Is M1 Excessive SSD wear issues fixed?

HWTech wrote:

Here is an article which mentions the reporting issue may have been fixed with macOS 11.4:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1-mac-ssd-storage-longevity-issue-in-macos-114-beta

That's what I've saying all this time. People should listen to me. 😎

"At the time, an AppleInsider source within Apple, not authorized to speak on behalf the company, told us that it was a data reporting error within the tools used to report SSD wear. According to that source, it was not believed to be an actual hardware issue with the SSD, nor were the SSDs aging notably faster than prior because of RAM swap or other reasons."

There was another thread where someone was having "excessive" SSD writes with Lightroom (one of the apps most commonly associated with the issue). They had a 16 GB RAM M1. I suggested that they disable Lightroom's use of GPU and their SSD writes dropped dramatically.

So, it appears at least in this instance, Lightroom was gobbling up RAM with GPU processing to the point were app swapping was taking place. Leads one to believe that the GPU is allowed to use as much "Unified RAM" as it wants and causing memory swapping. And since the SSD transfers speeds are so fast, that swapping isn't noticeable.

The problem comes in my experience mostly from using Adobe apps. I use iostat to check disk usage daily and do not have any special tools installed but I check everyday.

Yesterday I used After Effects several times, Photoshop, Premier, Indesign, Illustrator as I am a marketer and web developer. At by the end of the day I had written over 1 terabyte. The files I rendered were less than 10gigs in total themselves, but it did involve closing AE and opening it several times through the day.

Each time i open after effects it eats about 30-40 gigs. If I render a 1gb file with after effects, it will use about 150gigs during the render.

The total manufacturer suggested writes for a 256gb model is supposedly around 150tb. Realistically it probably will last up to 500tb~.

At the current usage rate it would last half a year or up to 2 years if I am lucky.

I will not use it so often and try to space it out. If you are an advanced user or use the device for work requiring Adobe Programs, I would recommend avoiding these M1 variations for now.

Adobe is working on a native M1 AE which would use less swap memory.

Thanks, I had not read anything about the GPU issue causing the problem. That is extremely interesting.

Here is an article which mentions the reporting issue may have been fixed with macOS 11.4:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/04/apple-resolves-m1-mac-ssd-storage-longevity-issue-in-macos-114-beta

ABBar wrote:

That article is completely wrong and is based on provably false information.

There is no reporting issue. There was never a reporting issue. The data was written. There was never any doubt that the data was written.

The idea that there was ever a reporting issue was described as "complete bull****" by the very same source they quote in that article claiming that it was fixed.

How about providing links to backup your claims?

You don't know if there is a reporting issue or not. None of us do since that is something which can be difficult to figure out. I know from personal experience with both hard drives and SSDs for 20 years that the SMART health information is not always properly implemented by drive vendors so incorrect reporting is always a possibility especially since the drive or the software is incorrectly interpreting or calculating the values. At the time I posted the link I had not seen any other explanations.

You should keep in mind there may be more than one issue here and the article I linked shows Apple may have solved one of the issues.

I'm not denying there is another issue of some sort since @ColdChili's post just before yours here is one of the few posts which actually provide details showing a specific repeatable problem with exact details. I know another respected forum contributor has mentioned that the excessive write issue might be caused by a GPU caching issue when using certain third party apps such as some of the Adobe products on an M1 Mac. M1 Macs use a completely different CPU & GPU & SSD so it appears third party apps may be utilizing these components in a way that produces excessive SSD writes. It is hard to say whether this is a macOS issue or a third party app issue, or a combination of both.

If a user can figure out which app is causing the excessive writes, then the user should contact the developer of the app for assistance since the developer will need to figure out a solution or end up working with Apple to resolve the problem. The issue is not occurring for everyone so I think the issue is limited to certain third party apps or certain types of workloads.

This is why I tend to avoid the first generation of any new product since there are always kinks to work out which are hopefully solved by the second generation. Users are agreeing to be guinea pigs (aka Beta Testers) by purchasing a first generation of a significantly new product model.

dialabrain wrote:

"At the time, an AppleInsider source within Apple, not authorized to speak on behalf the company, told us that it was a data reporting error within the tools used to report SSD wear. According to that source, it was not believed to be an actual hardware issue with the SSD, nor were the SSDs aging notably faster than prior because of RAM swap or other reasons."

Internet experts have confirmed that this was an XNU bug. However, the 11.4 XNU source has dropped several months ago and I haven't seen anyone follow up about where that bug actually was. It is almost as if Apple has access to some kind of secret code level somewhere between the "hardware" and the "software". That's just the kind of sneaky thing that Apple would do.

BobTheFisherman wrote:

What is the issue exactly? SSDs are made to read/write data.

The issue exactly is that, as of 11.6, the M1 Macs write up to 32 times more data to the SSD than an Intel Mac with the same amount of RAM performing the same workload in the same applications.

FWIW, I received my M1 MacBook Air Nov 17th, 2020. Here is part of a DriveDX report…

Advanced SMART Status : OK

Overall Health Rating : GOOD 100%

SSD Lifetime Left Indicator : GOOD 100%

Issues found : 0

Doesn't seem to be a problem.

What is it you are looking for? HDDs and SSDs fail over time and use as do all other components. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs so that is an improvement. Are you looking for some empirical data about the life of an SSD? Maybe a google search will result in performance/life comparisons. You asked "Is M1 Excessive SSD wear issues fixed?". My response was that there is no systemic issue I'm aware of wrt Mac SSDs. If you are finding different opinions on google then maybe ask those expressing those opinions about their findings.

FWIW, as I previously said on the post you linked, I think people were getting false reports with whatever tools they were using. I don't see a problem.

SteamX wrote:

This problem has been described more than once on this forum and other sites. It does not affect all users, but it can significantly reduce disk life. Apple did not recognize this as a problem, as usual, but perhaps released a solution in one of the OS updates.

My TV died, my light bulb burned out, my car air conditioner quit. I searched google and these same things are happening to others but not all other users. It must be systemic problems with these products, when will the product manufacturers fix these issues?

I'm sorry but I still do not understand what it is you want. Because some users have issues with a product does not mean there is a systemic problem that the manufacturer needs to fix.