M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

[Queen6]

My 2011 MBP lasted 10 years, and is actually still working. If I had to have spent this much time analizing every possible wear and tear scenario I wouldn’t have just used the thing like I did, and still do. I’ll be happy if my M1 Air lasts half as long. I can spare 1000 bucks every 5 years or so, I earn more than that in a single month.

My sister has a 2013 MBP, the first one to come out with SSD. It still works. I think Jobs meant it when he said it.

I'm of the same mind My own well used 15" 2011 still runs good as it ever did, even with a known dGPU flaw. I gave up micro analysing my Mac's years ago and got on with using them.

My own M1 MBP from Activity Monitor & Terminal writes no more to the disk than I would expect. The issue of significant writes to the M1 SSD's is a factor for some and no doubt concerning. Personally I believe it's likely due to 3rd party software or all the M1's would be similarly effected.

The solution in my mind is for those suffering this issue is to trace the offending applications, report to the vendor & Apple. I only tend to use my portable Mac's for two years professionally then replace them, so have no concern on battery/SSD life. After that point I re-task them or gift them.

Q-6

 

[SackJabbit]

open Console.app , start the log stream, and see what it's bitching about. A lot of it is just overzealous logging, but sometimes we'll catch a process or two going crazy. Often they're Apple's processes.
I think the GBs of excessive writes are all logs. But the logs are truncated, so you shouldn't see disk USAGE rise forever, but if it's litterally writing all those logs out to disk (I'm not quite sure it is), that's a lot of busywork that few people ever need or see.
We have a Mac Mini running Big Sur.. still has a spinning HDD and Big Sur GRINDS THAT DRIVE TO DEATH. It got a little better after an update a few months ago, but... it's back. We no longer leave it on 24x7...

Oh, that's a good suggestion, thanks. I didn't know if there was a way to see was what creating all these writes. I actually have a suspicion it may be due to unique recent activities or software I've been using since I got my iMac 90 days ago; software I needed to run when setting up and migrating to a new computer. I'll monitor their usage and see if one of them is the culprit.

I'm of the same mind My own well used 15" 2011 still runs good as it ever did, even with a known dGPU flaw. I gave up micro analysing my Mac's years ago and got on with using them.

My own M1 MBP from Activity Monitor & Terminal writes no more to the disk than I would expect. The issue of significant writes to the M1 SSD's is a factor for some and no doubt concerning. Personally I believe it's likely due to 3rd party software or all the M1's would be similarly effected.

The solution in my mind is for those suffering this issue is to trace the offending applications, report to the vendor & Apple. I only tend to use my portable Mac's for two years professionally then replace them, so have no concern on battery/SSD life. After that point I re-task them or gift them.

Q-6

Actually, I didn't bother with this over-analysing thing, with both my 2011 MacBook Air and 2016 MacBook Pro, which I still use often, and also with my PCs. I understoodd about SSD spares, lifespan, etc. when building my PC and picking SSDs, and had always used them as much as I can throw at them without these things concerning me too. I'm still very happy with them. ?

The SSD health wasn't a concern, it was my hard drives that I was monitoring. I had many external hard drives connected to my MacBooks, and four died in a period of a year, including one backup and the 2nd back up hard drive (while in the process of backing) . I had used DriveDx before and it flagged errors indicating a low percentage score of hard drive health. Good thing I still had off-site backup.

When I was migrating my stuff over to my iMac, I was monitoring the new hard drives I was restoring to. Having experienced hard drive failure in the midst of restoring, I wanted to be sure things went smoothly. It was only then I noticed that 99% number on my iMac and the insane amount of writes (38.4TB ) in such a short period.

Like many others here say, I should just use and enjoy my new iMac, which I do, it's an amazing device, and it's so speedy. I do like to keep my devices, mostly still in use. So that post of mine earlier was more of a concern and possible hassle if it really comes down to having to replace the SSD. In my country, we don't have Apple stores, the closest Apple Authorized Service Provider is 200km away from where I am, and devices may be sent away to Singapore. Hence, my question about warranty and Apple Care. But I guess I should direct these questions to Apple instead.

You're right, it must be a 3rd party software. I'll limit each use and then try them again, and see if it makes unusually high writes (whatever that means/is, lol), and then as you say, report it to the vendor & Apple. Thank you.

 

[Queen6]

Actually, I didn't bother with this over-analysing thing, with both my 2011 MacBook Air and 2016 MacBook Pro, which I still use often, and also with my PCs. I understoodd about SSD spares, lifespan, etc. when building my PC and picking SSDs, and had always used them as much as I can throw at them without these things concerning me too. I'm still very happy with them. ?

The SSD health wasn't a concern, it was my hard drives that I was monitoring. I had many external hard drives connected to my MacBooks, and four died in a period of a year, including one backup and the 2nd back up hard drive (while in the process of backing) . I had used DriveDx before and it flagged errors indicating a low percentage score of hard drive health. Good thing I still had off-site backup.

When I was migrating my stuff over to my iMac, I was monitoring the new hard drives I was restoring to. Having experienced hard drive failure in the midst of restoring, I wanted to be sure things went smoothly. It was only then I noticed that 99% number on my iMac and the insane amount of writes (38.4TB ) in such a short period.

Like many others here say, I should just use and enjoy my new iMac, which I do, it's an amazing device, and it's so speedy. I do like to keep my devices, mostly still in use. So that post of mine earlier was more of a concern and possible hassle if it really comes down to having to replace the SSD. In my country, we don't have Apple stores, the closest Apple Authorized Service Provider is 200km away from where I am, and devices may be sent away to Singapore. Hence, my question about warranty and Apple Care. But I guess I should direct these questions to Apple instead.

You're right, it must be a 3rd party software. I'll limit each use and then try them again, and see if it makes unusually high writes (whatever that means/is, lol), and then as you say, report it to the vendor & Apple. Thank you.

Malaysia then For those incurring high writes you really have to self investigate as I don't see any universal solution. More a factor of isolating, uninstalling applications until you narrow the offender down.

Even if there was a definitive HW/SW issue directly related to Apple they will not act on it unless they know that Apple will categorically loose in a court of law. This has always been Apple's position on such matters; failing dGPU's Butterfly Keyboards and a good deal more over the years. That said I do believe if your Mac or anyone else's for that matter is observing such astronomic writes to the SSD they should raise a case with Apple and follow up regularly as this will be your only fall back should the SSD fail prematurely which is likely to be outside the standard warranty period of 12 months.

FWIW I'm not in the habit of defending Apple, equally I don't see any issue my end. I would also go as far as to say if your Mac is mission critical, don't buy into the hype. Stay with Intel based Mac's and let Apple Silicon mature as right now the paint is still wet. Yes the M1 Mac's are on a different level and upcoming M1X will be more so, that said if you rely on your Mac for a living or critical use you might just want to consider holding off a couple of years and let the dust settle.

I feel your pain I just had high capacity HDD fail, backed up yet still tedious to deal with...

Q-6

 

[SackJabbit]

Malaysia then For those incurring high writes you really have to self investigate as I don't see any universal solution. More a factor of isolating, uninstalling applications until you narrow the offender down.

Even if there was a definitive HW/SW issue directly related to Apple they will not act on it unless they know that Apple will categorically loose in a court of law. This has always been Apple's position on such matters; failing dGPU's Butterfly Keyboards and a good deal more over the years. That said I do believe if your Mac or anyone else's for that matter is observing such astronomic writes to the SSD they should raise a case with Apple and follow up regularly as this will be your only fall back should the SSD fail prematurely which is likely to be outside the standard warranty period of 12 months.

FWIW I'm not in the habit of defending Apple, equally I don't see any issue my end. I would also go as far as to say if your Mac is mission critical, don't buy into the hype. Stay with Intel based Mac's and let Apple Silicon mature as right now the paint is still wet. Yes the M1 Mac's are on a different level and upcoming M1X will be more so, that said if you rely on your Mac for a living or critical use you might just want to consider holding off a couple of years and let the dust settle.
I feel your pain I just had high capacity HDD fail, backed up yet still tedious to deal with...

Q-6

Ha ha, yes Malaysia. Yeah, I stopped several scheduled services and disconnected all my external devices, and noticed the writes stopped climbing. I'm going to introduce one software after another, and see which one(s) is the culprit. That's a good idea, too about calling, raising a case and following up regularly with Apple, that way I will have record with them.

My MBP had to be send off because the battery was down to 29% battery health, and needed to be serviced (along with that Butterfly Keyboard issue). It couldn't start up without the power adapter or stay on for an hour, lol. I was told, with Covid, it could take a few weeks until I got it back. But, I decided I couldn't wait for the next M1X Mac to arrive, and I was nervous my MacBook Pro would suddenly just die on me (for whatever reason), and would prefer to have another working Mac with every thing port over and running exactly what was on my MBP. So, I jumped at the iMac. Still took 4 weeks to arrive after ordering from Apple Store online; not sure why it took that long. Maybe, because, Malaysia, lol. ?

 

[1440pOG]

Running macOS Mojave on a Mid 2014 Retina MacBook pro and could not be happier. Will wait several years until Apple decides to come back to Intel Chips (just kidding but only kind of) Talk about diminishing returns.?‍♂️ What good are performance upgrades if your hardware is destroyed and all data lost?

 

[opeter]

But... but... but... Mojave is not supported anymore with security patches etc.
Just kidding. I am also using Mojave. It is really a nice system and the last offical macOS, that support 32-bit Mac x86 applications.

 

[Chancha]

I still have my main production purpose iMac on 10.14.6 since forever. Last month or so Adobe decided they no loner allow their CC apps newest versions to run on it. I figured it is time to move on but I still have a few 32bit apps that need to be run occasionally. I got lots of spare Macs around that can be the "backup machine that lags with older OS just to be sure", but it is still a hassle to upgrade.

 

[Maximara]

I still have my main production purpose iMac on 10.14.6 since forever. Last month or so Adobe decided they no loner allow their CC apps newest versions to run on it. I figured it is time to move on but I still have a few 32bit apps that need to be run occasionally. I got lots of spare Macs around that can be the "backup machine that lags with older OS just to be sure", but it is still a hassle to upgrade.

There may be a way to emulate older hardware on the new Macs (sort of like Sheepshaver) allowing the older MacOS to run in emulation. Even if this kludge works I would recommend finding 64-bit alternatives because eventually you will have to make the jump.

 

[Populus]

There may be a way to emulate older hardware on the new Macs (sort of like Sheepshaver) allowing the older MacOS to run in emulation. Even if this kludge works I would recommend finding 64-bit alternatives because eventually you will have to make the jump.

There was some sort of virtual machine on Lion for running older OS X versions, right? Or did I dream of it?

 

[Maximara]

There was some sort of virtual machine on Lion for running older OS X versions, right? Or did I dream of it?

I mentioned one before - Sheepshaver (7.5.2 through 9.0.4.). The other three are Basilisk II (7.x through 8.1), Mini vMac (128K, 512K, 512Ke, SE and Classic; Mac II emulation is unstable), and QEMU (which requires a little more tech savvy to get the MacOS up and running) but I am not sure how well they run on an M1.

 

[Chancha]

While we are on the topic, how feasible it is if I run older OS X VM in a x86 based NAS? Or should I just repurpose a 2012 era Mac mini for this purpose, just have 10.14.6 on the permanently, and Remote Desktop to it from an M1 Mac in the future.

 

[Maximara]

While we are on the topic, how feasible it is if I run older OS X VM in a x86 based NAS? Or should I just repurpose a 2012 era Mac mini for this purpose, just have 10.14.6 on the permanently, and Remote Desktop to it from an M1 Mac in the future.

OS X can be very finicky on the hardware it will run on so you are likely better off using the 2012 era Mac mini with Remote Desktop.

 

[robfoll]

Here is my M1 Macbook Pro showing 33% of drive life used and 338TB written to disc in approx 1000 hrs of runtime.
My Intel MacMini has used just 3% and written 87TB in over 4000 hrs!
Both Macs run identical apps and nothing at all unusual
No idea yet if 10.54 fixes the problem

SUCCESS SOLVED - I've had many OS versions beta and otherwise and always thought that at some point I had done a complete Zero Wipe and reinstall. Turns out I probably had not. James at Apple Store Doncaster (Melbourne) took me seriously, did a deep diagnosis which showed no problems and then with my permission, wiped, reinstalled Monterey and hard-tested for two days. No faults were found BUT the high kernel task usage, mad disc write, stuttering and SSD wear appear to have vanished. Something was clearly hanging on from an old beta I guess, so totally my fault. With Australian consumer law MacBook, warranty is 3 years, so tons of time to keep an eye on that SSD and now the machine is faster than ever.

 

[pdoherty]

It’s still a fault of MacOS though. They shouldn’t be leaving bugs behind from betas when upgrading. Glad you got it solved though.

 

[robfoll]

It’s still a fault of MacOS though. They shouldn’t be leaving bugs behind from betas when upgrading. Glad you got it solved though.

Agree but betas are a risk and I missed a basic troubleshooting step. Ever onwards to an M2 Air 2022 for my next machine. Love the new 14 but a bit too bulky and heavy for me.

 

[littlej2]

It has been posted that 11.4 "fixes" the excessive disk writing, but this does not appear to to be the case.
I have 11.6, and can say the excessive SSD wear and swap is not fixed. I have 16GB, and currently swap is running at 6GB with only a handful of apps open. In 2 days, activity monitor is reporting kernel_task as 991 GB written 1.09 TB Read. And that is only surfing the web, email and social media. smartctl is showing 3% disk, worn, with 160TB written. That's in less than a year of reasonably lite use. It has been said that its the fault of the apps, such as whatsapp and skype, but I need both of these to do my job, and neither of these affect my PC which I used every day for 3 years and currently have 0% wear on that.

 

[thadoggfather]

I have 22 days uptime, 11.6, and 222GB written per kernel_task under Disk tab on Activity Monitor.

10GB written every day on average.

My excessive disk usage is fixed.

can't speak to Monterrey haven't messed with it yet

 

[TheSynchronizer]

I no longer have any excessive writing issues on my M1 Pro 14” on the latest Monterey.

 

[Cyprusian]

In the 10 weeks since I purchased my refurbished Mac Mini M1 16/512 (running MacOS Monterey version 12.1) it has read 2.7 TB and written 1.3 TB of data to its internal SSD.

 

[InuNacho]

"Put hard disks to sleep when possible" hasn't worked for years. macOS is just a spewing pig that can't stop reading and writing when "nothing" is going on.

Several of my external HDDs do spin down and sleep when connected directly to my 2018 Mini, yet the same drives will spin when connected to docks and hubs. MacOS is just a side project at this point.

 

[Maximara]

It has been posted that 11.4 "fixes" the excessive disk writing, but this does not appear to to be the case.
I have 11.6, and can say the excessive SSD wear and swap is not fixed. I have 16GB, and currently swap is running at 6GB with only a handful of apps open. In 2 days, activity monitor is reporting kernel_task as 991 GB written 1.09 TB Read. And that is only surfing the web, email and social media. smartctl is showing 3% disk, worn, with 160TB written. That's in less than a year of reasonably lite use. It has been said that its the fault of the apps, such as whatsapp and skype, but I need both of these to do my job, and neither of these affect my PC which I used every day for 3 years and currently have 0% wear on that.

The problem is how they are handling Rosetta 2 - x86 translation can become a disk write bonanza especially with programs that have no M1 native code.

 

[InuNacho]

The problem is how they are handling Rosetta 2 - x86 translation can become a disk write bonanza especially with programs that have no M1 native code.

Interesting. Now this is purely anecdotal and probably not related to anything, but why didn't we see this during the first PPC - Intel Rosetta? I know we were still on HDDs back then and HDD wear is not the same as SSD wear, but I don't remember my drive being chewed up by PPC versions of CS2.

 

[throAU]

Interesting. Now this is purely anecdotal and probably not related to anything, but why didn't we see this during the first PPC - Intel Rosetta? I know we were still on HDDs back then and HDD wear is not the same as SSD wear, but I don't remember my drive being chewed up by PPC versions of CS2.

Intel/PPC rosetta worked in an entirely different way and was doing translation on the fly in memory.
Apple Silicon Rosetta is doing dynamic recompilation (and store for later) of code on install or first run.

 

[toke lahti]

In the 10 weeks since I purchased my refurbished Mac Mini M1 16/512 (running MacOS Monterey version 12.1) it has read 2.7 TB and written 1.3 TB of data to its internal SSD.

Where do you check those numbers?

 

[Cyprusian]

Where do you check those numbers?

Using the app DriveDx from binaryfruit.com