M1 SSD Life span scaring issue

Question

M1 SSD Life span scaring issue

Hello, I start to worry about the SSD of my mac mini m1 16/512. After 292 days of work, it looks like it already has 134,28 TB of Data units written and it is already at 5% of prefailed reallocation (data from disk sensei). Smartctl gives even more scary 147TB. Where my mackbook pro from 2017 which undergo the same intensity of work has only 136TB for 8%...

Does it mean that it my m1 SSD is at the end of its life? How is it possible that it can be such short (not even a year) ?

I've seen that it only can handle 300 and 400 times its capacity if refer to online information (like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIuYvxxyFsI ...

Thanks

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Number: APPLE SSD AP0512Q

Serial Number: 0ba0127a021c7641

Firmware Version: 2.120.4

PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID: 0x106b

IEEE OUI Identifier: 0x000000

Controller ID: 0

NVMe Version: <1.2

Number of Namespaces: 3

Local Time is: Wed Dec 8 13:34:34 2021 CET

Firmware Updates (0x02): 1 Slot

Optional Admin Commands (0x0004): Frmw_DL

Optional NVM Commands (0x0004): DS_Mngmt

Maximum Data Transfer Size: 256 Pages

Supported Power States

St Op Max Active Idle RL RT WL WT Ent_Lat Ex_Lat

0 + 0.00W - - 0 0 0 0 0 0

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 33 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 99%

Percentage Used: 5%

Data Units Read: 247,012,487 [126 TB]

Data Units Written: 288,371,609 [147 TB]

Host Read Commands: 1,945,936,155

Host Write Commands: 1,058,592,802

Controller Busy Time: 0

Power Cycles: 375

Power On Hours: 727

Unsafe Shutdowns: 40

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Error Information Log Entries: 0

Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745

Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 8, 2021 4:40 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

woodmeister50

Level 7

20,503 points

Dec 8, 2021 5:07 AM in response to jacquesperconte

From general information on the web, the "common" range of TBW for SSDs is:

SSD Size TBW

256 GB 300

512 GB 600

1TB 1200

There are several manufacturers of SSDs that can deliver 2 to 3 times the above values. It seems that the supplier Apple uses for their SSDs can supply these higher levels. Whether Apple is using them or not is unknown.

From your report, a couple key numbers to consider:

Available Spare: 100%

means that none of the spare blocks have been used yet, i.e. no "worn out" blocks have occurred.

Percentage Used: 5%

Is the estimated amount of the life of the drive used which is based on a variety of factors determined by the manufacturer.

With that said, TBW is a number that is used by manufacturers to determine their warranty coverage and is not real indicator of the ultimate life of the drive. Much like a car, a car manufacturer will repair vehicles under warranty up to say 50,000 miles. But that doesn't mean the car will die at 50,001 miles.

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Answer 2

Dec 8, 2021 7:02 AM in response to jacquesperconte

One thing you can do if you are concerned, get an external Thunderbolt SSD for your projects. They are very fast and all the reads and writes can be none on them. There is also the possibility of getting an external multi drive RAID enclosure which can speed access up by writing across the drives (RAID0 would be the mode and Google that to learn more). This is what a lot of video production people use.

BTW, we are only users like yourself here so you won't get any "official word" from Apple here.

And if you truly believe that this is an issue, contact Apple Directly (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201232) or set up a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple Store or at the nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider and have the Mac evaluated.

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Answer 3

Dec 8, 2021 6:40 AM in response to woodmeister50

Thank you very much for those informations. So it looks like I don't have to worry in a short term. It may just have reach a bit more than its life span. I hope I will have an official answer from Apple to know more about the state of my drive. I am using it a lot for video projects.

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Answer 4

Dec 8, 2021 7:48 AM in response to woodmeister50

Thank you, you're completely right I do. I have a lot of external drives (really a lot). There is an issue because actually, I do not work so much directly on the internal hard drive. I will report that. Thanks for the link.

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M1 SSD Life span scaring issue

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