M3 Macbook Pro SSD Writes seems unusual?

[HiVolt]

I'm not sure what possessed you to get an 8gb machine when you're a graphic designer. I would return it if you still can and get one with 16gb, or the M3 Pro that comes with 18gb.

 

[Sitron]

I'm not sure what possessed you to get an 8gb machine when you're a graphic designer. I would return it if you still can and get one with 16gb, or the M3 Pro that comes with 18gb.

Huge discount and desire for macos, apps on macos like keynote way better, didn't want used MacBook m1 for 1.5k even if it's 16gb

 

[Sitron]

This is insane overkill. I do heavy graphics work in Photoshop with 100+ layers/multiple huge files open and I never break 32 GB RAM. The only exception is once I start dumping stuff into Premiere Pro, it'll get close.

I think 64 GB is sufficient for heavy 3d work, I'm not even tiny close to being that heavy. I don't use photoshop a lot, only for mockups. My main thing is illustrator which at largest files, uses 2-3gb of ram

 

[saudor]

I think 64 GB is sufficient for heavy 3d work, I'm not even tiny close to being that heavy. I don't use photoshop a lot, only for mockups. My main thing is illustrator which at largest files, uses 2-3gb of ram

of course but the context is your work. anyways going back to the topic, you should be ok. modern drives are rated for 300 tb writes per 500gb of space. in practice, they’ll last much longer. even old drives from the early 2010s could do a couple petabytes despite being rated for only 75 tb (technically that was 2D mlc nand vs 3d tlc today but should be close)

 

[Sitron]

of course but the context is your work. anyways going back to the topic, you should be ok. modern drives are rated for 300 tb writes per 500gb of space. in practice, they’ll last much longer. even old drives from the early 2010s could do a couple petabytes despite being rated for only 75 tb (technically that was 2D mlc nand vs 3d tlc today but should be close)

Yeah, to he honest, I owned many laptops, mainly equiped with hdd and non failed expect my pc hdd which I replaced. Many say that SSD don't know to fail. Also, it seems that this writes happen even in 18gb versions. I guess macos as a system is designed to use ssd or ram as much as it can as opposed to pc.

 

[Ethosik]

That's very odd. Are you using something like iStat Menus to monitor swap?

My previous base M1 MB Air with 8GB of RAM, the swap file was never 0 and I never used RAM intensive apps like Illustrator or Photoshop. I have serious doubts that your swap file is almost always 0.

Yeah I confirmed this years ago but even currently My Mac Studio has 128GB of RAM and it can still use swap.

Even on the Windows side I confirmed having 64GB of RAM (back when that was the max for non-Xeon CPUs) that Chrome still used my swap

 

[conmee]

I bought a used 1TB Apple SSD (which came out of a 2013 Mac Pro if I recall) for my 2015 MacBook Pro in 2018 that a family member now uses daily, and it’s still running strong on Monterey (last supported OS for the 2015). That’s at least five years of use for the SSD in my 2015 MacBook Pro plus whatever use it endured while in the older Mac Pro.

My current main machine is a 2019 MacBook Pro 15” with 2TB soldered SSD. Build date is October 14, 2019 so just passed 4yrs. I am usually running at least two Windows 10/11 VMs in addition to everything else running. I do have 32GB specifically because I knew I needed that for the VMs to run smoothly, so that has likely helped reduce/eliminate need for swapping. Anyhow, SSD health as determined by DriveDX is 100% healthy and 99% on remaining life. Power on time is at 1,193 hours (419 power cycle count) and total data written is 58.4TB. I recall reading somewhere that the reliable life of these SSDs are in the range of hundreds of TBs. So at my current rate, I will get another four years easily, and then I’ll upgrade to an M6! 😉

I think for 99% of folks, the SSD will outlive the usefulness of the computer itself, even with a lot of swapping.

 

[rmn1644]

I've always had issues on my Macs about what look to be Kernel writing.

My Macbook Pro M3 that I bought at Thanksgiving is already up to 50TBW per the DriveDX. DriveDX also says I still have 99% of life left.

After the SSD writing big stink on the M1's - did anyone ever have an issues with drives failing? I travel a lot with my laptop so I tend to get a new one every two years anyway, but 50TBW in six months sure seems like a lot.

 

[ChrisA]

I've always had issues on my Macs about what look to be Kernel writing.

My Macbook Pro M3 that I bought at Thanksgiving is already up to 50TBW per the DriveDX. DriveDX also says I still have 99% of life left.

So you used up 1% of the drive's life in half a year. At that rate, the SSD will be dead in "only" 50 years.