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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
That doesn't seem bad. About 112 GB/day.

112 GB / day is fine in your opinion? :) It's like writing and deleting half of the ssd every single day. This is sick :D
If the SSD is rated for 1000-1500 TBW why does it matter? At 1 PBW that would be 8000+ days (almost 9000).
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
isn't 11 unsafe shutdowns a lot for just 47 power on hours?
It depends. I've had the M1 MacBook Air since the release day so about 100 days and I've had 41 unsafe shutdowns. But I had a lot of crashes early on. They are getting less frequent but I had two kernel panics within 12 hours a few days ago. I had huge problems with having to force restart my MBA when using external monitors.
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
If the SSD is rated for 1000-1500 TBW why does it matter? At 1 PBW that would be 8000+ days (almost 9000).

It can be even rated for 100k TBW. Still - 112 GB / day just by using the system is way too much.

You know why there is a RAM in computers? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be offensive or something. I'm just saying, that there are reasons why RAM exists.


Avg. 4k movie takes 30-60 GB afaik. So you are basically downloading and removing 2-4 4k movies every single day, just by using the computer. 🤯
 

saber106

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2021
22
6
isn't 11 unsafe shutdowns a lot for just 47 power on hours?

Oh that, I got the bug " not able to create local user " thing after reinstall my MBA M1 so I have to hard shutdown like... 11 times ( hold power button ) in order to try to fix that (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211983). After I managed to fix that problem no more unsafe shutdowns :D.

I have re-enable TG Pro (Without writing log file) and let iStats Menu run again, I will keep notice the Read / Written and report back later (For now it's 5.86GB / 2.87GB).

--------------------
P/S: Maybe the high read / written log could also be from me reinstall my MBA M1 for like 4 times in the first day because of the " not able to create local user bug ", in another 7 days I did another reinstall because I messed up some apps, I think I copy about 400GB of data from my PC to this mac 3 times too.

P/S2: oh yeah... I did download some 4k movies that was like around 80GB+...

--------------------
Well, I will just report back in 2,3 days, see how it goes.
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
It can be even rated for 100k TBW. Still - 112 GB / day just by using the system is way too much.

You know why there is a RAM in computers? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be offensive or something. I'm just saying, that there are reasons why RAM exists.
Why does it matter? The M1 Macs are fast. If they are fast using a lot of SSD it's fine. Computer architecture changes over time. Using a fast SSD to increase overall system performance seems like a win to me.
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
Why does it matter? The M1 Macs are fast. If they are fast using a lot of SSD it's fine. Computer architecture changes over time. Using a fast SSD to increase overall system performance seems like a win to me.
once again:

Avg. 4k movie takes 30-60 GB afaik. So you are basically downloading and removing 2-4 4k movies every single day, just by using the computer. 🤯

Look at below. What exactly could be written to the disk EVERY single day that takes 112 GB and then it's removed? Logs? it's just a text, small bytes.

It doesn't matter if the disk will last for years - what bother us is WHY and what takes so much GB every single day

edit:
Why does it matter?

because something is writing 2-4x 4K movie (or 2x whole Big Sur) into my disk every single day. And I don't know what and why.

I think some people just forgot how big the "112GB" is. It's half of my hard drive. It's couple of times more than my RAM is.
 
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Spindel

macrumors 6502a
Oct 5, 2020
521
655
Just download 50GB files on your computer and see the smartmontools will show you 50 GBW more. In my opinion this is pretty accurate. Correct my if I'm wrong 🤔
Well if it is like it was a while back Linux and MacOS (EXT*, HFS and HFS+) computers move around files in the background so "downloading" a 50 GB file should actually cause more than 50 GB of writes.

But I actually don't know if this still is the case.

EDIT:// Basically the computer defragments itself automatically (unlike NTFS on windows machines) when the computer reads the files, this means it actually physically moves the data to a different part of the drive.
 
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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
once again:

Avg. 4k movie takes 30-60 GB afaik. So you are basically downloading and removing 2-4 4k movies every single day, just by using the computer. 🤯

Look at below. What exactly could be written to the disk EVERY single day that takes 112 GB and then it's removed? Logs? it's just a text, small bytes.

It doesn't matter if the disk will last for years - what bother us is WHY and what takes so much GB every single day :)
Ok, it bothers you but you haven't explained why. Why is it a problem? I'm also a little mystified at what is causing so many SSD writes. I suspect that it is swap but that doesn't seem to hold in every case that I've seen. But for my purpose, I'm seeing a high number of SSD writes but given the expected lifespan (TBW), I just don't care.

There are some outlier cases that are worrisome though. Someone reported 65 TBW in a short period of time. That is not OK.
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
Why is it a problem? Because even if my SSD will last for next couple years I will have problem selling or using it in next 2-3 years.
Because some people have even higher usage - there are reports on twitter and other tech-related pages with even hundreds of TBW in just 1-3 months. Friend of mine have his m1 SSD with below 90% right now (2 months after buying).

My computer or your can last for 2-4 years. His not. And in the next 2-4 years we won't be able to sell it because this issue will be probably very well know and no one will want those machines ;P Just saying.

and - from an `IT guy` - it's just my curiosity what exactly is writing a few 4K video movies into my SSD every single day :)
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
I just ordered m1 air 16\512. And i worries about ssd... Has anyone asked apple support about this problem?

Don't be worried ;P it will last for years anyway. Only some of users are experiencing huge amount of TBW in a very short period of time.
 

inc0gnito

macrumors member
Nov 20, 2020
42
12
I have reported this issue back in January when my kernel_task was writing TB's of data a day!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/kernel-task-eats-terabyte-a-day-anybody-else.2280029/

At that time usage of my 1 month old MBA was around 15TBW.

One month later I am seating already at over 60 TBW.

I am don't use adobe or anything. Just Safari, sometimes Brave and couple of mail clients. It seems very inconsisten with other users which makes me think this is a software issue?

Nevertheless losing 2% of hard drive lifespan within less than 3 months is scary.
 

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m-a

macrumors member
Sep 26, 2014
55
15
Stop calling it a problem, unless it really is a problem.

Dear Spindel: Just calm down; some may call it a problem, some an issue and some a feature. The main part of my question was merely: Are there any reactions from  so far?
 
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Forti

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
Stop calling it a problem, unless it really is a problem.

Imagine that you have an 256gb SSD. The "life" of it is somewhere around 700-1600 TBW.
Now imagine, that after 2 months of use you have already 200 TBW, while the same job, same tasks and same tools on Mac with intel have 50-60 GBW after 1-2 years.

Sure, it's not an issue at all


Dear Spindel: Just calm down; some may call it a problem, some an issue and some a feature. The main part of my question was merely: Are there any reactions from  so far?

No, and I don't think apple will say anything about this. Maybe in next couple of months, or after first year of Mac's with m1.
 

TheProphetC

macrumors newbie
Feb 24, 2021
1
0
Is mine okay, I am CS student who has just started coding on Xcode. Bought 1 month ago, entry M1 MBA, 8/256.


Screenshot 2021-02-24 at 11.54.34.png
i
 

jonmh85

macrumors newbie
Feb 22, 2021
9
2
London
17.7tb in 69 days so 256gb per day assuming I used it everyday which I havent. Seems to be around 100gb / day now. only really using it for browsing and watching movies. Bought it for coding while traveling but obviously havent gone anywhere during national lockdown.
 

Ploki

macrumors 601
Jan 21, 2008
4,324
1,560
13" Pro, 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD, bout a month old.
Used every day pretty much. My project drive is external TB3 drive. Mainly work in Logic, some projects page, other don't, swap is generally unused. I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary compared to my intel mac tbh, but forgot to check smart status before i sold them all.

Code:
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        26 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    4,882,564 [2.49 TB]
Data Units Written:                 3,546,962 [1.81 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 52,361,900
Host Write Commands:                23,705,727
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       140
Power On Hours:                     32
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   14
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
 

gank41

macrumors 601
Mar 25, 2008
4,350
5,021
I’d assume local Time Machine snapshots are taking up a lot of this.

I use Onyx once in a while and turned off the option to delete the local snapshots when cleaning. I’m also using iStat Menus, so I’ll need to see if a log file is getting out of hand. I’m at 22.7 TBW after about 3 months.

As for any other apps that could be an issue, I’m a frequent Logic Pro user, recording maybe 5GB or so a week (that’s a guess of an average). I use FCPX less than LPX, but still some light work there. Other than that it’s all web browsing, email, RSS Reeder, Twitter, some music in the Music app (my library is on an external disc)..

I had another potential issue unrelated to this and was thinking about reinstalling macOS 11.2.1 but now I’m thinking I’m gonna wait a little longer and see how this plays out.
 

star trek

macrumors member
Apr 1, 2013
37
1
What about disabling SWAPPING !?!? OR M1 chip works writing on SSD to boost performance !?!?
Have a Good Day Everyone !!!!!
 

childoftheko4n

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2011
274
84
It is possible that the numbers being reported by this tool are incorrect.
it is, however multiple tools both third party and first party are all reporting the same thing within the same system. Anything is possible, but doesn't appear likely at this point.
 

Spindel

macrumors 6502a
Oct 5, 2020
521
655
I’d assume local Time Machine snapshots are taking up a lot of this.

I use Onyx once in a while and turned off the option to delete the local snapshots when cleaning. I’m also using iStat Menus, so I’ll need to see if a log file is getting out of hand. I’m at 22.7 TBW after about 3 months.

As for any other apps that could be an issue, I’m a frequent Logic Pro user, recording maybe 5GB or so a week (that’s a guess of an average). I use FCPX less than LPX, but still some light work there. Other than that it’s all web browsing, email, RSS Reeder, Twitter, some music in the Music app (my library is on an external disc)..

I had another potential issue unrelated to this and was thinking about reinstalling macOS 11.2.1 but now I’m thinking I’m gonna wait a little longer and see how this plays out.

iStats har currently written 460 MB to disk (according to activity monitor) on my machine after about 8 h on time. Don't think you need to worry about that app.

As I said in earlier posts in this thread, there seems to be a lot of applications writing to disk all the time. Now I'm still not worried about this.

It is possible that the numbers being reported by this tool are incorrect.
I said it earlier in the thread, I do not trust these number just because power on time reported seems off (even if you consider the SDD going into hibernation mode between writes, not to mention that the read/writes is more or less constant to the drive while you work on your computer) and also reported temperatures seem to be static in my case.





But personally for me this is "mehhh" even if reported numbers are correct, because then I've only written 1,5 TB to my drive since late november. That's nothing.
 
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shutterfreak

macrumors newbie
Nov 28, 2018
15
6
Belgium
EDIT:// Basically the computer defragments itself automatically (unlike NTFS on windows machines) when the computer reads the files, this means it actually physically moves the data to a different part of the drive.
That is true for mechanical hard disks. A solid state disk (SSD) is never defragmented as it offers little benefit (and wears the flash cells). Think of it as sequential reading (writing) + cost of moving the hard disk heads versus parallel reading (writing) in a SSD.
 
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