discard to your preferences, and watch your writes (most likely) disappear.

 

[kubilaydem]

Second day with Firefox + iCloud.

4 hours uptime and 1,80 gb write

 

[David Hassholehoff]

I discovered this thread last week, at which point TBW was about 5.4 TB. Data Units Read was significantly higher at about 8.
I've had this mini since December, it's a 16/512 model, and I keep the photos on an external HDD, and all music and video on a couple of BSD machines networked to the mini.
This means that the most intensive stuff besides the OS is probably the ~/Library, followed by ~/Applications (where I keep my games) and /Applications. I use the iCloud Documents sync thing, so ~/Documents really resides in ~/Library and syncs all the time.
(I planned to put ~/Applications on a fast external NVMe, but have not had the means too yet. I also planned to put the photos on one of the BSD machines, but sadly the "system library" can't be on a networked drive.)
I don't use Safari, I use Firefox and qutebrowser. I don't do much photo and no video editing. I use text editors and IDE's most of the day. And any heavy downloading I do through the BSD machines (ssh + curl), since I store most of my data on them already.
I use Homebrew and have 211 formulas and 14 casks installed. I run brew update && brew upgrade daily. I have 67 apps under /Applications and 5 under ~/Applications.

Also; would anyone who has been following the thread continously be so kind as to make a summary of what's happened? I only read through the first few pages before I realised there was 60-70 more and I don't have the time to go through them all. 🙇🏼‍♂️

 

[David Hassholehoff]

Oh, and since people are reporting on uptime and crashes:

I have 21 days since last reboot, and I've had one crash since I got the mini in December. Not sure why smartmontools is reporting 10 unsafe shutdowns. I rarely shut down the mini, I reboot for updates and when I have installed something that needs a reboot. I sometimes put it to sleep, but most of the time I just turn off the monitor and leave it on.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

View attachment 1752537
I discovered this thread last week, at which point TBW was about 5.4 TB. Data Units Read was significantly higher at about 8.
I've had this mini since December, it's a 16/512 model, and I keep the photos on an external HDD, and all music and video on a couple of BSD machines networked to the mini.
This means that the most intensive stuff besides the OS is probably the ~/Library, followed by ~/Applications (where I keep my games) and /Applications. I use the iCloud Documents sync thing, so ~/Documents really resides in ~/Library and syncs all the time.
(I planned to put ~/Applications on a fast external NVMe, but have not had the means too yet. I also planned to put the photos on one of the BSD machines, but sadly the "system library" can't be on a networked drive.)
I don't use Safari, I use Firefox and qutebrowser. I don't do much photo and no video editing. I use text editors and IDE's most of the day. And any heavy downloading I do through the BSD machines (ssh + curl), since I store most of my data on them already.
I use Homebrew and have 211 formulas and 14 casks installed. I run brew update && brew upgrade daily. I have 67 apps under /Applications and 5 under ~/Applications.

Also; would anyone who has been following the thread continously be so kind as to make a summary of what's happened? I only read through the first few pages before I realised there was 60-70 more and I don't have the time to go through them all. 🙇🏼‍♂️

Well from what you said you only wrote around 42GB a day, which works out to ~1.76GB an hour aka you have nothing to worry about. Your SSD will last years and years before any issues arise.

enjoy your mac and as long as your writes are <5GB/hour there really is nothing to worry about