ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[telo123]

I wish there was a way to disable Activity Monitor because I have this thing at the back of my head that's wondering, how much RAM am I using right now? How much SWAP is being used? How many bytes have been written to the SSD?

I am one of the normal use cases and I do not exceed writing more than 25 GB/day if I'm not downloading something. But, I keep checking regardless.

Sigh, I wish I never looked into this issue and just lived in ignorant bliss.

 

[leons]

Hmmm i remember seeing someone say that these drivedx numbers are not accurate.

Anyway, will do, thanks.

"someone" probably did. But they hwve been verified by other means, and they are accurate.

 

[Maximara]

So I finally received my 16/512 MBA M1. First thing I did was download drivedx, and it says that my cycle count was 74 times or so. However when I go to system report, it says my cycle count was only 1.

In addition, the oh-so-scary "data written" reported by drivedx was about 90GB, and this was literally within 2 or 3 hours of turning on my mac for the very first time. When I checked activity monitor, i went to the "Disk" tab and in the bottom right, it says "data written" was about 8 GB.

This thread has 90 pages worth of posts, did anyone ever come to a conclusion on whether or not drivedx is reporting accurate numbers?

Given drivedx uses a variant of smartctl which is part of smartmontools my early comments that that is you back figured from the numbers smartmontools gave you would get totally bizarre results. From post 1012:

The TB*100/percentage = TBW crosscheck produces at worst 6827 (170*100/2.49) TBW for the drive. More over If 170TB written is 2% then 170TB x 50 would be 100% which is 8500 TBW,

Ok that is nuts, there is no way there are 6827 TBW, much less 8500 TBW, SSDs that are sanely priced (assuming they exist at all).

Since the formula derived from the one everyone and his brother has been using to predict how long the SSDs last per "Eliminate the impossible and whatever remands no mater how improbable is the truth" the percentage must be wrong.

Ergo smartctl must be generating untrustful numbers and is therefore useless.

TL; DR: that has been my consern from the get go. Per The SSD Endurance Experiment: They’re all dead that linear equation crosscheck is valid.

 

[Fred Zed]

Just chiming in, light user here.

 

[Maximara]

"someone" probably did. But they hwve been verified by other means, and they are accurate.

That "someone" was me early on as linear crosscheck (TB*100/percentage = TBW; totally valid by the data of The SSD Endurance Experiment: They’re all dead) produced insanely large numbers. IIRC that "percentage used" is supposed to be based on the warranted amount so who warrants their SSD for 6000+ (yes over six thousand) TBW?!

I might add some of the people saying that Activity Monitor confirmed these number said turning off Time Machine helped. But Activity Monitor shows things written to all drives and the only way Time Machine is fully useful is that one is using an external drive.

There has always been something "off" about most of these numbers.

 

[Maximara]

Just chiming in, light user here.

How's your browser usage and are there any x86 programs being used? From everything said the browser is the first suspect for high numbers followed by programs needing Rosetta 2.

 

[leons]

I and others who have never had external drives (physical or otherwise) attached to their computers have cross-checked and verified data used with that as reported. A few outliers may have misinterpreted or misreported their numbers. "Something" is off, but it's not the numbers! ;-)

 

[leons]

Come to think of it, I don't know why some Youtuber (or some other adventurous soul) doesn't get a base-level M1 and run an intense continuous disk writing routine on it 24x7. Nothing to lose; the machine will still be under warranty when the SSD fails. Then we will have (at least one) documented and semi-reliable real-world example of when the drive will actually fail.

 

[Snowii]

How do you limit that in LR?

Sorry for the late answer.

I've come across a supposingly helpful solution which set the preview quality (or use of gpu for previews or something similar) to lower settings within lr preventing the extensive swapping a bit.

Sorry for not sharing anything more specific, it was either here or on Adobe /lr forums I'd guess. Anyway this all is pointing me towards x1 nano before the swapping issue gets resolved somehow (and apple brings the new air )

 

[rob984]

Sorry for the late answer.

I've come across a supposingly helpful solution which set the preview quality (or use of gpu for previews or something similar) to lower settings within lr preventing the extensive swapping a bit.

Sorry for not sharing anything more specific, it was either here or on Adobe /lr forums I'd guess. Anyway this all is pointing me towards x1 nano before the swapping issue gets resolved somehow (and apple brings the new air )

Thanks! well I already tried someting, with PS, reduced the GPU setting in CameraRaw to Use Gpu for display, and tried to edit one photo (24MP NEF from D750) which resulted in writing of 2-4GB. Which is not that bad I think.

 

[mr_jomo]

Heads-up: latest Microsoft Office beta channel build seems to idle spam the SSD.

I saw this a couple of days back and it has repeated itself since then: open 2-3 documents, in say Excel, and let it idle while you do other work --> after 2 hours idle time 6-8 GB written to the SSD.

I'll jump back to the release channel and see if that remedies things.

Just a heads-up.

 

[Ningj]

Heads-up: latest Microsoft Office beta channel build seems to idle spam the SSD.

I saw this a couple of days back as has repeated itself since then: open 2-3 document, in say Excel, and let it idle while you so other work --> after 2 hours idle time 6-8 GB written to the SSD.

I'll jump back to the release channel and see if that remedies things.

Just a heads-up.

Editing offline files with autosave off or onedrive backed?

 

[thenewperson]

Come to think of it, I don't know why some Youtuber (or some other adventurous soul) doesn't get a base-level M1 and run an intense continuous disk writing routine on it 24x7. Nothing to lose; the machine will still be under warranty when the SSD fails. Then we will have (at least one) documented and semi-reliable real-world example of when the drive will actually fail.

Would actually be a better way to kill it than bending or dropping it, that's for sure 🙄

 

[Ektachrome]

In today's M1 iMac presentation they said "You can have 100s of tabs open (in Safari)."

Obviously, Apple considers lots of tabs to be normal use. So much for the people saying we are using our computers in unintended ways.

Not just in the presentation, this is now featured in the M1 Chip section of the new iMac page on Apple’s website -

And (I personally really loved this one) -

Clearly not ‘entry level’ machines not being used as Apple intended, then...

 

[TheSynchronizer]

Not just in the presentation, this is now featured in the M1 Chip section of the new iMac page on Apple’s website -

View attachment 1761264
And (I personally really loved this one) -

View attachment 1761265
Clearly not ‘entry level’ machines not being used as Apple intended, then...

To me, this almost seems to indicate one of three things... either
1) Apple is counting on very few future iMac owners checking their activity monitor for SSD writes and instead just using the machine with 100+ safari tabs writing away boatloads of swap to their SSD -> faster death, faster mac repurchase?
2) Apple is using some crazy advanced SSD technology that can withstand such high writes for a 'normal' period of ownership of, say, 8 years.
3) Or Big Sur 11.3 will be fixing a lot of swap management issues and an upcoming Safari update will be implementing memory management / tab discarding / tab sleeping / fixing the excessive Safari Cached Web Content caching.

Sincerely hoping for 3 (and 2).. but it could very well be point 1.

 

[osplo]

Hmmm i remember seeing someone say that these drivedx numbers are not accurate.

Anyway, will do, thanks.

And remember you don't need to buy DriveDX just to check writes.

Some generous soul (nickname jdb8167) wrote this utility that does exactly that and works like a charm:

The release is here: https://github.com/jamesdbailey/smartTBW/releases/download/v0.1/smartTBW

(Thanks again James!)

 

[leons]

To me, this almost seems to indicate one of three things... either
1) Apple is counting on very few future iMac owners checking their activity monitor for SSD writes and instead just using the machine with 100+ safari tabs writing away boatloads of swap to their SSD -> faster death, faster mac repurchase?
2) Apple is using some crazy advanced SSD technology that can withstand such high writes for a 'normal' period of ownership of, say, 8 years.
3) Or Big Sur 11.3 will be fixing a lot of swap management issues and an upcoming Safari update will be implementing memory management / tab discarding / tab sleeping / fixing the excessive Safari Cached Web Content caching.

Sincerely hoping for 3 (and 2).. but it could very well be point 1.

I'm not too worried. Based on my observations, Apple has the base model SSD (256MB) rated at 1.6PB. The article mentioned earlier in this thread had a consumer-level SSD tested and failing at 2.5PB. And that was six years ago. Using the methods in this thread, I've got my daily writes down to 35GB. So, being pessimistic and assuming that the Apple SSD dies at what it appears to be rated for (and that would assume it is worse than those made five years ago AND that it doesn't last much more than its rating, which most SSDs do), then my SSD should die in a little over 125 years.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

I'm not too worried. Based on my observations, Apple has the base model SSD (256MB) rated at 1.6PB. The article mentioned earlier in this thread had a consumer-level SSD tested and failing at 2.5PB. And that was six years ago. Using the methods in this thread, I've got my daily writes down to 35MB. So, being pessimistic and assuming that the Apple SSD dies at what it appears to be rated for (and that would assume it is worse than those made five years ago AND that it doesn't last much more than its rating, which most SSDs do), then my SSD should die in a little over 125 years.

Likewise not worried either as I've also fixed my daily writes, and I definitely believe these m1 SSDs should be able to reach 2PB+ writes with no issue. So personally I'm safe and won't be affected either way, and I don't miss Safari at all as my Brave extensions are too good to let go of

But I'm definitely curious to see how this pans out in the future on the greater scale, especially with Apple's apparent approach to the situation being "don't worry, open 100 Safari tabs and write to swap all you want!"

 

[leons]

Likewise not worried either as I've also fixed my daily writes, and I definitely believe these m1 SSDs should be able to reach 2PB+ writes with no issue. So personally I'm safe and won't be affected either way, and I don't miss Safari at all as my Brave extensions are too good to let go of

But I'm definitely curious to see how this pans out in the future on the greater scale, especially with Apple's apparent approach to the situation being "don't worry, open 100 Safari tabs and write to swap all you want!"

Agreed! I see it now as an enjoyable "show" to watch!
And, for my part of this show/experiment, I promise to report back if my drive lasts a few years less than my 125+ year estimate!

 

[fwilers]

Editing offline files with autosave off or onedrive backed?

Shouldn't matter. Why write 6-8GB's of data with just a few doc's open idle.
On Windows I have autosave and onedrive backup with multiple huge Excel files, Outlook, and Word open all day. It isn't even close to 500MB's written in an entire day.

 

[Fred Zed]

How's your browser usage and are there any x86 programs being used? From everything said the browser is the first suspect for high numbers followed by programs needing Rosetta 2.

I use Safari, I dont have any other browsers installed. Let me know if you want further information. I am always happy to assist.

 

[stigman]

This is short tech brief which I found on Kioxia website which says that they offer 3 types of NAND FLASH depending on clients they are adressed to

https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/business/memory/asset/KIOXIA_SSD_NAND_Endurance_Tech_Brief.pdf

Given that teardown showed Kioxia TLC NAND FLASH in MBPs we may estimate TBW for each scenario. Actually, we don't know what's the specified lifetime for 256GB model MBP and higher, but according to this page it says that duration of warrianty perriod for Clients SSDs is rated at 3 years and for Data&Enteprise SSDs 5 years: https://business.kioxia.com/pl-pl/ssd/support/warranty.html


so at worst case scenario we get result of:

TBW= 0,3 (DWPD for CLIENTS) x 0,250 (terabytes) x3 warrant x365 days= 82,1

which is impossible....

but let's say we've got DWPD endurance rated at 3 (which Kioxia offers for DATA CENTERS and ENTERPRISE) and lifetime of 5 years

TBW= 3 x 0,250x5x365 = 1,368 which is nearly 1.4 petabyte
which is 768 GB per day

it sounds more appealing, right? but the fact is we know a little about SSDs in MBPs and taking these numbers at face value would be not a right thing to do as real numbers could be even higher which is very likely.

Nevertheless, I'd say that these SSD may have 5 years of specified lifetime and DWPD rated at 3.

Sorry guys for my rubbish english.

​

 

[leons]

This is short tech brief which I found on Kioxia website which says that they offer 3 types of NAND FLASH depending on clients they are adressed to

https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/business/memory/asset/KIOXIA_SSD_NAND_Endurance_Tech_Brief.pdf

Given that teardown showed Kioxia TLC NAND FLASH in MBPs we may estimate TBW for each scenario. Actually, we don't know what's the specified lifetime for 256GB model MBP and higher, but according to this page it says that duration of warrianty perriod for Clients SSDs is rated at 3 years and for Data&Enteprise SSDs 5 years: https://business.kioxia.com/pl-pl/ssd/support/warranty.html


so at worst case scenario we get result of:

TBW= 0,3 (DWPD for CLIENTS) x 0,250 (terabytes) x3 warrant x365 days= 82,1

which is impossible....

but let's say we've got DWPD endurance rated at 3 (which Kioxia offers for DATA CENTERS and ENTERPRISE) and lifetime of 5 years

TBW= 3 x 0,250x5x365 = 1,368 which is nearly 1.4 petabyte
which is 768 GB per day

it sounds more appealing, right? but the fact is we know a little about SSDs in MBPs and taking these numbers at face value would be not a right thing to do as real numbers could be even higher which is very likely.

Nevertheless, I'd say that these SSD may have 5 years of specified lifetime and DWPD rated at 3.

Sorry guys for my rubbish english.

​

Your English is fine! Your 1.4PB estimate is not so far off from the 1.6PB that I believe these are rated for.

 

[gank41]

Looks like we'll be able to continue our AppleCare+ Support beyond the standard 2 years. I'd assume if I did this for my M1 MBP, and say maybe 3½ years from now my Drive fails, regardless of reasoning, they'd either fix or replace it.

AppleCare+ Coverage for Mac Can Now Be Extended Beyond Three Years

In addition to making AppleCare+ available for the Apple TV for the first time, Apple is now allowing AppleCare+ coverage for Macs to be extended...

www.macrumors.com

 

[fwilers]

Agreed! I see it now as an enjoyable "show" to watch!
And, for my part of this show/experiment, I promise to report back if my drive lasts a few years less than my 125+ year estimate!

The concern isn't necessarily how long the drive will last. It's the mass amount of resources being consumed for no reason. This effects performance and battery life.