Want to preserve the lifespan/value of your M1 Mac?

[skids929]

As I see this thread is going nowhere in a hurry (certainly not in the direction I intended), I'll keep my responses to a minimum, so it will die off sooner. But I'll say this... backing up your data does not affect that original data on your dead/inaccessible SSD (soldered to the motherboard) being in someone else's possession, who may have the skills and ability to extract it, after said motherboard/SSD now belongs to them, after replacement. Why people are totally missing the point of what I'm saying is beyond me.

Could it be because you're smug and condescending throughout?

 

[digitalbreak]

I have decided to wrap my new MacBook Air M1 in the locker so I can preserve its lifespan for centuries to come!

Seriously though, enjoy your machine. If you are using the cloud, use those apps and services. If you are not using the cloud, backup your laptop so you can restore when in dire need!

 

[FHoff]

Considering my 2015 MacBook Pro has only used 6% of the SSD lifespan, I think I’m good.

 

[jqc]

I'd be willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience and "external hassle", if I knew it would mean my computer was worth more when I went to sell it. Assuming a $1,200 M1 Mac Mini (16Gb/512Gb configuration w/ AppleCare+) was worth about $500 (or less) in 3-5 years in average condition, vs. $650+ in nearly prestine condition (internal SSD virtually unused). Yeah, getting $150 more for the same system would be worth it to me.

Show us where in the market people are actually selling 3-5 year old laptops at a 30% premium due to SSD condition. You can't cause it doesn't actually happen in real life.

And the value of old tech is dependent on how much better the new tech is not the condition of the SSD. Look what just happened to the 16" MBPs. You think you're going to get a better price then the next 16" owner cause your SSD is less used??? I'd love some of what you're smoking.

I too am surprised you have a wife....

 

[rezwits]

Dude, honestly, just a report, I have a 1,2,3...24 SSDs in house, since 2012. You wanna know how many have died?

ZERO

Here is my secret to success if you want to know, as most posters in this thread already know or have probably pointed out (TL;DR):

If you are going to buy an SSD, NEVER, except when doing a quick BULK transfer of some sort, never go over HALF of the Storage capacity.

So let's say you want/need a mac with 16GB / 256GB of SSD? right? Then you actually need to buy a 16GB / 512GB, or settle for an 8GB / 512GB. And NEVER (try not to) go over 256GBs of use, i.e. try to maintain 256GB of FREE Space, this goes for iPhones too. I didn't even count those "ssd" drives. So add +8 SSDs, so 32 ssds, and NONE died.

The whole secret is trim and garbage collection...

Here is one other thing to take note:

That USED 256GB "section", is also NOT USED that much, (I mean there are software/app updates but), quite a bit of the 256GBs of the 512 SSD is in READ MODE, so you do quite a bit of READs, write's hurt more.

Lastly, DUDE you are spinning the roulette wheel, but the only number you need to be worried about is DOUBLE ZERO GREEN, why? Because you dropped $1000~ for Technology, if you get that 1/36 that dies, SHRUG?

That's life... in computers, by NOT USING your device you're defeating the whole purpose. i.e. LOSING TIME, which in some books EQUALS MONEY?!?

Good Luck Dawg!

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Have you checked the resale value of a wife recently? I wrapped mine in cellophane and put her in a closet; don't think it will help resale much but at least I'm saving maintenance money...

Did you at least leave breathing holes?

 

[SlCKB0Y]

you are spinning the roulette wheel, but the only number you need to be worried about is DOUBLE ZERO GREEN

interesting point, in my country roulette wheels have only 37 slots, 0 (green) - 36.

 

[Obioban]

Not using the internal SSD will not meaningfully increase resale value— and certainly not by more than you’ll spend on an extra drive to use in its place.

 

[triptolemus]

This thread is 10 minutes of my life I cannot get back.

Sad.

 

[Wehrwolf]

Could it be because you're smug and condescending throughout?

Nailed it.

 

[ventmore]

Many years ago I bought a brand new Octavia vRS. It had really nice half leather seats but the material section was light in colour and prone to staining.

I put seat covers on from day one which didn't look great, and wasn't as comfortable as sitting directly on the seat, but I figured it would keep the seats in good condition.

I sold the car to my brother 3 years later. The seats were pristine but I didn't get any more for the car (would've been the same even if I wasn't selling to family) and, more importantly, I never got to enjoy the seats myself.

After that, I vowed just to use things the way they're designed to be used and enjoy them while i have them.

 

[ventmore]

Speaking specifically about the SSD in OP's machine...I could definitely make the argument that it's better to buy a machine where the SSD has been tried and tested for a few years vs one that hasn't been used at all.

The unused SSD may well have been one of the small number of components that was defective from the factory. It may be that it would last a couple of months before inevitably dying, but this wouldn't happen to the OP......it would happen to the next owner who probably doesn't have any warranty left. That'd be extremely annoying for the new owner because, as I learned from the OP, the SSD in these machines can't be replaced......I learned that a few times!

 

[Marshall73]

I have all data backed up so if it dies it dies. Repair under warranty, quote for out of warranty repair or just replace it. No biggie.

 

[deeddawg]

How many people have had their brand new M1 Mac suddenly bork? I've seen several posts. It won't boot. Won't do anything. Let's say it happens after you've transferred all your sensitive/private data onto the built-in SSD. Not worried? You take it to Apple... they swap out the motherboard. Hand you back your system. Not worried? You just copy the data from your backups, right? What about the copy that's stuck on the SSD that's now in Apple's control/ownership? Things that are encrypted can be unencrypted. And Apple has the tools/skills to do that, no matter what they tell you.

It'd be far simpler for Apple to just remotely pull your "sensitive data" from your functioning computer than for them to wait patiently for your logic board to fail then seek to extract the data and crack the encryption.

Me? Not concerned. I'm simply too boring for anyone to go to that sort of time or effort just to find a couple pictures of my dog. I also don't ever put anything into a computer or online which I'd be embarrassed for someone to make public.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I've sold quite a few computers to people and I have never once been asked about how much the SSD has been used. Not only would almost no one ever ask, even fewer people would know how to ask you to quantify the usage.

How many potential buyers do you think would say "Hey can you please compile and install smartmontools and use smartctl to give me detailed information regarding the onboard SSD"? NONE. EVER.

On laptops and mobile devices ive sold I've been asked about battery health and cycles but that's about it.

I don't even know how to respond to this ridiculous thread. The mean time to failure (MTTF) with modern SSDs is measured in millions of hours (usually around 1,500,000), presumably calculated with an assumption about the average I/O which occurs during normal consumer usage. It's highly likely that the SSD will outlive the useful life of the computer.

If you intend to connect your consumer Mac up in a datacenter and use it as part of a database cluster of an extremely active application then your concern might be warranted /s

I'd be much more concerned about getting 1/2 - 1/3 the I/O speeds by going external.

I realise by responding to this thread I am giving it oxygen and I thoroughly regret that. My apologies to all the sane people.

Luposian, is there a particular reason you are COMPLETELY ignoring this set of posts from SICKB0Y? It should completely takes care of all of your concerns--as if he were a living personification of Calgon. Now buy your mini, filevault it, zero it out when you sell it, and be happy!

(I have 20 years in IT related fields and build many of my own machines myself--even a few hackintoshes...the guy is right on.)

 

[ght56]

It's not a point of failure (except as a precaution). It's a matter of "value preservation". In 3-5 years, if you use the internal SSD the entire time, how much "life" will be left on it? 50%? More? Less?

Im guessing you are saying this sarcastically, but, for the majority of users, likely 90%+. A middle estimate for the write endurance of a 1TB SSD would be about 500 terabytes. You would have to write in the ballpark of 450 GB a day to exhaust it in a 3 year span.

 

[MK500]

I'm one of those extremely paranoid people who constantly assume the worst about big companies and privacy. One of the ways I've found to keep sane is a simple rule:

"Follow the money"

If a company has financial interests in doing something terrible, they probably are doing that.

FaceBook/Instagram/Google/Amazon stealing your data: Obviously. It is literally their entire business model. It's where their profit originates.

Apple stealing your data: Apple makes ridiculous amounts of money selling hardware. They then make a much smaller amount of money selling ad-free services for that hardware. All of these are sold on the premise that they respect your privacy and don't have/want access to your data. You know when Amazon is selling hundred billion $ contracts to the CIA to track you? Apple is giving gov a middle finger at the same time with end-to-end encryption and telling congress "we can't access that data even if we wanted to". Each time there is a breach (because zero breaches ever is an impossibliity) it literally COSTS them money in lost sales and market price. Apple would be incredibly stupid to steal even one persons data. They can make 1000 times more money than stealing a few peoples financial data and photos. By selling them hardware. By selling them services with no ads.

It's OK/good to be paranoid. But don't be stupid. Follow the money.

And we can talk about rogue Apple Store employees all you want; but it takes a LOT to decrypt that data. If they were caught they would be flayed alive and then sued into bankruptcy by Apple. There is just no incentive in it; and massive disincentive.

 

[spiderman0616]

I don't bother trying to protect the hard drive on my devices. It's not the 90s anymore. I put all my stuff in iCloud Drive, and for anything I want a fallback copy of, it gets copied to my external drive. I don't even bother with Time Machine anymore.

 

[Busenitz111]

I preserve the value of my vehicles the same way. They all have less than 11 miles, original tires, brakes, wiper blades, and that “new car smell”.

Thanks but no thanks.
I don’t intend to do anything to shorten the life or decrease the value of my vehicles, or computers, intentionally but i do intend to use and enjoy them and to a certain extent they are built from consumable parts.

 

[Haribokart]

What a horrible way, joyless way to use a product.

 

[txtx]

Realizing that the SSD inside an M1 Mac is soldered to the motherboard, once it dies (for whatever reason), you’re sunk.

Thus, it behooves M1 Mac owners to preserve the life/value of their M1 Mac as much as possible.

To wit, the first thing to do is to create a USB restore drive, for M1 Big Sur.

Next, is to enable external drive booting and then install a bootable copy of Big Sur to an external hard drive or SSD and use ONLY that drive from then on.

If the external hard drive/SSD dies, the value of your Mac is untouched, because you haven’t been using the internal SSD. How much value do you think your M1 is worth when it can’t be booted, because the internal SSD is fried or most of its usable life is significantly used up? I doubt you could get a few hundred for it, maybe $50 (if internal SSD is dead) Dunno. Is it worth the risk?

Therefore, I think it would be best to compile precise steps to do what I’ve outlined above and live by them.

I know I would...

This thread is old enough for someone to have made this point, but I don't have time to hunt for it; sorry if I'm being redundant...

If you boot your M1 Mac from an external source, the computer's internal SSD must still be accessed in the process. If your internal SSD has failed, you will not be able to boot from anything. This is an idiocy Apple created specifically for M1 Macs. Your internal SSD dying is probably THE prime situation for a bootable clone, but this truly great and reassuring tool no longer exists for M1 Macs.

However, I've never had a Mac SSD fail. Even my 2010 Mac Pro's original HDD still works.

So back up your data to be ready load onto the new Mac you will be forced to buy in this unlikely but possible occasion and monitor your battery life, because, as someone else on here noted, it's much more likely the battery dies.

--------------------

One source of many (about halfway down the page): https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/

"Note that, as I indicated above, M1 Macs can't readily boot from external drives. There are things you can do, if you have an external Thunderbolt 3 drive (USB-C isn't sufficient), but even that won't work if the internal drive is dead. Unless things change, bootable backups are basically a thing of the past on M1-based Macs."

 

[Spumwuzzle]

Consider yourself shocked... electrocuted, stunned, amazed, and otherwise rendered flabbergasted! 🤣 And, goodness... will people stop thinking I'm talking about the M1 laptops? I'm talking about the M1 Mac Mini

Why is someone so concerned about data security posting his and his wife’s first name, city, state and wedding date?

 

[Fred Zed]

OP, what would you recommend for use for my iPhone 12 Pro Max 256GB, so that the solid state drive doesn't wear out? thanks.

 

[Mikael H]

OP, what would you recommend for use for my iPhone 12 Pro Max 256GB, so that the solid state drive doesn't wear out? thanks.

Don't know about storage, but you should always use it in flight mode to avoid electrons leaving the antennas deteriorating their surfaces.

 

[Fred Zed]

Don't know about storage, but you should always use it in flight mode to avoid electrons leaving the antennas deteriorating their surfaces.

I think ionizing is the word ?