SSD LIFE DOWN 45% in 6 months 120GB SSD 2TB HD

[pistonpilot]

What a fool I was to opt for 120GB SSD paired with the 2TB spinning drive, and think I would get normal use of it.

I got the 27 iMac Dec 31st of 2019 as a replacement by Applecare and opted to go with the 2TB HD because the 1TB came with a 32gb SSD where the 2 and 3 TB drives come with a 120GB SSD.

DriveDX says my lifespan is down 45 percent in 6 months and my drive lifespan is now average.

I sent an email to DriveDX support at Binary Fruit and got a very snarky and rude response which I will post here. I thought maybe there might be a reporting error.

This was their response:

) Your questions have nothing to do with DriveDx support, they relate to the internal design and operation principles of Apple Fusion Drive and SSDs. We are not Apple support and we are not free online courses teaching the principles of operation of the SSDs and Apple Fusion Drives. All related information is available from open sources like the Apple website and Apple help manuals, Wikipedia, etc.

2) The link that we sent you in our previous email contains the necessary information and answers to all your questions. So instead of complaining, you'd better say thanks. (Re)read the article from this link if you really want to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

3) The most suitable analogy for your case is "You wiped the car tires by 40% in 5 months. The problem is not in the tires and not in the diagnostic equipment, but your driving intensity and/or driving style. The type of tires you have chosen for the car is not suits your driving style and intensity. "

The size of the SSD in your Fusion drive is only 120 GB, and in 5 months you recorded 72 TB on it, which is a lot for such a small SSD. Therefore, the wear of the SSD is 40%. For your workloads, you need an SSD of at least 10 times the size of the current one. This is our free advice for you.

Best regards,

Lara Knarska

_______________________________________________________

I sent some very unkind words back to Lara including they should thank me for buying the program, and a few words I won't post here.

This looks like very poor planning on Apple's part. I cannot control what gets written to this drive by the CoreServices of OSX.

By the end of the year, the drive will be useless.

Apple says they aren't interested until the SSD fails.

Who else is seeing the same? DriveDX will work in full demo mode for 15 days. Try it and see if your drives are suffering the same fate.

 

[BrianBaughn]

For context, please post the messages you sent to DriveDx.

 

[ignatius345]

You have a problem with DriveDx for diagnosing a hardware problem you're having?

 

[pistonpilot]

You have a problem with DriveDx for diagnosing a hardware problem you're having?

No. I have a problem with this sentence: So instead of complaining, you'd better say thanks.

They instead, should thank me for paying for the product.
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For context, please post the messages you sent to DriveDx.

Not necessary. I sent an email to support asking them if this might be an anomaly in the DriveDX program. You see the response.

 

[ignatius345]

No. I have a problem with this sentence: So instead of complaining, you'd better say thanks.

They instead, should thank me for paying for the product.

If you emailed them with the same combative tone you're showing toward people here, I'm not surprised you got a negative response. Good luck to you.

 

[pistonpilot]

The issue is that OSX wrote 81TB to a 120GB SSD in 6 months' time. At this rate, there will be no drive left to write to by the year's end. Who else is having this issue?

I just got off the phone with Apple and their standard line is that they ignore 3rd party software.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Not necessary. I sent an email to support asking them if this might be an anomaly in the DriveDX program. You see the response.

You got a very detailed response to such a short inquiry! Good luck.

 

[ghanwani]

Interesting that the tool offers so much insight.

It sounds like the hybrid setup is designed for large amounts of data that are accessed infrequently like archived photos and videos, etc., with the 120GB drive acting like cache. It also sounds like your usage involves heavy use of writing to the main drive. (What has been your usage?)

If you have written 72TB in 6 months, that's like writing the entire 120GB drive 600 times, or roughly 3.3 times day. I'm not sure what the typical rating of drives is, but this is on the high side for sure. I saw an old article that had an example of a drive that would last 5 years if writing the entire drive once per day. Since you are writing it 3.3 times day, that means drive life is reduced to 1.5 years. 6 months into that means drive wear would be expected around 33%. Yours is a little high, but not completely out of line.

Most folks won't see such problem if they are not writing large amounts of data frequently.

Make sure you're backing up all your data.

 

[DeltaMac]

Your SSD doesn't suddenly expire (and stop working), just because a random, scary-looking record (Lifetime left) in SMART reports that your device reads/writes exceed some arbitrary manufacturers-assigned number.
I think you can choose to ignore the number, as it really is only used for future planning for device replacements, and isn't necessarily an accurate indicator in real life. If you want to watch something that Drive-DX reports, try Advanced Smart Status (0 Issues Found), and Overall Health rating (100%).
And, again, SMART does NOT predict the future, it just reports data, which can be considered meaningless without OTHER events, such as system or drive performance, or other actual problems on your system.

 

[mmomega]

If you emailed them with the same combative tone you're showing toward people here, I'm not surprised you got a negative response. Good luck to you.

To Ignatius : I read the same way as you.

To OP: If anyone tells me I "should" do something... nope.
Keep your dismissive tones to people you think you can use that on.
Good luck on whatever it is you're doing.

 

[pistonpilot]

Interesting that the tool offers so much insight.

It sounds like the hybrid setup is designed for large amounts of data that are accessed infrequently like archived photos and videos, etc., with the 120GB drive acting like cache. It also sounds like your usage involves heavy use of writing to the main drive. (What has been your usage?)

If you have written 72TB in 6 months, that's like writing the entire 120GB drive 600 times, or roughly 3.3 times day. I'm not sure what the typical rating of drives is, but this is on the high side for sure. I saw an old article that had an example of a drive that would last 5 years if writing the entire drive once per day. Since you are writing it 3.3 times day, that means drive life is reduced to 1.5 years. 6 months into that means drive wear would be expected around 33%. Yours is a little high, but not completely out of line.

Most folks won't see such problem if they are not writing large amounts of data frequently.

Make sure you're backing up all your data.

Drive wear is almost 50 percent in 6 months.

I have no control over what gets written to the drive. It's a fusion drive. OSX decides what goes on the SSD portion, not me.

I'm not a heavy user, I don't do rendering, no video, yet this drive has had 81TB written to it in 6 months.

That can't be right. Or is it?
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To Ignatius : I read the same way as you.

To OP: If anyone tells me I "should" do something... nope.
Keep your dismissive tones to people you think you can use that on.
Good luck on whatever it is you're doing.

You never saw what I wrote to DriveDX.

What you saw, was their response to my support query.

Here is what THEY wrote at DriveDX:

) Your questions have nothing to do with DriveDx support, they relate to the internal design and operation principles of Apple Fusion Drive and SSDs. We are not Apple support and we are not free online courses teaching the principles of operation of the SSDs and Apple Fusion Drives. All related information is available from open sources like the Apple website and Apple help manuals, Wikipedia, etc.

2) The link that we sent you in our previous email contains the necessary information and answers to all your questions. So instead of complaining, you'd better say thanks. (Re)read the article from this link if you really want to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

3) The most suitable analogy for your case is "You wiped the car tires by 40% in 5 months. The problem is not in the tires and not in the diagnostic equipment, but your driving intensity and/or driving style. The type of tires you have chosen for the car is not suits your driving style and intensity. "

The size of the SSD in your Fusion drive is only 120 GB, and in 5 months you recorded 72 TB on it, which is a lot for such a small SSD. Therefore, the wear of the SSD is 40%. For your workloads, you need an SSD of at least 10 times the size of the current one. This is our free advice for you.

Best regards,

Lara Knarska
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Your SSD doesn't suddenly expire (and stop working), just because a random, scary-looking record (Lifetime left) in SMART reports that your device reads/writes exceed some arbitrary manufacturers-assigned number.
I think you can choose to ignore the number, as it really is only used for future planning for device replacements, and isn't necessarily an accurate indicator in real life. If you want to watch something that Drive-DX reports, try Advanced Smart Status (0 Issues Found), and Overall Health rating (100%).
And, again, SMART does NOT predict the future, it just reports data, which can be considered meaningless without OTHER events, such as system or drive performance, or other actual problems on your system.

I agree with you, and that is why I wrote support@binaryfruit.com to get some clarification about the information DriveDX was giving me.

I called Apple, talked with a tier 2 support man, and I asked him to kick a few questions to the engineers.

Specifically, I want to know, what does writing 81TB of data to a 120GB SSD do to the lifespan of the drive. It is the grey area in the information supplied by SMART, that I wanted DriveDX to clarify. I paid for the product, and I expect a simple question to be answered. Instead, I got that snarky response from Lara at BinaryFruit.com about how I should thank them.

 

[tyc0746]

So what are you doing on the Mac?

Maybe something you’re doing doesn’t register with you as a high risk usage when it actually is?

A little bit of info about your usage may help diagnose your issue (maybe by using logs or activity monitor to see what’s using the disk so much)...assuming anyone can be bothered offering assistance anymore.

 

[DeltaMac]

Is there possibly an issue with the DriveDX software that affects your "high write rate"? Seems like Binary Fruit folks don't think so, but THEY don't have any control over what you do, and how you have your system configured. There are some situations that create a lot of writes to the drive, such as active cache files, runaway log files, etc.

Might be a good plan to discover what is creating a lot of writes to the SSD.
I understand you don't directly control what gets written to the SSD (and by extension to the hard drive portion of the fusion drive) - but something is doing a LOT of writes to the SSD, and you CAN discover to some extent what is doing a lot of writes. Activity Monitor/Disk tab is a good place to start.

 

[ghanwani]

Drive wear is almost 50 percent in 6 months.

I have no control over what gets written to the drive. It's a fusion drive. OSX decides what goes on the SSD portion, not me.

I'm not a heavy user, I don't do rendering, no video, yet this drive has had 81TB written to it in 6 months.

That can't be right. Or is it?

Not enough knowledge to say. If it’s being used as a cache then even reads from the hard disk could result in writing to the SSD.

I do think the response from binaryfruit was a bit cocky.

 

[pistonpilot]

The problem with all of this Fusion Drive issue is that Apple doesn't educate their tech reps much on the mechanism and there is little to be found from Apple about the working of it.

I want to know if others have the same problem. Go to Binary Fruit and download DriveDX. It will work fully for 15 days.

 

[throAU]

You bought a fusion drive that is under warranty for X years with Apple depending on the state of Applecare. SSDs have a limited life.

If it fails, return it.

If it doesn't fail, continue using it.

Fusion drives in general are a bad idea for heavy read/write usage, but it is what it is.

I agree with the tech support from DriveDX - you sent them a query regarding your machine that is in no way related to their product. You wasted their time. Tech support for software is for software problems, not whining about somebody else's product.

Depending how you phrased your initial query (i.e., if it was whining about how can your drive be dead?), which we have not seen I'd consider the reply you got to be within the realms of reasonable.

 

[pistonpilot]

I do think the response from binaryfruit was a bit cocky.

I told them to go F themselves. I have never seen a vendor write something like this to a paying customer.

 

[pistonpilot]

You bought a fusion drive that is under warranty for X years with Apple depending on the state of Applecare. SSDs have a limited life.

If it fails, return it.

And that begs the question, how will it fail. Since it is a fusion drive, and I have Applecare, it will be under warranty when it fails.

What will failure look like?

The drive by the SMART info, is already used up 45 percent of the drive. Does this mean I only have 70 GB of SSD and not 120GB?

Is that a fail?

If it has 1 percent left, OSX will write to what it has, will it tell me the drive failed, or struggle with a small space.

And when there is nothing to write to, will it fail, or just stop writing?

This is the problem with Apple, they don't have diagnostic software and can't say if the Apple Store has software either.

They ignore DriveDX. "It's third-party software" they say. We can't acknowledge it.
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It sounds like the hybrid setup is designed for large amounts of data that are accessed infrequently like archived photos and videos, etc., with the 120GB drive acting like cache. It also sounds like your usage involves heavy use of writing to the main drive. (What has been your usage?)

Which was my thinking when I bought the Fusion instead of a 500GB SSD.

Most of my 2TB drive is full of static things as you described above.

The Question isn't coming to you folks yet: Is the algorithm Apple uses faulty? I'm a normal user. I spend most of my days in the browser. I support Customers with IT. I'm not doing video rendering or publishing with very large files. I have no idea what is written to the SSD but aren't you surprised that in 6 months it has WRITTEN, not read, over 81TB to a small 120GB SSD?

Is this a flaw in the Apple Fusion System?

The other question that comes to mind, is that I am not yet using Catalina. Does Catalina utilize the drive better than Mojave?

 

[throAU]

You must work for Binary Fruit. If not, I think they have a position for you in tech support.

No, but I work in tech and have been on the other end of customers with unrealistic expectations and misdirected aggravation - many years ago. Some customers are unreasonable, and depending on how you approached this situation with your original query to the vendor - who has absolutely nothing to do with your SSD problems, you may well have deserved that response.

We still haven't seen how you originally approached this.

I'm actually in a senior IT architect/supervisor position these days.

 

[kaans]

There are a lot of trolls on this forum, so ignore the negative comments - but also, your approach seems a bit flawed too, you complain about the nature of things to a 3rd party company (I don't even know what DriveDX does, probably nothing useful)

Anyway, the "Drive Health" is just an estimation, or rather, a warranty at times - for example some SSD's are sold with 600TB write guarantees, once you write 600TB total to it, it's out of warranty - it could last 60000TB more writes, it's just "luck" - It could also fail before you could even write 1TB's

If it's an important drive, just back it up occasionally and enjoy life

 

[ma3740]

I told them to go F themselves. I have never seen a vendor write something like this to a paying customer.
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That type of language to other people is utterly unacceptable and reflects very poorly upon you. You should be ashamed. There are no situations where talking to somebody doing their job in that manner is legitimate. I sincerely hope that you change your ways, if nothing else for your own sake.

When it comes to the question of your drive it all seems very strange. There’s no other program in the background that you use that is doing strange ready-writey things?

 

[pistonpilot]

No, but I work in tech and have been on the other end of customers with unrealistic expectations and misdirected aggravation - many years ago. Some customers are unreasonable, and depending on how you approached this situation with your original query to the vendor - who has absolutely nothing to do with your SSD problems, you may well have deserved that response.

We still haven't seen how you originally approached this.

I'm actually in a senior IT architect/supervisor position these days.

On what do you base this assumption? I own my own business and have been in IT for over 30 years. It's so good to know that you have senior position and so telling that you make assumptions with no facts in evidence. Good for you.
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That type of language to other people is utterly unacceptable and reflects very poorly upon you. You should be ashamed. There are no situations where talking to somebody doing their job in that manner is legitimate. I sincerely hope that you change your ways, if nothing else for your own sake.

When it comes to the question of your drive it all seems very strange. There’s no other program in the background that you use that is doing strange ready-writey things?

That's your opinion, isn't it? I'll give it the credit it is due.
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There are a lot of trolls on this forum, so ignore the negative comments - but also, your approach seems a bit flawed too, you complain about the nature of things to a 3rd party company (I don't even know what DriveDX does, probably nothing useful)

Anyway, the "Drive Health" is just an estimation, or rather, a warranty at times - for example some SSD's are sold with 600TB write guarantees, once you write 600TB total to it, it's out of warranty - it could last 60000TB more writes, it's just "luck" - It could also fail before you could even write 1TB's

If it's an important drive, just back it up occasionally and enjoy life

How can you offer a response if you know nothing about DriveDX? What about my approach do you find flawed? Try to be specific.

 

[JustMartin]

It's possible that your usage pattern is not suitable for a fusion drive. Caching systems work best when the same sectors are used many times. So, they're brought into cache and stay there. If your workflow involves many different sectors that are visited infrequently, then the cache will never settle down, it will be writing data in and out almost constantly.

 

[pistonpilot]

It's possible that your usage pattern is not suitable for a fusion drive. Caching systems work best when the same sectors are used many times. So, they're brought into cache and stay there. If your workflow involves many different sectors that are visited infrequently, then the cache will never settle down, it will be writing data in and out almost constantly.

Clearly, my iMac is working overtime. I don't know how to monitor what goes on the SSD. What I really want, is for others to download DriveDX from https://binaryfruit.com and use their free 15-day version to compare. Is my experience unique or is there a very big hidden problem that Apple does not want us to see?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"The issue is that OSX wrote 81TB to a 120GB SSD in 6 months' time. At this rate, there will be no drive left to write to by the year's end. Who else is having this issue?"

I'm not an expert.
But I sense that one of the primary reasons for "so much writing" is the way that the Mac OS has "managed memory" since the introduction of Mavericks some years ago.

With Mavericks, Apple introduced a new paradigm as to how physical RAM was loaded and managed by the OS. The OS now loads ALL the RAM at bootup, and then begins "swapping it around" using the boot drive. That means millions of "page ins" and "page outs", increasing drive usage.

This is why Macs with platter-based hard drives run much more slowly post-Mavericks -- because the drive is being hit so much that it simply "can't keep up".

SSD's can "keep up", of course, but the problem now results in additional wear "on the cells" of the SSD. Thus, it actually becomes possible to "use one up" prematurely if you're using applications that are continually "going to the drive" and pouring on the page outs and page ins.

I found an answer to this problem, but it's not for everyone.
For a number of years now, I've run my Macs with VM disk swapping DISABLED via the terminal.
No more page ins or page outs... ZERO.

Of course, in theory it could be much easier to crash the OS because "you ran out of memory". But I manage my apps and computer usage in such a manner that I avoid "pushing the edge of the envelope".

No memory-related crashes here.