High ssd writes on M1 MBA 8/256

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Level 1

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High ssd writes on M1 MBA 8/256

So, I've had this MBA since the start of Feb, bought second hand so can't vouch for previous use. I'm on 11.5.1 as of 25 July.

I've been following the discussions on Macrumors forums about the high TBW (terabytes written) and there are some ideas in there that reduce this effect. There are some assumptions regarding the lifetime of these drives at around 160TBW. Now my logging using smartmontools of this is showing a pretty high reading from 57.4TBW. At this rate, my SSD will not last more than a couple of years.

Others on that forum say that they have very low writes and yet I'm not doing any intensive video of graphics work, simple web browsing, and so on.

If you don't look for this then you won't be any wiser but I'm concerned about the impact of these high levels of SSD write cycles.

Is there anyone on this forum with the knowledge or experience of this please?

Posted on Jul 30, 2021 12:03 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

69,296 points

Jul 31, 2021 5:29 PM in response to IanDeGama

It is currently unknown whether this is due to a macOS bug or if the information shown by the SMART attributes is accurate. Supposedly at least one of the causes was supposed to have been fixed with macOS 11.4 (I believe MacRumors had an article about this fix). Another contributor on these forums mentioned a potential issue with some apps and how the GPU may be using excessive amounts of memory/storage causing unnecessary writes to the SSD (I've never heard of this although it is entirely plausible). It would not be surprising that certain apps are doing something which causes this problem since the M1 CPU may be handling things differently that the Intel CPU. Since not everyone is experiencing these high SSD writes my guess is it is due to a third party app.

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High ssd writes on M1 MBA 8/256

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