ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[pistonpilot]

Even better, I have never had RAM fail in any of my Macs since 1990ish.

My 4th AppleCare replacement was an iMac that shipped with bad memory. I had added memory to the iMac so the bad memory was at the end not the beginning. I put the larger chips first. The bad memory destroyed the partitions on all my HD's including the internal before I was able to figure out what was happening.

It was a great reason to get everyone on a cloud backup. I only have my data because it was in the cloud.

 

[jeanlain]

The SSD is not integrated into the SoC. the SoC only has the CPU itself + the Ram. that's what makes it a SoC

Stickily speaking, the RAM is next to the M1, but it's not part of it.

----

For people expecting a "fix": a specific bug has to be identified first. What's the usage patterns of those with TBs of data written each day? If they are using way more apps that the RAM cam take, then high disk swap is expected. The fact that M1 Macs are so fast, and have very fast SSDs, may make people overconfident in their ability to runs dozens and apps and have dozens and tabs open at once (since if doesn't noticeably slows down the system). But that's not something Apple could fix, expect perhaps by sending warning in dialog boxes.
Has it been demonstrated that Big Sur does disk swapping too "aggressively"? Is it different from Catalina on intel Macs?

If Rosetta apps just require more RAM to operate, then there is little Apple could do either. If time machine writes local backup do disk, then it's doing its job. Same for spotlight indexing.

As for Chrome, Photoshop or other apps, which have been incriminated, there is nothing Apple can do.

I know people are worried, but given that SSD writes appear to have many causes, including "normal" ones and third-party apps, I'm not sure a clear bug has been identified.

 

[Maximara]

My 4th AppleCare replacement was an iMac that shipped with bad memory. I had added memory to the iMac so the bad memory was at the end not the beginning. I put the larger chips first. The bad memory destroyed the partitions on all my HD's including the internal before I was able to figure out what was happening.

This is why Apple is not so

Stickily speaking, the RAM is next to the M1, but it's not part of it.

----

For people expecting a "fix": a specific bug has to be identified first. What's the usage patterns of those with TBs of data written each day? If they are using way more apps that the RAM cam take, then high disk swap is expected. The fact that M1 Macs are so fast, and have very fast SSDs, may make people overconfident in their ability to runs dozens and apps and have dozens and tabs open at once (since if doesn't noticeably slows down the system). But that's not something Apple could fix, expect perhaps by sending warning in dialog boxes.
Has it been demonstrated that Big Sur does disk swapping too "aggressively"? Is it different from Catalina on intel Macs?

If Rosetta apps just require more RAM to operate, then there is little Apple could do either. If time machine writes local backup do disk, then it's doing its job. Same for spotlight indexing.

As for Chrome, Photoshop or other apps, which have been incriminated, there is nothing Apple can do.

I know people are worried, but given that SSD writes appear to have many causes, including "normal" ones and third-party apps, I'm not sure a clear bug has been identified.

Time machine and Sportlight could be set up to be less frequent and in Time Machine's case not write to the local HD when you have a perfectly functional external hooked up.

 

[star trek]

Hello Everyone !!!!

Could this issue having problems with TRIM !not working !?!?
Someone tryed to disable swapping !?!?
Have a Good Day Everyone !!!!

 

[ambient_light]

I am on 11.3b4 and after 4 days 4 hr uptime Kernel_task has written 1.55TB . So not fixed for me.

Similar experience here, but as for other folks on this thread, before this update it was ca. 1Tb per day, i.e. some improvements to the memory management and swapping were applied. Before I observed crazy swap activity right after the reboot, now system is "waiting", and gets unreasonably high swap writes only after the 4-5Gb swap size watermark, even when ca 3-4Gb memory are free.

This makes me think that Apple just applied a bandaid here and tweaked a swappiness activity a bit, or some memory thresholds in the algorithm so that it behaves better for 8/16Gb with the moderate load, while thereal fix is still not yet in place.

Regarding reasons for the problem - I would reiterate that for my machine it's never Rosetta (oahd), Time Machine, photolibraryd, or other deamons under launchd which are problematic, but always kernel_task and swap, which generate 80-90% of writes. I didn't see a good evidence for other sources of the problem. Nothing mysterious here - should be rather straightforward issue to fix for OS kernel engineers.

 

[Forti]

[...] If they are using way more apps that the RAM cam take, then high disk swap is expected. [...]

Have you even read a storied users shared here?

Just a simple question:

Why my Mac mini m1 with 16gb RAM have to write couple of times more data to disk compared to my intel Macbook?
Like I said, the same tasks, same work-time, even the same projects for couple of months 😉

Most of apps on my Mac m1 is fully native right now. Except only email client, which is barley writing anything to disk (based on activity monitor).

So once again: why my Mac m1 16GB has to write 300-600 GB daily to disk, while intel MacBook is creating ~~60GB (which still in my opinion is way to much)?

Can any one that is saying "there is no issue" answer to that? 🙂 I don't think so. So please stop saying "there is no issue".


YES - the my Mac m1 will still last for years.
YES - probably 99% users won't even notice this
YES - the m1 mac's have a significant higher SSD usage than intel one (we don't fully know if this is because of m1 or BigSur)
YES - the issue still exists and it would be nice to have an official answer from Apple like "hey folks, we know about that, this is because XYZ (e.g. rosetta 2, some native apps etc) - don't worry, the SSD can last for at least 700-1400 TBW or so)

 

[wirtandi]

Seriously, I have been postponing my purchase for the longest time. I really need to buy a laptop now, so my question is, if I only use the laptop for browsing (watching videos, browsing the web, etc.) and microsoft office work, am I going to be ok? I plan on getting the 16/512 MBA M1.

 

[Sysmet]

Seriously, I have been postponing my purchase for the longest time. I really need to buy a laptop now, so my question is, if I only use the laptop for browsing (watching videos, browsing the web, etc.) and microsoft office work, am I going to be ok? I plan on getting the 16/512 MBA M1.

You should be fine. I believe this issue is less common than participants of this thread think.

 

[featherlessbird]

I think I've found my main culprit - Spark mail client. Without it, my Mac writes about 200GB a day, which is a great improvement from 3TB.

 

[Sysmet]

I've posted a reply some time ago, but it's still on moderation because of attached image for some reason, so I'll repeat.

Those who have problems with excessive data write should try to make 11.2.3 clean install from USB drive and use Mac for one day without any third party software and turned off Time Machine. Then 1-by-1, add something and log results.

You will figure out what is causing it.

 

[jeanlain]

Have you even read a storied users shared here?

I haven't read all 59 pages, but I have read many reports here saying that disk writes have been reduced by switching to another app, disabling spotlight, time machine and such. In these cases at least, there is no "bug" for Apple to fix, except perhaps in Safari (?), which appears to be writing more to disk than Edge (though Apple could consider that normal behaviour), but less than Chrome.
Or possibly a bug with Rosetta, if Rosetta apps are mostly the cause of problems.

o once again: why my Mac m1 16GB has to write 300-600 GB daily to disk, while intel MacBook is creating ~~60GB (which still in my opinion is way to much)?

Can any one that is saying "there is no issue" answer to that? 🙂 I don't think so. So please stop saying "there is no issue".

Oh, I haven't said that there was no issue, just that we should not expect a universal fix from Apple that would reduce disk writes for everyone. Many different things can cause high disk writes, some "normal", some not.

 

[jeanlain]

I think I've found my main culprit - Spark mail client. Without it, my Mac writes about 200GB a day, which is a great improvement from 3TB.

So that would be almost 3TB per day for a single mail client. 😳
This is still an Intel app. Could this a bug with Rosetta 2?

 

[Wando64]

Just a simple question:

Why my Mac mini m1 with 16gb RAM have to write couple of times more data to disk compared to my intel Macbook?
Like I said, the same tasks, same work-time, even the same projects for couple of months 😉

...

YES - the m1 mac's have a significant higher SSD usage than intel one (we don't fully know if this is because of m1 or BigSur)

I think I asked before but never got a proper answer from anyone (sorry if I missed it).
Have you compared your M1 Mac with your Intel Mac for a given period of time whilst BOTH running Big Sur?

Your last point would indicate that you might have not done so, in which case you would be (obviously) not comparing like with like.
If that is true, why even ask the question? Too many differences to make a reasonable comparison.

 

[Forti]

I think I asked before but never got a proper answer from anyone (sorry if I missed it).
Have you compared your M1 Mac with your Intel Mac for a given period of time whilst BOTH running Big Sur?

Your last point would indicate that you might have not done so, in which case you would be (obviously) not comparing like with like.
If that is true, why even ask the question? Too many differences to make a reasonable comparison.

To be honest I just checked, and it does looks kinda interesting. I'm starting to thinking that this issue can be because of Big Sur, not m1.

Look at this:

Intel Macbook:
1. month ago my intel MacBook had 47.5 TBW
2. last month the MacBook is used by my girlfriend, she is learning programming (node.js process, safari and Firefox)
3. now the MacBook have 52.8 TBW

So clearly even the MacBook has some significant TBW in 1 month...

Mac m1:
1. month ago I had 0.9 TBW
2. last month using it 8-14 hours per day I have now over 8 TBW

Summary: in the last two years I used the intel MacBook as my daily machine - 8-14 hours daily, programming. In over two years it created ~~47 TBW.

Now in one month with 2-3 hours daily use it creates another 5.3 TBW.
My Mac m1 with 8-14 hours daily created over 8 TBW

This starts to make me think that I could be wrong the whole time. 🤔

Maybe the issue is not with m1 itself, but BigSur? The intel MacBook is running Big Sur since September last year.
hmmmmm

 

[anpaman]

There are a youtuber said it caused by unoptimised apps relying on Rosetta 2.

 

[iLog.Genius]

Have you even read a storied users shared here?

Just a simple question:

Why my Mac mini m1 with 16gb RAM have to write couple of times more data to disk compared to my intel Macbook?
Like I said, the same tasks, same work-time, even the same projects for couple of months 😉

Most of apps on my Mac m1 is fully native right now. Except only email client, which is barley writing anything to disk (based on activity monitor).

So once again: why my Mac m1 16GB has to write 300-600 GB daily to disk, while intel MacBook is creating ~~60GB (which still in my opinion is way to much)?

Can any one that is saying "there is no issue" answer to that? 🙂 I don't think so. So please stop saying "there is no issue".


YES - the my Mac m1 will still last for years.
YES - probably 99% users won't even notice this
YES - the m1 mac's have a significant higher SSD usage than intel one (we don't fully know if this is because of m1 or BigSur)
YES - the issue still exists and it would be nice to have an official answer from Apple like "hey folks, we know about that, this is because XYZ (e.g. rosetta 2, some native apps etc) - don't worry, the SSD can last for at least 700-1400 TBW or so)

I think a lot of people are arguing and defending the wrong issue you and many people are stating. First I totally agree with you because I have the same issue, though I'm less concerned with SSD writes and more to do with RAM gets used for no apparent reason and causes Safari refreshes which interrupts work flow.

We're not worried about the integrity of the SSD. Even with the increased writes, the computer should still last years so it's less of a concern. The concern is why it is happening in the first place when nothing has changed in terms of work flow from Catalina to Big Sur for example. In my case, the increased writes is a result of high memory usage for just browsing Macrumors.

Some of us are not worried about "writing out an SSD". All this "what's the percentage" is irrelevant to us who are asking why is there in abnormally increased amount of writes.

 

[pibefision]

Whay Apple is silent on this topic? Any idea?

 

[Gustavo Carvalh]

11.3 Beta 4 has been significantly better for me in terms of swap used and disk writes.

 

[hakr100]

This discussion is way over my technical prowess and I really reading it only to find out what the resolution is, if any, but really...1400 posts so far and no definitive answer?

 

[Apple_Robert]

I tried the trial version of the DriveDx app, and it's showing 18.7 TB of data written? I do have the 16GB/2TB model, but still.. Yikes.

View attachment 1731008

I have had my base M1 MBA since 12/24, and have done a lot of downloading and installing. I think it is a software problem with some apps, that some people are using. I am not concerned.

 

[Leon1das]

To be honest I just checked, and it does looks kinda interesting. I'm starting to thinking that this issue can be because of Big Sur, not m1.

Look at this:

Intel Macbook:
1. month ago my intel MacBook had 47.5 TBW
2. last month the MacBook is used by my girlfriend, she is learning programming (node.js process, safari and Firefox)
3. now the MacBook have 52.8 TBW

So clearly even the MacBook has some significant TBW in 1 month...

Mac m1:
1. month ago I had 0.9 TBW
2. last month using it 8-14 hours per day I have now over 8 TBW

Summary: in the last two years I used the intel MacBook as my daily machine - 8-14 hours daily, programming. In over two years it created ~~47 TBW.

Now in one month with 2-3 hours daily use it creates another 5.3 TBW.
My Mac m1 with 8-14 hours daily created over 8 TBW

This starts to make me think that I could be wrong the whole time. 🤔

Maybe the issue is not with m1 itself, but BigSur? The intel MacBook is running Big Sur since September last year.
hmmmmm

Knowing Apple publicly admitted several years ago that they were slowing older iPhones - I really do hope we wont see similar affair with BigSur - "increased SSD wear on purpose, enabling faster upgrades"...

I really dont want to think that, but hey it happened once.... giving me cold chills

I know that when money is at stake... shareholders are the customers - not regular Joes and Janes who want to run devices as long as they can...

 

[souko]

 

[Internaut]

Late to this thread. Just to note that for me (so caveat YMMV), the latest update seems to improve things. What does seem to yield a big improvement is not running anything requiring Rosetta (the Aussie guy who runs the Created Labs Youtube channel alerted me to that possibility).

At the moment I'm running Word, OneNote, Safari, Edge (both with just the tabs I need right now) and Tw@tter (all Apple Silicon) and it's showing 0 bytes of swap used (which is suspicious in itself). I will continue to monitor (perhaps add Teams and FaceBook Messenger to the mix, later).

I've been fairly sanguine about the whole thing from the start. Apple will one of:

• Fix the problem (good)
• Fix the problem albeit with a performance penalty (in which case the sharks lawyers will circle)
• Not fix it (see above)
• Or accept they will be paying for out of warranty SSD replacements.

Edit: The problem feels like a memory leak somewhere (in some app, in macOS or even possibly Rosetta).

 

[IceStormNG]

Could this issue having problems with TRIM !not working !?!?
Someone tryed to disable swapping !?!?

While I'm on an Intel machine that also has quite high write values, I did some testing here. As I have enough RAM, and I didn't liked how macOS swapped for no reason, I disabled swap.
But: You cannot fully disabled it. No matter what you set, it still swaps during sleep. But not while it's active. Now I have almost no writes except for what my applications write.

But: Do not do this if you're low on RAM all the time. My machine has 32GB RAM and all my apps that I use at the same time fit into that without any problems. If you have a 8GB RAM machine, do not disable swap. On 16GB and more you could try this if your apps all fit into RAM. If not, you might see system instability or crashes.

What I would like to see is a sysconfig value like linux's swappiness. So the OS doesn't swap just because it's bored but only if needed. Even if it doesn't effect my SSD lifetime, it's unnecessary to swap all the time and writing to SSD costs more power and takes longer than simply leaving stuff in RAM.

There's no need for "free up" RAM. Unused ram is wasted RAM.

 

[Leon1das]

While I'm on an Intel machine that also has quite high write values, I did some testing here. As I have enough RAM, and I didn't liked how macOS swapped for no reason, I disabled swap.
But: You cannot fully disabled it. No matter what you set, it still swaps during sleep. But not while it's active. Now I have almost no writes except for what my applications write.

But: Do not do this if you're low on RAM all the time. My machine has 32GB RAM and all my apps that I use at the same time fit into that without any problems. If you have a 8GB RAM machine, do not disable swap. On 16GB and more you could try this if your apps all fit into RAM. If not, you might see system instability or crashes.

What I would like to see is a sysconfig value like linux's swappiness. So the OS doesn't swap just because it's bored but only if needed. Even if it doesn't effect my SSD lifetime, it's unnecessary to swap all the time and writing to SSD costs more power and takes longer than simply leaving stuff in RAM.

There's no need for "free up" RAM. Unused ram is wasted RAM.

How does one disable swap?