How to test the hard drive for memory swap issue

[krishnaM]

I just recently purchased a refurbished M2 mac studio from Apple with 64Gb RAM and 1Tb hard drive. It's working perfectly but as it is not brand new, I want to make sure that the SSD's life is not compromised because of memory swap issue in the past. Is there any simple way to get that information?

 

[Bigwaff]

DriveDx or open source SmartMon tools can show you the internal metrics and indicators of your drives “health”.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

The DriveDx has good documentation explaining how to interpret these metrics to understand how much usage your drive has seen and it’s potential lifespan.

 

[Wando64]

Compromised? How do you even define that?

An Apple refurbished Mac is usually either an unused originally faulty unit that had been repaired, or a unit that has been returned very soon after purchase and then prepared for reselling.
Either way, there is no way that the SSD would be “compromised“, however you define the term.
Besides, this behaviour (not issue) of high levels of swap, has been observed only/mainly in macs with 8GB RAM.

If you worry about stuff like this, perhaps buying refurbished wasn’t the best option for you.

Sorry I can’t help about finding out the info. I presume the same method used by others on their machine, might also work on a new/refurb unit.

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

1. Install Homebrew
2. In the Terminal application:
   1. execute brew install smartmontools to install smartmontools
   2. execute diskutil list to determine the IDENTIFIER of your internal, physical disk. It should be disk0 if you don't have external drives connected.
   3. execute smartctl -a disk0 (replace the IDENTIFIER with yours) to get the result

Example result:

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        2 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    1%
Data Units Read:                    49,453,114 [25.3 TB]
Data Units Written:                 34,686,514 [17.7 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 2,051,840,039
Host Write Commands:                977,209,946
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       191
Power On Hours:                     810
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   14
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

I've been using this Mac for 3 years and the Percentage Used is 1%. That roughly translates to the SSD still has 99% of its lifetime.

 

[krishnaM]

If you worry about stuff like this, perhaps buying refurbished wasn’t the best option for you.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I purchased refurbished unit because I can save some money while getting it from trusted site. At the same time I want to make sure that everything is running fine before the end of return window. You may call it my paranoia or trying to be careful

 

[eldho]

Or just wanting to know.

 

[Wando64]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I purchased refurbished unit because I can save some money while getting it from trusted site. At the same time I want to make sure that everything is running fine before the end of return window. You may call it my paranoia or trying to be careful

Well sure, why not. Nothing wrong for being curious or careful. But my point was more about where do you draw the line.

I would be confident that the results will show an amount of writing similar to that found on a new unit.
So, let’s start from that. What is the SSD write typical of a new unit?
How far from that do you need to be to make you return the Mac?
In other words, what is your definition of ’compromised’ and why?

I almost always buy Apple refurbished, and it never occurred to me that they could be any different from a brand new one.

 

[Chancha]

In my experience with buying Apple refurb and also sending Macs for Apple to return with a refurb logic board (thus on-board SSD NANDs are not new):

"Newly"-bought refurb typically has OK data written record.
But service refurb can have VERY high written.

Just some examples;
A refurb MBA15 base model bought in September: 461GB
A MBP2019 16" having gone through logic board replacement also in Sept: 133TB (!!)

Anything lower than 1TB is fine, even a brand new Mac should have a few hundred GBs of writes just to install the OS and apps.

 

[Mr.Fox]

I just recently purchased a refurbished M2 mac studio from Apple with 64Gb RAM and 1Tb hard drive. It's working perfectly but as it is not brand new, I want to make sure that the SSD's life is not compromised because of memory swap issue in the past. Is there any simple way to get that information?

1)Disconnect all external devices except keyboard, mouse, monitor, Ethernet connection (if applicable), and AC power connection.
2)Launch the Apple Diagnostics application
3)Turn on your Mac, then while it is starting up, press and hold the D key immediately on the keyboard.
Release the key when the progress bar or language selection prompt appears.
If using the D key doesn't work, press and hold Option (⌥)-D at startup.

Or download Onyx and install the disk utility through it and watch smart. Sonoma OS is just supported. By the way, some programs do not determine the SMART state well - the SSD/HDD controller is to blame, keep this in mind

 

[krishnaM]

I downloaded the DriveDx and as expected it is showing only 1.1TB written data with 100% good health status. My 2yr old M1 mac mini (8GB/256GB) is with 73TB data, still with 96% life. Thank you all for the guidance and reassurance.

 

[Gr1f]

FWIW My 2x external NVMe's were running a bit hot in the last few days. ~55-60c (threshold is 81c). I updated iStat Menus and the temp dropped to the usual 44c.