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antwormcity

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 9, 2008
58
21
Hi all,

The other issue of TBW is beaten to death, though I have another strange observation.

I received my MBA M1 8/256 on Friday and have barely cycled power/restarted 2 times. The disk showed 77 power cycles the first time I ran the diagnostics commands Saturday early morning. The macbook has been ON since then and I finally restarted yesterday. The cycle count went up +1 to 78 as expected. The usage hours are definitely not correct.

Question is: Is this typical for a brand new machine? The battery cycles were 0 when I setup the system, so it would appear its not an accidental used item shipped to me through friend's EPP.

thoughts? your experience?

Host Read Commands: 10,702,508
Host Write Commands: 5,304,459

Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 78
Power On Hours: 5

Unsafe Shutdowns: 3

output here

Code:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [Darwin 20.3.0 arm64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       APPLE SSD AP0256Q
Serial Number:                      0deadbeefdeadbeef
Firmware Version:                   1161.80.
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x106b
IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x000000
Controller ID:                      0
NVMe Version:                       <1.2
Number of Namespaces:               3
Local Time is:                      Sun Feb 28 13:38:41 2021 PST
Firmware Updates (0x02):            1 Slot
Optional Admin Commands (0x0004):   Frmw_DL
Optional NVM Commands (0x0004):     DS_Mngmt
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         256 Pages

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
0 +     0.00W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0

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

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        32 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    943,806 [483 GB]
Data Units Written:                 768,626 [393 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 10,702,508
Host Write Commands:                5,304,459
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       78
Power On Hours:                     5
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   3
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745
 
I wonder if every time it went to sleep because you were not using it and woke up it counted as a cycle. You could contact the people that wrote the tool and ask them what they are measuring.
 
I had the same issue

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

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        25 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    1,020,693 [522 GB]
Data Units Written:                 720,463 [368 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 15,845,423
Host Write Commands:                6,586,248
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       169
Power On Hours:                     5
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   13
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0


seems fine:
  • power on hours: 5
  • battery cycles: 3
  • Data Units Written and Read

but this Power Cycles is concerning me.

did you contacted the tool developer?
anyone else know what is it?
 
I use DriveDx and yeah, mine had very high power cycles when I first booted it up and installed DriveDx. Like 75 or something. After a day of downloading everything and getting everything setup, it's at 85. <shrug>. Maybe some test they did at the factory? It's an ssd so I'm not really bothered by this.
 
I use DriveDx and yeah, mine had very high power cycles when I first booted it up and installed DriveDx. Like 75 or something. After a day of downloading everything and getting everything setup, it's at 85. <shrug>. Maybe some test they did at the factory? It's an ssd so I'm not really bothered by this.

I bought the MBA from third party seller, don't have apple store in my city.
The box had that factory seal and came with 2 or 3 battery cycles ... but came with a border scratch that I just realized when I came to home, the seller didn’t want to make the exchange since I had opened it and hadn’t seen anything in front of him...

so I'm wondering if that is refurbished or resealed

it's a tiny scratch and only seeing with light reflex. but is bothering me, it's my first MBA and I don't know how efficient is apple quality control, or I was rip off with that.

 
I bought the MBA from third party seller, don't have apple store in my city.
The box had that factory seal and came with 2 or 3 battery cycles ... but came with a border scratch that I just realized when I came to home, the seller didn’t want to make the exchange since I had opened it and hadn’t seen anything in front of him...

so I'm wondering if that is refurbished or resealed

it's a tiny scratch and only seeing with light reflex. but is bothering me, it's my first MBA and I don't know how efficient is apple quality control, or I was rip off with that.

I don't know about that third party but - we were talking about SSD power cycles - most of my Macs have had 1-2 cycles from the Apple Store. I figure they test some more than others in the factory.

That's a pretty good gash on the side there. I've never had a Mac from the factory come like that.

I very rarely buy from third party because I've seen the practice of re-wrapping/shrink wrapping returned items and trying to sell as new.
 
I got a base model M1 Pro back in late December, and I've used it daily. Mine is showing only 205 power cycles after about 3.5 months.

Before taking any further action, I'd recommend waiting it out, and checking the cycles every couple days or so. If you check it a couple weeks from now and it's only a few more cycles, that's normal.

Anyway, I wouldn't stress about it. After seeing some of the other comments here, I'm starting to think that the machines are normally shipped with a couple cycles. Perhaps they would be from the firmware flashing process.
 
Hi all,

The other issue of TBW is beaten to death, though I have another strange observation.

I received my MBA M1 8/256 on Friday and have barely cycled power/restarted 2 times. The disk showed 77 power cycles the first time I ran the diagnostics commands Saturday early morning. The macbook has been ON since then and I finally restarted yesterday. The cycle count went up +1 to 78 as expected. The usage hours are definitely not correct.

Question is: Is this typical for a brand new machine? The battery cycles were 0 when I setup the system, so it would appear its not an accidental used item shipped to me through friend's EPP.

thoughts? your experience?

Host Read Commands: 10,702,508
Host Write Commands: 5,304,459

Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 78
Power On Hours: 5

Unsafe Shutdowns: 3

output here

Code:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [Darwin 20.3.0 arm64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       APPLE SSD AP0256Q
Serial Number:                      0deadbeefdeadbeef
Firmware Version:                   1161.80.
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x106b
IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x000000
Controller ID:                      0
NVMe Version:                       <1.2
Number of Namespaces:               3
Local Time is:                      Sun Feb 28 13:38:41 2021 PST
Firmware Updates (0x02):            1 Slot
Optional Admin Commands (0x0004):   Frmw_DL
Optional NVM Commands (0x0004):     DS_Mngmt
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         256 Pages

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
0 +     0.00W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0

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

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        32 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          99%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    943,806 [483 GB]
Data Units Written:                 768,626 [393 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 10,702,508
Host Write Commands:                5,304,459
Controller Busy Time:               0
Power Cycles:                       78
Power On Hours:                     5
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   3
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0

Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745
I personally wouldn't worry about it. 78 power cycles but only 5 power-on hours. If it were somehow used, it would seem like a very odd usage pattern (turn on/off repeatedly for 5 hours but without any battery cycles?). I suspect just factory configuration. And given the design of the machine, they can't just pluck a used SSD off the assembly line. I say ignore it.
 
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I got an Apple Store refurbished mini 16GB / 1TB nearly 2 weeks ago.

After restoring a Time Machine backup I ran DriveDX to get an idea how much it had been used.
I was surprised at the high number of Power Cycles (150) compared with the Power On Hours (11).
I too have been wondering if it is something to do with factory configuration.

Anyway, I am delighted with this machine - fast, smooth, quiet and cool running ! :cool:
 

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I got an Apple Store refurbished mini 16GB / 1TB nearly 2 weeks ago.

After restoring a Time Machine backup I ran DriveDX to get an idea how much it had been used.
I was surprised at the high number of Power Cycles (150) compared with the Power On Hours (11).
I too have been wondering if it is something to do with factory configuration.

Anyway, I am delighted with this machine - fast, smooth, quiet and cool running ! :cool:

Seems that high Power Cycles is related with flashing the macos to new version (big sur)
BTW, your mac came with last OS version?
 
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