SSD Issues on rMBP (SOLVED!!)

[WH1]

Hi there, I seem to be having issues with the SSD on my MBP mid 2014. 512 HD. I7 with dedicated NVIDIA card. 16 GIG RAM.

First of all I use my machine mainly for audio production with Logic Pro X. The HD Usage meter on Logic shows a spike and audio and metronome skip when pressing Rec. No matter how many tracks I am running. This happens with just one or several tracks. With my internal card or external audio interface.Changing the buffer size makes no difference. No issues playing back just when recording.

This started happening when I upgraded to Yosemite.

When playing around with the disk utility I noticed that the erase free space option was clickable, something that is not supposed to be available for Solid state drives. I foolishly tried to erase free space which resulted in the following inconsistency.

The process actually ran until it said my drive was almost full. Which is not.


So my questions are:
Why would the erase free space utility run on my SSD?

How to you troubleshoot a drive? (I'm fairly new to Mac)

What are my options here? I guess I could just fomat and reinstall, but that is a drag.

Is Yosemite seeing my drive as a non SSD?

I'm thinking this got something to do with the drive underperforming in logic.

thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

Interesting discovery about erase free space. You are correct, as I recall that was always greyed out in the past on an SSD. I just check and on my 2014 Retina on Yosemite it now allows erase free space... so maybe this is a Yosemite change. At any rate I think you are okay on that point.

When you erase free space it actually make a large disk image that fills all the empty space on the drive, then deletes it. So your seeing the drive filling up was normal.

Also the way you are seeing the space shown there in Disk Util is normal for Yosemite because Yosemite converted the drive to a core storage volume. That is why you now see Macintosh HD twice and not the drive itself there any longer.

So does the 276GB space used it is showing there sound about right? If it is, I think you are fine and everything you are seeing is normal.

 

[WH1]

Yeah, weird huh, why is the core storage volume showing full vs the partition?

I formatted from scratch and I still see the same, Is there anyway I could disable core storage for the drive? I'm thinking that might have something to do with my first issue in Logic.

 

[nobodyjustwalks]

Hi there, I seem to be having issues with the SSD on my MBP mid 2014. 512 HD. I7 with dedicated NVIDIA card. 16 GIG RAM.

First of all I use my machine mainly for audio production with Logic Pro X. The HD Usage meter on Logic shows a spike and audio and metronome skip when pressing Rec. No matter how many tracks I am running. This happens with just one or several tracks. With my internal card or external audio interface.Changing the buffer size makes no difference. No issues playing back just when recording.

This started happening when I upgraded to Yosemite.

When playing around with the disk utility I noticed that the erase free space option was clickable, something that is not supposed to be available for Solid state drives. I foolishly tried to erase free space which resulted in the following inconsistency.

Image

The process actually ran until it said my drive was almost full. Which is not.


So my questions are:
Why would the erase free space utility run on my SSD?

How to you troubleshoot a drive? (I'm fairly new to Mac)

What are my options here? I guess I could just fomat and reinstall, but that is a drag.

Is Yosemite seeing my drive as a non SSD?

I'm thinking this got something to do with the drive underperforming in logic.

thanks!

Thereʻs nothing wrong with your Mac. "Erase Free Space" exists incase you want to write 0s over empty parts of your hard drive without touching your OS and personal files. The reason for this is because, technically, when you place a file in "trash" and delete it, it doesnʻt actually delete the file (unless you choose "secure empty trash"). What your computerʻs TRIM command does, is it allows the OS to tell the SSD what blocks of space on your hard drive are available for writing to. So when the "trash" disappears from your trash can, your dataʻs actually still on your hard drive, but the OS knows that it can write to that part of your hard drive. Which eventually happens.

So...those who want that data to be imposbile to recover use "erase free space" and choose from the options there: "1 pass" to "7 pass" to even the NSA wouldnʻt be able to recover your deleted files.

Anyway, thereʻs nothing wrong with Disk Utility having allowed you to perform this function. Itʻs normal and part of what Disk Utility does. Also, formatting your hard drive, in essence, would wipe your primary volume, which your case is about 499 GB in size, which would be similar to executing the "erase free space" function.

---Source: I spoke to Apple Care about your exact question because I had done the same thing just two days ago. However, my questions related to why Disk Utility displays 5 tabs and 4 tabs when clicking on Macintosh HD (Primary disk and Volume) instead of 2 tabs and 3 tabs as you are showing. It also shows different information about the disk at the bottom of Disk Utility.

Screen shot attached >>>

I compared my computer to the ones at the Apple Store and they all show 5 tabs and 4 tabs like the screen shot. Anyway the guy I spoke to was a senior rep and he said he didnʻt have a good answer. loll.. It just is what it is.

LINK > http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3680

 

[Weaselboy]

Yeah, weird huh, why is the core storage volume showing full vs the partition?

I formatted from scratch and I still see the same, Is there anyway I could disable core storage for the drive? I'm thinking that might have something to do with my first issue in Logic.

That is normal. The core storage volume uses the entire disk space it why it looks like that.

I don't think core storage would cause the issues you are having, but if you want disable it disconnect any other drives and run the command below in Terminal. That will turn off core storage for the main disk.

diskutil cs revert /

 

[WH1]

Hey, thanks so much for the reply. There is a difference between yours and mine. Yours is showing as GUID partition for your drive, might be due to the size, dunno... in the one I posted my drive shows as a Logical Volume Group.

Check the details at the bottom of the screenshot for the drive, not the partition.

After much reading and much formatting, I found out that Yosemite actually ctivates Core Storage by default, which is the same technology used on Fusion drives. To revert to actually seeing the drive as a physical unit and not a logical one just type the following on terminal.

diskutil cs revert disk1.

reboot and thats it. Wish I would have known before, but oh well.


Thanks so much.

Just for further reference>
yes, this is standard behavior.
formatting is useless, i went as far as booting from a live drive running ubuntu and wiping the drive from there. it is what it what it is.

----------

Weaselboy, thanks so much for the reply! beat me to it! Anyway, thanks of the reply and support, this is truly a great community. I'll make sure to post when i get a chance to try Logic Pro X.

 

[WH1]

Just before this is over. Is there any advantage of using CoreStorage other than enabling FileVault?

 

[nobodyjustwalks]

Hey, thanks so much for the reply. There is a difference between yours and mine. Yours is showing as GUID partition for your drive, might be due to the size, dunno... in the one I posted my drive shows as a Logical Volume Group.

Check the details at the bottom of the screenshot for the drive, not the partition.

After much reading and much formatting, I found out that Yosemite actually ctivates Core Storage by default, which is the same technology used on Fusion drives. To revert to actually seeing the drive as a physical unit and not a logical one just type the following on terminal.

diskutil cs revert disk1.

reboot and thats it. Wish I would have known before, but oh well.


Thanks so much.

Just for further reference>
yes, this is standard behavior.
formatting is useless, i went as far as booting from a live drive running ubuntu and wiping the drive from there. it is what it what it is.

----------

Weaselboy, thanks so much for the reply! beat me to it! Anyway, thanks of the reply and support, this is truly a great community. I'll make sure to post when i get a chance to try Logic Pro X.

Pretty cool. Thanks for the Terminal command, I was looking high and low for something that would do that. The screenshots I posted were of a rMBP at the Apple Store, not my computer. My computerʻs Disk Utility screen looks exactly like yours.

----------

Also the way you are seeing the space shown there in Disk Util is normal for Yosemite because Yosemite converted the drive to a core storage volume. That is why you now see Macintosh HD twice and not the drive itself there any longer.

Finally! An explanation for why Disk Utility displays the way it does. Thanks for the explanation!

 

[Weaselboy]

Just before this is over. Is there any advantage of using CoreStorage other than enabling FileVault?

Like you said, core storage is the underlying technology behind Fusion and FileVault, but for some reason Yosemite is turning on core storage even without either Fusion or FileVault turned on. Nobody really is sure yet why this is happening and Apple has not published any explanation. Having it on does not hurt anything, and turning it off does not seem to matter either.

 

[WH1]

I figured, thanks.

Anyway I guess disabling corestorage did resolve my issue.