Parallels Desktop and M1 Disk Destruction

[Kocko]

Disk wear on M1 was reported due to writes.
In the end, it turned out that it wasn't so bad.
I need certain Windows programs on the Mac mini and therefore install Parallels Desktop.
Anyone have any experience if Parallels Desktop is not destroying the disk on M1?

 

[Fishrrman]

How much RAM is installed on your m1 Mini?
8gb or 16gb ?

 

[Kocko]

Disk 500 GB, RAM 16 GB

 

[Fishrrman]

"Disk 500 GB, RAM 16 GB"

Even with 16gb of RAM, the OS (and Parallels) may want to "hit the drive" quite a bit (lots of VM page ins and page outs).

Probably no way around this on an m1 Mac, because there's no way to increase the physical RAM.

What I would try (again, it's what only I would do):
Use the terminal to disable VM disk swapping, and then see if the Mini will run without crashing.
This might or might NOT work. You have to be careful about not running too many apps at once.

If nothing else works, then perhaps for your use case, you need one of the existing (or upcoming) m1pro Macs with more RAM (perhaps 32gb?)...