M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

[Maximara]

This is a serious problem. My M1 MBP 8/256 using fairly standard business apps has used 21% of SSD life in 5 months writing 258TB to disk. This means the SSD will die at just under 2 years which is unacceptable. Apple is going to have huge warranty problems.

As explained in The SSD Endurance Experiment: They’re all dead that is NOT what the percentage means. All the percentage is supposed to show is how much the amount drive is warranted for has been used up. Now 1229 TBW is a little high for a 256 to be warranted for but the fact of the matter is things generally go way beyond their warranted period.

I agree that 258TB being written to the drive over only 5 months is way excessive but it is likely an issue with the programs you are using...which is totally out of Apple's control.

 

[kk200]

If SSD’s burn out with 2 years of casual use Apple is going to have to extend a program

I’m not going to look at stats just see how this shakes out
-base m1 air

more likely it is burned with 2 years and 4 months

 

[pdoherty]

As explained in The SSD Endurance Experiment: They’re all dead that is NOT what the percentage means. All the percentage is supposed to show is how much the amount drive is warranted for has been used up. Now 1229 TBW is a little high for a 256 to be warranted for but the fact of the matter is things generally go way beyond their warranted period.

I agree that 258TB being written to the drive over only 5 months is way excessive but it is likely an issue with the programs you are using...which is totally out of Apple's control.

That sounds like passing the buck to me, considering the exact same programs on other non-M1 Big Sur Macs don’t exhibit this behavior.

 

[Maximara]

That sounds like passing the buck to me, considering the exact same programs on other non-M1 Big Sur Macs don’t exhibit this behavior.

It's not passing the buck when we have people who are reporting 1.03 TB for 8 hr/day in a month and another reported 4.3 TBW over 5 months (0.86 TB per month). If this was Apple's fault high writes would be happening to everyone who bothered to check and it is not. Ergo the problem is not with Apple.

Also Rosetta has to write to the drive to do its magic and if you are running a lot of Intel (or badly written M1) programs than that is going to clobber the SSD. Also some people have been using Chrome which is a notorious RAM hog and likes writing to the HD like crazy.

 

[pdoherty]

It's not passing the buck when we have people who are reporting 1.03 TB for 8 hr/day in a month and another reported 4.3 TBW over 5 months (0.86 TB per month). If this was Apple's fault high writes would be happening to everyone who bothered to check and it is not. Ergo the problem is not with Apple.

Also Rosetta has to write to the drive to do its magic and if you are running a lot of Intel (or badly written M1) programs than that is going to clobber the SSD. Also some people have been using Chrome which is a notorious RAM hog and likes writing to the HD like crazy.

Why does Rosetta (a CPU emulator) need to write to disk? Once it’s loaded it should simply be swapping Intel functions for RISC ones.

 

[jdb8167]

Why does Rosetta (a CPU emulator) need to write to disk? Once it’s loaded it should simply be swapping Intel functions for RISC ones.

It caches the translation so it only has to write to disk once per application.

 

[09872738]

Also Rosetta has to write to the drive to do its magic and if you are running a lot of Intel (or badly written M1) programs than that is going to clobber the SSD.

Not correct. The translation is in JIT fashion, done just once. An if badly written programs were responsible, why is this only happening on Big Sur?
Makes no sense whatsoever.

Also Rosetta 2 is NOT an emulator!

 

[Maximara]

It caches the translation so it only has to write to disk once per application.

Not correct. The translation is in JIT fashion, done just once. An if badly written programs were responsible, why is this only happening on Big Sur?
Makes no sense whatsoever.

Read Found Potential Culprit to High SSD Writes / High Swap Usage in M1 Macs, At Least For Me... The key part of that: "Then I realized that some of the long-running apps running on Rosetta 2 were hogging quite a bit of memory, ... I also knew that they are built on Electron/Chromium which can be memory hogs."

"So I tried uninstalling these apps, instead opting for web-based clients running in Safari since a couple of days ago and guess what...only 40GB SSD writes per day. So it could be Rosetta 2 that causes high swap usage that leads to high SSD writes, or it could be the Electron/Chromium-based apps that seem to just be memory hogs. Either way, I'm happy to see that my SSD write figure is now in the much more acceptable range."

M1 Mac SSD Swap Issues Explained: Should you be WORRIED? says much the same thing.

M1 Mac owners are experiencing high SSD writes over short periods of time gives some more data across several platforms

Also Rosetta 2 is NOT an emulator!

Never said it was. Rosetta 2 still has to write its translation to the drive though and if the program is a memory hog on x86 it isn't going to stop being one on the M1 so the SSD gets hit twice: once for the translation and again for the RAM swap the program likely needs to run.

 

[jdb8167]

Read Found Potential Culprit to High SSD Writes / High Swap Usage in M1 Macs, At Least For Me... The key part of that: "Then I realized that some of the long-running apps running on Rosetta 2 were hogging quite a bit of memory, ... I also knew that they are built on Electron/Chromium which can be memory hogs."

"So I tried uninstalling these apps, instead opting for web-based clients running in Safari since a couple of days ago and guess what...only 40GB SSD writes per day. So it could be Rosetta 2 that causes high swap usage that leads to high SSD writes, or it could be the Electron/Chromium-based apps that seem to just be memory hogs. Either way, I'm happy to see that my SSD write figure is now in the much more acceptable range."

M1 Mac SSD Swap Issues Explained: Should you be WORRIED? says much the same thing.

Never said it was. Rosetta 2 still has to write its translation to the drive though and if the program is a memory hog on x86 it isn't going to stop being one on the M1 so the SSD gets hit twice: once for the translation and again for the saw the program likely needs to run.

The binary size of an application is trivial even if translated. There is no way that writing the translated binary to disk is causing excessive disk writes. Swap could still be a culprit but that has nothing to do with Rosetta 2.

 

[Maximara]

The binary size of an application is trivial even if translated. There is no way that writing the translated binary to disk is causing excessive disk writes. Swap could still be a culprit but that has nothing to do with Rosetta 2.

So as I said the SSD get kicked in the head by the amount of RAM the program needs, it liking to write to the HD like a drunken sailor, or worst both.

Oh on the claim this is only happing with Big Sur, somebody ran these tools on a 4-year old MBP, Percentage Used: 100%, Available Spare Threshold: 10%; 448 TBW. Sadly he didn't state the size of the drive but as you can see this is not unique to Big Sur. Heck, Big Sur didn't even exist in 2016-2017 and those numbers are coming from a Mac that shipped with either Sierra or High Sierra.

 

[pdoherty]

It caches the translation so it only has to write to disk once per application.

Which sounds like you’re agreeing with me that it shouldn’t be the source of a lot of disk activity - caching it (in RAM) once loaded.

 

[pdoherty]

Read Found Potential Culprit to High SSD Writes / High Swap Usage in M1 Macs, At Least For Me... The key part of that: "Then I realized that some of the long-running apps running on Rosetta 2 were hogging quite a bit of memory, ... I also knew that they are built on Electron/Chromium which can be memory hogs."

"So I tried uninstalling these apps, instead opting for web-based clients running in Safari since a couple of days ago and guess what...only 40GB SSD writes per day. So it could be Rosetta 2 that causes high swap usage that leads to high SSD writes, or it could be the Electron/Chromium-based apps that seem to just be memory hogs. Either way, I'm happy to see that my SSD write figure is now in the much more acceptable range."

M1 Mac SSD Swap Issues Explained: Should you be WORRIED? says much the same thing.

M1 Mac owners are experiencing high SSD writes over short periods of time gives some more data across several platforms

Never said it was. Rosetta 2 still has to write its translation to the drive though and if the program is a memory hog on x86 it isn't going to stop being one on the M1 so the SSD gets hit twice: once for the translation and again for the RAM swap the program likely needs to run.

If an app was a hog as an Intel app we’d be seeing the excessive amount of writes on Intel Macs and not just M1 Macs.

 

[Maximara]

If an app was a hog as an Intel app we’d be seeing the excessive amount of writes on Intel Macs and not just M1 Macs.

And exactly what is Percentage Used: 100%, Available Spare Threshold: 10%; 448 TBW on 4-year old MBP, if not an "excessive amount of writes"? Yes, he didn't state the size of the drive but as you can see this is not unique to Big Sur or M1 Macs. Neither existed in 2016-2017 but rather Intel and Sierra and High Sierra did.

 

[kc9hzn]

Read Found Potential Culprit to High SSD Writes / High Swap Usage in M1 Macs, At Least For Me... The key part of that: "Then I realized that some of the long-running apps running on Rosetta 2 were hogging quite a bit of memory, ... I also knew that they are built on Electron/Chromium which can be memory hogs."

"So I tried uninstalling these apps, instead opting for web-based clients running in Safari since a couple of days ago and guess what...only 40GB SSD writes per day. So it could be Rosetta 2 that causes high swap usage that leads to high SSD writes, or it could be the Electron/Chromium-based apps that seem to just be memory hogs. Either way, I'm happy to see that my SSD write figure is now in the much more acceptable range."

M1 Mac SSD Swap Issues Explained: Should you be WORRIED? says much the same thing.

M1 Mac owners are experiencing high SSD writes over short periods of time gives some more data across several platforms

Never said it was. Rosetta 2 still has to write its translation to the drive though and if the program is a memory hog on x86 it isn't going to stop being one on the M1 so the SSD gets hit twice: once for the translation and again for the RAM swap the program likely needs to run.

An Electron based app running in an x86 version of Chromium via Rosetta 2 would be worst case scenario for Rosetta 2 memory usage, and a solid reason to avoid Electron in favor of real native apps (and I say that as someone who’s written Electron apps professionally). If you’re in charge of, say, the Slack desktop app or GitHub for Desktop, you can’t go M1 native until Electron does. And that would be even worse for projects downstream of Electron (such as OpenFin).

Edit: Electron is M1 native now, but it’s a separate library. You might not be able to create a universal application if you use Electron. And it’s version 11.0.0, which means that you probably can’t adopt it until you’re at a point in your product cycle where you’re able to update to library versions with breaking changes.

 

[VSOP]

Hi!
I've heard about m1 ssd issue today and checked my m1 MacBook Air 8gb / 256gb. 3 months of browsing\developing safari + chrome + firefox + vscode + some games (factorio, civ 6):

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 36 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 8%
Data Units Read: 267,750,118 [137 TB]
Data Units Written: 258,509,262 [132 TB]
Host Read Commands: 796,685,501
Host Write Commands: 630,060,825
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 85
Power On Hours: 366
Unsafe Shutdowns: 6
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0



DriveDx shows 92% health and 120 TB written. Is delta since boot (Time since boot: 8 days 8:50) ?

Activity monitor shows maximum 12 gb for Telegram. Is it since boot (Time since boot: 8 days 8:50) ?

So how can it be 132 TB or 120 TB written in 3 months if I have 79 gb in 8 days?
Why DriveDx delta is greater than sum of written in Activity Monitor? Is it swap?

And what should I do?

 

[pdoherty]

Anyone know if this SSD issue is seen on the M1 iPad Pros? What’s the best tool for watching SSD activity on iPad (if anyone knows)?

 

[seadragon]

Anyone know if this SSD issue is seen on the M1 iPad Pros? What’s the best tool for watching SSD activity on iPad (if anyone knows)?

I may be wrong but my understanding is that unlike Macs, iPads don‘t do any memory swapping from RAM to SSD.

 

[I7guy]

Anyone know if this SSD issue is seen on the M1 iPad Pros? What’s the best tool for watching SSD activity on iPad (if anyone knows)?

Don’t think there are any tools for monitoring this, m1 iPad or not.

 

[Slartibart]

Anyone know if this SSD issue is seen on the M1 iPad Pros? What’s the best tool for watching SSD activity on iPad (if anyone knows)?

While smarttools run on iPadOS 14.5.1 there seems to be no way on a non-jailbreak to access /dev/sda. Apple does not provide/allow similar low-level access as in MacOS in iPadOS.

 

[Maximara]

Hi!
I've heard about m1 ssd issue today and checked my m1 MacBook Air 8gb / 256gb. 3 months of browsing\developing safari + chrome + firefox + vscode + some games (factorio, civ 6):

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 36 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 8%
Data Units Read: 267,750,118 [137 TB]
Data Units Written: 258,509,262 [132 TB]
Host Read Commands: 796,685,501
Host Write Commands: 630,060,825
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 85
Power On Hours: 366
Unsafe Shutdowns: 6
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0



DriveDx shows 92% health and 120 TB written. Is delta since boot (Time since boot: 8 days 8:50) ?

View attachment 1779103

Activity monitor shows maximum 12 gb for Telegram. Is it since boot (Time since boot: 8 days 8:50) ?

View attachment 1779106

So how can it be 132 TB or 120 TB written in 3 months if I have 79 gb in 8 days?
Why DriveDx delta is greater than sum of written in Activity Monitor? Is it swap?

And what should I do?

If this is a standard workload for you you may need the 16GB model. If that is not an option your two biggest disk writers are Telegram and Chrome totaling 70.23 GB (Chromes little "helper" has written 7.52 on its own). Unless there is a reason to not do so drop Chrome and look for a less write happy replacement for Telegram.

 

[Earl Urley]

SSD thrashing issue has been fixed, supposedly, in 11.4

This comes from the guy working on Linux for the M1.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1396374313591140357

It was a low-level kernel bug that was likely responsible..

 

[SactoGuy18]

Earl Urley, thanks for the update.

 

[wirtandi]

So, can anyone confirm that 11.4 finally fixes the SSD issue for sure?

 

[Maximara]

So, can anyone confirm that 11.4 finally fixes the SSD issue for sure?

Any fixes to the OS will not fix issues with applications that are poorly coded or use RAM like it is going out of style (Chrome).

 

[robfoll]

Anyone know if this SSD issue is seen on the M1 iPad Pros? What’s the best tool for watching SSD activity on iPad (if anyone knows)?

Happening on my MBP Pro. Drive DX is a great app to track this SORRY NOT IPAD