Downloading Too Much on rMBP does it cause any harm to the Machine ?

[NT1440]

This person clearly has the absolute knowledge on all things IT, so believe him, don't question anything, and abuse your notebook. Use it like it was desktop class hardware designed for 24/7 use. Yes, after 20+ years of being an IT professional, I "don't know how computers work" If your machine overheats, and your cooling system gets pushed to it's limits..it will cause wear and tear to your cooling system. My only point was that genius, because fans do wear out. Well, maybe yours don't because that's not possible

You honestly think that an average user, through downloading, is going to stress his machine to the point of failure? You don't think every method of throttling and self preservation built into these things aren't going to kick in? Sure you can state a fan might fail if it's running full tilt constantly, but that's not what you came out and said. I work with machines that pull down hundreds of gigabytes a day, and while the oldest of them at this point is about six years old, having a busy network connection is not going to cause a problem. Your post reeks of the "common wisdom" that consumers always have on their minds that just doesn't hold up to reality. Are you going to instruct the client to defragment monthly as well?

 

[snaky69]

So but can too much downloading make the process of the SSD cells wearing off faster ?

Not in the timeframe you're going to be owning the machine, unless you intend on keeping it more than 15 years.
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The MBP was running great, then I went and downloaded a ton of torrents over the period of about 6 months, one morning I woke up to find the MBP cooking with a broken fan.. I really don't care what anyone says or thinks, I am 99% sure that the 30+ torrents I was running at any given time were inappropriate for a notebook 24/7. It causes too much heat, pushing the cooling system till it broke.

A notebook, is fine to grab a few torrents, but I would never leave it running overnight to grab a dozen or more files. A desktop system or NAS is more appropriate for 24/7 use.
[doublepost=1465453992][/doublepost]

This person clearly has the absolute knowledge on all things IT, so believe him, don't question anything, and abuse your notebook. Use it like it was desktop class hardware designed for 24/7 use. Yes, after 20+ years of being an IT professional, I "don't know how computers work" If your machine overheats, and your cooling system gets pushed to it's limits..it will cause wear and tear to your cooling system. My only point was that genius, because fans do wear out. Well, maybe yours don't because that's not possible

Unless your internet is a gigabit connection, and you were maxing out the hard drive's write speeds, and even then, you were not generating nearly enough heat through your torrenting to affect anything at all.

You fan was already one it's way out and just died, it overheated once the fan kicked the bucket, end of story. Fans are moving parts, they die, some sooner than others, often without warning.

 

[jerryk]

Are you looking to use your Macbook as a Torrent server/downloader? If so that seems like a waste. Something like a Raspberry Pi could do the job for much less.

One article said you could run a Pi 24/7 and have it pull down torrents for a year for $3 in electricity. Add to that the $50 for a 1 TB drive, $35 for the Pi itself, and $5 for a microsd card. Add a left over phone charger and an ethernet cable or wifi dongle and you have it.

Then you can share the files to your macbook (or any other computer on your network) by running a Samba server on the Pi. You will be able to access the Pi's Samba directly from your Mac's Finder.

 

[itsamacthing]

Not in the timeframe you're going to be owning the machine, unless you intend on keeping it more than 15 years.
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Unless your internet is a gigabit connection, and you were maxing out the hard drive's write speeds, and even then, you were not generating nearly enough heat through your torrenting to affect anything at all.

You fan was already one it's way out and just died, it overheated once the fan kicked the bucket, end of story. Fans are moving parts, they die, some sooner than others, often without warning.

You speak about my hardware in such factual ways, and while you make some good points, it's just an opinion. I believe bad code caused my CPU to get pegged, which overworked my fans over long period of times, that burned them out... but that is just my opinion.

 

[augustya]

Are you looking to use your Macbook as a Torrent server/downloader? If so that seems like a waste. Something like a Raspberry Pi could do the job for much less.

One article said you could run a Pi 24/7 and have it pull down torrents for a year for $3 in electricity. Add to that the $50 for a 1 TB drive, $35 for the Pi itself, and $5 for a microsd card. Add a left over phone charger and an ethernet cable or wifi dongle and you have it.

Then you can share the files to your macbook (or any other computer on your network) by running a Samba server on the Pi. You will be able to access the Pi's Samba directly from your Mac's Finder.

No I am not looking to use a MacBook to use Torrent Files, this is something I may do additionally. But I don't know if there is any other option to download torrents if I dont have any other machine. This Raspberry Pi if I understand correctly needs to be plugged into your existing monitor or something right ? so it needs an Monitor or something of that sort !

 

[Weaselboy]

But I don't know if there is any other option to download torrents if I dont have any other machine.

What you could do if you don't want to use your local Mac for torrenting is pay for a "seedbox" service. Essentially you are paying a company to use their servers to seed your files for you. Not cheap though. If you search on the term seedbox you will see many options.

 

[snaky69]

You speak about my hardware in such factual ways, and while you make some good points, it's just an opinion. I believe bad code caused my CPU to get pegged, which overworked my fans over long period of times, that burned them out... but that is just my opinion.

Thermodynamics aren't an opinion. You can't generate more heat than the power consumed, you'd be breaking the laws of physics. The fact is that a platter hard drive and a network card being maxed out (which neither were likely to be by torrenting) is not outputting enough heat to damage anything, period.

You're entitled to think you killed your MBP by torrenting, THAT is an opinion. A false one, but still an opinion.

 

[augustya]

What you could do if you don't want to use your local Mac for torrenting is pay for a "seedbox" service. Essentially you are paying a company to use their servers to seed your files for you. Not cheap though. If you search on the term seedbox you will see many options.

But how does it work ? If I use a paid service for downloading torrents in their servers how do I get the file to me then ? Didn't quite get it how does it work ?

 

[Weaselboy]

But how does it work ? If I use a paid service for downloading torrents in their servers how do I get the file to me then ? Didn't quite get it how does it work ?

They download the file to their servers and seed from there. Then you can login to their server under your account and download the file form their server to your computer.

 

[Queen6]

Just check my 2014 512SSD 13" Retina with DriveDx wear levelling is at 90% with the drive writing over 15TB of data, safe to say it will run a little longer

As for torrenting, I would be more concerned about where you live and local legislation, than wearing out the SSD

Q-6

 

[augustya]

They download the file to their servers and seed from there. Then you can login to their server under your account and download the file form their server to your computer.

So let's say for e.g downloading a 10GB file from the seedbox site may not take that much time as it would take to download the torrent is it from the torrent site ? I know my internet speed also comes into picture here, but is that how it works ? Download file from their site ? And it will get downloaded faster versus downloading a torrent file ?

 

[Weaselboy]

So let's say for e.g downloading a 10GB file from the seedbox site may not take that much time as it would take to download the torrent is it from the torrent site ?

Not necessarily. Like you said, a lot depends on your Internet speeds and how many seeds there are for the torrent. In theory the seedbox has a faster connection to the Internet than you do, so the file would be available on the seedbox faster than it would be if you torrented it straight to your computer. But even still, you would be limited to your connection speed when downloading from the seedbox server.

A seedbox is really geared more toward getting the torrenting activity off your network and computer and on the seedbox you can use your system normally. Then just download the whole file from the seedbox when you feel like it.

 

[augustya]

Not necessarily. Like you said, a lot depends on your Internet speeds and how many seeds there are for the torrent. In theory the seedbox has a faster connection to the Internet than you do, so the file would be available on the seedbox faster than it would be if you torrented it straight to your computer. But even still, you would be limited to your connection speed when downloading from the seedbox server.

A seedbox is really geared more toward getting the torrenting activity off your network and computer and on the seedbox you can use your system normally. Then just download the whole file from the seedbox when you feel like it.

Yeah I got it how the seed sox works but I am saying then finally to download the torrent downloaded file from the seedbox of to my computer would depend on my internet speed right ?

 

[Weaselboy]

Yeah I got it how the seed sox works but I am saying then finally to download the torrent downloaded file from the seedbox of to my computer would depend on my internet speed right ?

Yes... exactly.

 

[jerryk]

No I am not looking to use a MacBook to use Torrent Files, this is something I may do additionally. But I don't know if there is any other option to download torrents if I dont have any other machine. This Raspberry Pi if I understand correctly needs to be plugged into your existing monitor or something right ? so it needs an Monitor or something of that sort !

No monitor or keyboard required. You can connect via ssh for terminal access or via gui using Vnc. This lets you contol the pi from your Mac and download content while you were doing something else or even traveling with your Mac. Essentially the pi is a cheap sever to do whatever you want.

 

[augustya]

So what is a best and cheaper option the PI or the Seedbox for downloading Torrents ?

 

[augustya]

Yes... exactly.

But I still don't get it how can Seedbox help, because it would still make me the same time as downloading the torrent file directly as the time taken to download the already downloaded file from seedbox. If I can download faster, I would rather not download faster from directly the torrent site ? To download a 10GB torrent file it would take me the same time as downloading directly from the torrent site or download it from the seedbox. My download speed would remain the same so how does it make any difference ?

 

[robvas]

But I still don't get it how can Seedbox help, because it would still make me the same time as downloading the torrent file directly as the time taken to download the already downloaded file from seedbox. If I can download faster, I would rather not download faster from directly the torrent site ? To download a 10GB torrent file it would take me the same time as downloading directly from the torrent site or download it from the seedbox. My download speed would remain the same so how does it make any difference ?

The seedbox will download the torrent way faster than your home machine (unless you have fiber internet at home). I can download a movie in like 2 minutes with my server because it has a gigabit internet port on it. My home computer would take like a half hour to get the same movie on my 60mb internet. Also my web surfing, video streaming, etc can be a little laggy while I torrent.

When I download a completed video file from my server it comes down at a straight 60mb maxing out my home internet in just a plain http/ftp download so it happens fast and "doesn't look illegal".

Also it reduces wear on your SSD by downloading bigger chunks at a time instead of writing random little chunks as it downloads the torrent file, but I think we have all agreed by now you're not going to hurt your SSD by downloading torrents even if you do it 24/7

 

[Weaselboy]

But I still don't get it how can Seedbox help, because it would still make me the same time as downloading the torrent file directly as the time taken to download the already downloaded file from seedbox. If I can download faster, I would rather not download faster from directly the torrent site ? To download a 10GB torrent file it would take me the same time as downloading directly from the torrent site or download it from the seedbox. My download speed would remain the same so how does it make any difference ?

The idea is not faster downloads, but getting the workload off your computer and onto the seeedbox server. (If that is your goal)

 

[augustya]

The idea is not faster downloads, but getting the workload off your computer and onto the seeedbox server. (If that is your goal)

Of course the idea for me is faster download and getting the heat and energy and load off my Mac !!

 

[shoehornhands]

I just have a question if on an rMBP if I download a lot of Torrent does it cause any harm to the Hardware of the Device ? Can too much downloading pose any harm to the machine ?

Here's one way to access / monitor the SMART info of the SSD:

Install the Homebrew package manager by typing the following into terminal (simply cut and paste into terminal):

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"


Once installed, you can type "brew doctor" in terminal to confirm everything is working (it will return "Your system is ready to brew" if there aren't any problems, or might ask you to run another command to resolve something).


You can then use Homebrew to install smartmontools (simply type "brew install smartmontools" into terminal), which provides you with utilities to control / monitor the storage systems on your computer.


Once installed, you simply run "smartctl -a disk0" (which should be your primary disk) to see a printout of your SSD's SMART / health info:

e.g.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 40
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x001a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 3385
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 092 092 000 Old_age Always - 7434
169 Unknown_Attribute 0x0013 253 253 010 Pre-fail Always - 3647115107840
173 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0032 193 193 100 Old_age Always - 81618993212
174 Host_Reads_MiB 0x0022 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 4158947
175 Host_Writes_MiB 0x0022 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 7045400
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1683
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 066 066 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Min/Max 21/65)
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x001a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
240 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0


In particular, you can look at "Host_Writes_MiB" and the value associated with it (which I believe represents a health percentage, based on the manufacturer specs).

For example, the Host Writes shown above are 7045400 MiB, which is a little under 7 TB of writes. To put that into perspective, most consumer SSDs I've seen have a specified endurance of 50 to 150 TB.

There was an article awhile back where they actually put SSD endurance to the test, which found the manufacturer ratings to be extremely, extremely conservative. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they were getting up into petabytes (1 petabyte = ~1,000 terabytes = ~1,000,000 gigabytes) of 24/7 writes before the SSDs actually died.

Point being, in all practicality, it's just not something you need to worry about.

 

[augustya]

The idea is not faster downloads, but getting the workload off your computer and onto the seeedbox server. (If that is your goal)

But of course for me it only means and make sense if there is a faster download of the file be it anyways through Torrent or through File a transfer of both will take the same amount of time what's the point of a seeedbox ?

 

[simonsi]

Of course the idea for me is faster download and getting the heat and energy and load off my Mac !!

You are fixing a problem that doesn't exist. Really.

Di you download the "Waterproof my iPhone App" by any chance?

1TB of download to your machine is 1TB of download, it doesn't matter whether it goes to another machine first, if it comes to your machine it comes to your machine.

 

[Toutou]

What the hell is this thread about? Downloading files via torrent can't (and won't) damage a MacBook. No way. I mean, it's just the networking chip working and some fairly slow disk read/writes. Nothing to even worry about.