M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

[MacRumors]

Over the past week, some M1 Mac users have been reporting alarming SSD health readings, suggesting that these devices are writing extraordinary amounts of data to their drives (via iMore).

Across Twitter and the MacRumors forums, users are reporting that M1 Macs are experiencing extremely high drive writes over a short space of time. In what appear to be the most severe cases, M1 Macs are said to be consuming as much as 10 to 13 percent of the maximum warrantable total bytes written (TBW) value of its SSD.

Flash memory on solid-state drives, such as those used in Macs, can only be written to a certain number of times before they become unstable. Software ensures that load is spread evenly across the drive's memory cells, but there is a point when the drive has been written to so many times that it can no longer reliably hold data. So while SSD wear is normal, expected behavior, drives should not be exhausting their ability to hold data as quickly as some M1 Macs seem to be.

One user showed that their M1 Mac had already consumed one percent of its SSD after just two months, while another M1 Mac with a 2TB SSD had already consumed three percent. The total data units written for these machines is running into many terabytes, when they would normally be expected to be considerably lower.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1361155414994407424

The user with three percent usage speculated that, were his machine a 256GB model, it could have used as much as 30 percent to date, and have reached maximum TBW in around two years. An SSD can continue to function once its TBW limit has been reached, but there is no knowing how long it will last past this point.

It is not known how widespread the TBW issue is, but reports of strange SSD behavior are also now emerging from users with Intel-based Macs, suggesting that the TBW issue may not be exclusive to M1 Macs.

The reported wear is so extreme on some M1 Macs that it suggests the problem is due to a bug rather than the expected behavior of the M1 chip, but it is unclear if the problem pertains to erroneous readings or macOS genuinely writing vast amounts of data to the drive. Drive monitoring tools are sometimes unreliable and it is likely that the issue can be fixed via an update to macOS Big Sur.

Article Link: M1 Mac Users Report Excessive SSD Wear

 

[AndiG]

For gods sake Apple doesn't solder its flash drives! It does? Damn!!!

 

[javanate]

Isn't this exactly what was predicted with inadequate RAM they put in stock models?

 

[SactoGuy18]

Isn't this exactly what was predicted with inadequate RAM they put in stock models?

That's what I think, too. Hopefully, Apple will surprise use with 64 GB of RAM maximum on the new MacBook Pro models.

 

[Populus]

“M1 macs use less RAM, they are more efficient”
“On M1 macs, 8GB seem like 16 on Intel machines”

Yeah, sure. I never bought this statement. M1 memory management isn’t magic, it just have an awesome performance when using the swap file. It uses a huge amount of SSD to swap, I experience it with my M1 MacBook Air, specially when connected to an external monitor.

It trades the need of RAM memory for SSD wear on the long run.
I’d like to be mistaken on this assumption, because I appreciate the lifespan of my machine, but...

EDIT: Maybe it is not so closely related to the amount of RAM, as 16GB models are experiencing this issue as well. We’ll have to wait and see.

 

[opeter]

Isn't this exactly what was predicted with inadequate RAM they put in stock models?

Yep, and they say 8 GB of RAM is enough...

 

[G4DPII]

Shock horror, Apple's marketing is found to be total BS!

 

[Kashifnawaz85]

And the scary thing is you can not replace those SSDs.

 

[thadoggfather]

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

 

[Santabean2000]

Up your RAM, Apple!

 

[ZipZilla]

This is exactly why I never buy the first version of an Apple product. People wind up being guinea pigs and beta testers. Expensive!

 

[JPack]

Not to worry. Apple will have determined that only a small percentage of units are affected.

 

[zorinlynx]

This is me, standing happily far away from this first gen hardware.

I generally like Apple but it's always been the prevailing wisdom to stay away from their first generation stuff. It tends to have issues. I'm sure when M2 Macs come out they will be amazing.

 

[ArPe]

That discussion is a nothing. It is based on old SSD spec knowledge. They are using tools based on old SSD specs. Nobody knows how durable the new Apple SSDs are.

Also the way people use computers changed so much. People streaming videos and music and getting notifications and downloading/uploading much bigger files than ever.

This is not 2011 anymore. It’s 2021. Of course you writing much more data. Many people don’t keep track how much data they are writing or streaming.

Also, who of those people have not enough system memory compared to how much their apps want to use. We saw so many people stupidly saying 8GB enough man UMA changes the game man UMA uses less memory man. ???

Internet people ???

 

[maflynn]

Isn't this exactly what was predicted with inadequate RAM they put in stock models?

But we kept hearing that the M1's ram utilization isn't the same as Intel. I've seen people justify 8GB on the M1 is the same as 16 and even 32GB on intel

 

[badatusernames]

How can I check the SSD total writes on my device?

 

[mi7chy]

Apple should adopt user replaceable SSD like Microsoft Surface Pro X that's 7.3mm thin so no excuses for 16.1mm Macbook Air M1.

 

[FilmIndustryGuy]

Dont buy 1st get products. My M1 Air died within return period. Lesson learned. Not even sure if its a good idea to go for the first M Pros and iMac

 

[averagenerd81]

Let's wait to see what comes out about this. I can't count the number of times people here (including myself) have jumped to conclusions with literally a tweet as "evidence".

 

[The Cappy]

Yep, and they say 8 GB of RAM is enough...

Please link to where you or anyone else predicted this particular, as part of a criticism about the RAM.

 

[NMBob]

"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.

 

[mi7chy]

How can I check the SSD total writes on my device?

Install Homebrew then smartmontools.

https://docs.brew.sh/Installation

`brew install smartmontools && sudo smartctl --all /dev/disk0`

 

[ArPe]

Isn't this exactly what was predicted with inadequate RAM they put in stock models?

For basic office use it’s enough. Then some Internet forum social media people buy the 8GB and they go ‘Look man look me man look how much video editing man I have UMA can load 100GB into memory man no problem’ ??

 

[ghanwani]

We need coconutSSD to show us SSD health.

 

[apparatchik]

Unless this is properly -scientifically- compared to Intel Macs and found to be exclusive to the M1 chips, this cannot be attributed to the M1 design but perhaps a macOS issue (its RAM/disk cache distribution), alas, sounds some tweaking can be done on the software side to depend less on disk cache.

If you read the posts, people with 16GB of RAM have been experienced apparent heavy wear as well, so, it might just happen than even 64GB of RAM might not suffice if macOS decides to allocate to disk anyways.