M1 Mac owners are experiencing extremely high SSD writes over short periods of time, likely thanks to aggressive swap

[just_dave]

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

Well hopefully this has created enough noise for Apple to look at it and make a statement, whatever that may be. Personally I'm not going to hang my hat on it definitely is actually writing that much data because it's just so far outside the realistic even for the proposed reason people are claiming. I want a lot more assurance that the data statistics is correct and reliable.

Believe what you want, but Activity Monitor, which is an Apple-made app reports the same numbers as how the SMART reading increases.

[just_dave]

4 hours ago, descendency said:

Maybe the 16GB version was a good idea...

Most of these are 16GB including mine but yeah, person who buys 8GB non-upgradeable RAM in 2021 doesn't have the highest intellect.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, just_dave said:

Believe what you want, but Activity Monitor, which is an Apple-made app reports the same numbers as how the SMART reading increases.

Things is there is a difference between how real time performance data is read compared to other things like process statistics like host writes, of which bugs with those have existed in the past so them being wrong is not unreasonable. Similar to SMART readouts, those have been wrong and firmware bugs in the past as well and to that matter like I mentioned before the values of how that is represented isn't always in a standard way so if you just get a generic SMART reading and read the HEX value and assume that it converts just like any other SSD/HDD then you'll get wrong information.

 

Mac OS doesn't do some weird or extra style of paging compared to any other Unix style OS, even if your system is paging a lot due to low system memory or more aggressive process and memory caching it's still not going to generate as much writes as people are reporting.

 

I'll believe it when someone can better quantify it and qualify it with more accurate and more trusted toolset and testing process, or if Apple shortcuts this and releases a statement affirming this is true, which ever comes first. It should not at all be hard to setup real time process monitoring for a disk write of a known write throughput over a specific time and log that at the application level, process level and system level and compare what each say has actually happened and also look at the reported total writes the OS is claiming to real/near real time system logging of write activity. If there is a significant divergence in any of these then there is more likely a bug.

[just_dave]

34 minutes ago, Spindel said:

@just_dave it’s really confusing to have this discussion with you on 2 paralell forums

I'm just trying to let the people on other forums know that others are having the same issue

[RejZoR]

6 hours ago, just_dave said:

Most of these are 16GB including mine but yeah, person who buys 8GB non-upgradeable RAM in 2021 doesn't have the highest intellect.

I have laptop with 8GB RAM. And it's in dual channel from factory so technically non upgradable unless I'd swap the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for what I need it which is internet, photos and movies. Ryzen 2500U even has enough grunt to do more demanding tasks, but is essentially non essential, so to speak. I can see someone buying 8GB RAM version if they only need it for such stuff. It's plenty enough for that. And so is storage. Mine came with 256GB of DRAM-less NVe M.2. It's tons for what's needed for. I'd be fine even with 64GB SSD if I'm honest. But no one sells them anyway these days.

[just_dave]

47 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I have laptop with 8GB RAM. And it's in dual channel from factory so technically non upgradable unless I'd swap the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for what I need it which is internet, photos and movies. Ryzen 2500U even has enough grunt to do more demanding tasks, but is essentially non essential, so to speak. I can see someone buying 8GB RAM version if they only need it for such stuff. It's plenty enough for that. And so is storage. Mine came with 256GB of DRAM-less NVe M.2. It's tons for what's needed for. I'd be fine even with 64GB SSD if I'm honest. But no one sells them anyway these days.

I mean sure, but reading what rig you have as your main you can probably get by with a chromebook as a secondary device lmao

[bcredeur97]

macs do seem to be a bit heavy on memory usage (a bit heavier than windows even). So im sort of not really that surprised with the lack of memory. 

I feel like you honestly need at least ~20GB of RAM to use Mac OS nowadays lol.

[bcredeur97]

7 hours ago, just_dave said:

Most of these are 16GB including mine but yeah, person who buys 8GB non-upgradeable RAM in 2021 doesn't have the highest intellect.

that is your average joe who walks into an apple store and asks the sales floor what he should get after telling them he needs a laptop for work/school/whatever.

 

maybe he knows a lot about certain things, just not computers.

 

One thing I've learned as I've grown older is just how specialized people tend to be. They learn a lot about certain things, little about others. Doesn't mean they're stupid, just too specialized.

[leadeater]

50 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

One thing I've learned as I've grown older is just how specialized people tend to be. They learn a lot about certain things, little about others. Doesn't mean they're stupid, just too specialized.

Man Doctors/Surgeons etc are case and point about that, so many computer tech illiterate. I'd far rather them be more expert in medical treatment than to be lesser in that area and better with computer technology, their ability to understand hardware isn't going to help me as a patient needing medical care. Ideally they could have both.

 

There was a point about ~10 years ago where technology was less guided and pure convenience designed on every level where I thought that over time general competency would increase but alas in many ways we've been able to simplify so much now that usage of it imparts no understand and knowledge of it that it's actually regressing.

[Spindel]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

There was a point about ~10 years ago where technology was less guided and pure convenience designed on every level where I thought that over time general competency would increase but alas in many ways we've been able to simplify so much now that usage of it imparts no understand and knowledge of it that it's actually regressing.

How many of the computer builders in this forum even know of the pain of assigning DMAs and IRQs to components. Or the shit when you plugged in a new add in card and it simply wouldn't work because it needed the same addresses as some other component? 

 

Yeah, I'm a Mac user nowadays, but I used to build my own computers too. 

 

Best thing I've experienced was a guy I knew that soldered two ram expansion modules together and put in his Amiga and it registered as the total amount of both modules (and worked!).

 

Today building a computer isn't the same, sure requires some knowledge, but it's closer to a Lego model than old school computer building. 

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, just_dave said:

I mean sure, but reading what rig you have as your main you can probably get by with a chromebook as a secondary device lmao

I mean, that's how you prioritize things and it's why 8GB RAM is enough for some. People even game on 8GB systems...

[LAwLz]

59 minutes ago, Spindel said:

How many of the computer builders in this forum even know of the pain of assigning DMAs and IRQs to components. Or the shit when you plugged in a new add in card and it simply wouldn't work because it needed the same addresses as some other component? 

Or do anything more complicated than "download a driver" or "double click a program to run it".

Not to call anyone out but you can clearly see this in the pi-hole thread, where people struggle with even very basic and straight forward instructions because they aren't used to a CLI, or know how basic things like SSH and IP-addresses works.

 

Being a "tech enthusiast" these days basically means you can cite marketing material and product information. Maybe build a PC (which is basically as difficult as the geometry block puzzles for babies, but with more expensive blocks).

It's more about spending money than it is having knowledge about stuff.

[just_dave]

24 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I mean, that's how you prioritize things and it's why 8GB RAM is enough for some. People even game on 8GB systems...

I'm in the same situation,  I have a perfectly good gaming rig I'm going to upgrade even further, but I still got a 16/256 M1 Air. It's going to give it much longer useful life.

[RejZoR]

58 minutes ago, just_dave said:

I'm in the same situation,  I have a perfectly good gaming rig I'm going to upgrade even further, but I still got a 16/256 M1 Air. It's going to give it much longer useful life.

It is $200 more, but if you plan on using it for 5+ years it's probably worth it anyways.

[bcredeur97]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Or do anything more complicated than "download a driver" or "double click a program to run it".

Not to call anyone out but you can clearly see this in the pi-hole thread, where people struggle with even very basic and straight forward instructions because they aren't used to a CLI, or know how basic things like SSH and IP-addresses works.

 

Being a "tech enthusiast" these days basically means you can cite marketing material and product information. Maybe build a PC (which is basically as difficult as the geometry block puzzles for babies, but with more expensive blocks).

It's more about spending money than it is having knowledge about stuff.

reminds me when I was younger and I wanted to get a minecraft server up and running at my house. (I can't believe minecraft is so old now lol)

You know how long that took me? I had to completely learn how computer networks work from scratch before I could do it. The concept of internal/external IP's and how NAT worked took me forever to grasp and blew my mind when I finally got it lol

I still don't really know how I managed to figure it out on my own.I didn't even really ask for help, just a lot of angry googling. I surprise myself to this day how much I can figure things out without asking anyone.

Was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. Got me into computers.. now I work in IT.

Still so much I don't know though. Seem to come across something new/different every day.

[derr12]

20 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Find a program that can display S.M.A.R.T. data. I use CrystalDiskInfo.

 

 

Ehm, drives are the most likely thing to fail? SSDs in general have very low failure rates. They are very, very reliable.

I would not have any problems buying a laptop with soldered on storage, at least not now that we got SSDs everywhere.

Batteries are, from my experience, far more likely to go bad or fail long long before the storage goes bad.

ive had a couple fail in the past at the office.  it happens. 

 

 

[Fnige]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

People even game on 8GB systems...

Old me says hi

[just_dave]

8 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

that is your average joe who walks into an apple store and asks the sales floor what he should get after telling them he needs a laptop for work/school/whatever.

 

maybe he knows a lot about certain things, just not computers.

 

One thing I've learned as I've grown older is just how specialized people tend to be. They learn a lot about certain things, little about others. Doesn't mean they're stupid, just too specialized.

Yes, but your average joe doesn't install homebrew, smartmontools or even check the activity monitor. He doesn't even discuss this on twitter. We are talking  about more tech-focused, but less informed people here. Look at some of these youtubers. Most of them keep recommending the 8GB models to "95% of people".

Also your average joe for the things you listed above definitely won't come anywhere close to swapping so much that it would kill the computer in 2 years.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, just_dave said:

Yes, but your average joe doesn't install homebrew, smartmontools or even check the activity monitor. He doesn't even discuss this on twitter. We are talking  about more tech-focused, but less informed people here. Look at some of these youtubers. Most of them keep recommending the 8GB models to "95% of people".

Also your average joe for the things you listed above definitely won't come anywhere close to swapping so much that it would kill the computer in 2 years.

I would always recommend overkill things to people because it's what "I" would settle for. If they balk at that price, then I start saying where they can lower things, and what the consequences are.

 

I would recommend people take their GPU and CPU requirements down a peg before RAM. A slower CPU doesn't guarantee you everything loads slower, but insufficient RAM guarantees you everything slows down to the speed of the disk if it has to use it. So more RAM > faster SSD > Larger SSD > faster CPU > More CPU cores > Faster GPU. If you're gaming more than anything else, move Faster GPU to after larger SSD.

 

Like the thing you really do not want is for the GPU to use system memory, and then the OS to page it out. That will destroy the performance of even the highest end parts. 

 

Like the thing that is keeping me from buying a mac mini is that there is no 64GB model. That's what I want, and if I can't get that, obviously I'm not going with a mac. The previous 2006 and 2012 models I had, I maxed out the RAM on, and then replaced the hard drive further down the line. Past that point (the 2012 model can not take the most recent MacOS X) I haven't needed to use the mac, because the Windows desktop and laptop's are more capable.

 

Now, I'm not the average mac or windows pc user. I would rather have something overkill that lasts 7-8 years than something that has to be replaced every 24 months.

 

 

[Blade of Grass]

I don't have an M1 Mac, but I do have a late-2016 MBP (the first with Touch Bar) with a 1TB SSD that I use as a daily. 

 

 

My current uptime is 6 days 5:23, and currently:

350GB seems like a lot of data, I don't think more than 50GB can be from stuff I've been doing specifically. 

 

So to summarize, after writing to the drive just over 75x, the drive is reporting having 100% of spare available and only having used 2% of its life (I think that's what Percent Used means? can't be storage since I have over half the drive full). 

 

It does seem like it's using a lot of writes--perhaps a bug in the new version of MacOS? But realistically, if 75x writes is 2% of life, then my drive is projected to last ~3750 TB, which at even an accelerated 125TB/yr (assuming it's not a bug), is like ~30yrs of usage. 

 

I can't imagine Apple put shit SSDs in the new laptops that have worse endurance then their old tech. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Blade of Grass said:

I can't imagine Apple put shit SSDs in the new laptops that have worse endurance then their old tech. 

NAND is so good now days it's actually hard to create an SSD with crappy endurance, other than making an SSD small in capacity.

[Spindel]

9 hours ago, Blade of Grass said:

I don't have an M1 Mac, but I do have a late-2016 MBP (the first with Touch Bar) with a 1TB SSD that I use as a daily. 

 

 

My current uptime is 6 days 5:23, and currently:

350GB seems like a lot of data, I don't think more than 50GB can be from stuff I've been doing specifically. 

 

So to summarize, after writing to the drive just over 75x, the drive is reporting having 100% of spare available and only having used 2% of its life (I think that's what Percent Used means? can't be storage since I have over half the drive full). 

 

It does seem like it's using a lot of writes--perhaps a bug in the new version of MacOS? But realistically, if 75x writes is 2% of life, then my drive is projected to last ~3750 TB, which at even an accelerated 125TB/yr (assuming it's not a bug), is like ~30yrs of usage. 

 

I can't imagine Apple put shit SSDs in the new laptops that have worse endurance then their old tech. 

Your stats are in line with what my M1 stats show.

[NunoLava1998]

I have an M1 Mac (8/256) and this seems like a horribly designed swap algorithm more than anything. The SMART data is accurate and in line with what Activity Monitor shows.

If you keep a RAM-intensive application open (such as a game or a video-editing application) and it's kept in swap, it will write far more than it needs to. You could keep a more intensive application running, doing absolutely nothing at all (open but idle), and it will use your disk at 100-200MB/s, constantly.

It also doesn't help that macOS absolutely hogs RAM; it uses 1-2GB for 'cached files', you have to Ctrl+Q a program if you want it to actually quit (and free RAM) instead of just hide in the dock, etc.

This results in stupidly high swap usage all-around, and it's why Activity Monitor says I've used 1.1TB of disk in 11 hours when my screen time is 90% Chrome and Discord when all I've done is just kept DaVinci Resolve running.

However, if the SMART endurance data is to be believed, the endurance is around 2PBW for the 250GB.. so it's not too bad.

[Jet_ski]

I recently got a MacBook Pro M1 with 8GB of RAM because the 16GB was on back order for 4-6 weeks. I didn’t want to spend too much money for a new system while every freakin component is unavailable. So settle for this in the meantime.

 

What I’ll say about the swap is that it let me do a lot more work with the limited hardware. I’m working on a project with large tiff files, 1-4GB. Which you know if you’ve worked with tiff, if you open one of these nasty files, it ends up taking up somewhere 10-18GB of RAM. Without the crazy fast swap it wouldn’t be possible for me to even open the files.

[Grabhanem]

The great thing about Apple devices is that because the OS is packaged with the system, the hardware, firmware, and software are all perfectly optimized and seamlessly integrated.