Wear on SSD

Unless you are doing work that writes 80-100 GB+ a day to the SSD there is really no need to worry.

However, if you have insufficient RAM in your system and your apps are constantly memory swapping to disk, you could be writing substantial amounts and not really be aware of it because of the speed of the SSDs are so fast to make memory swapping not seem very noticeable unlike the old spinning HDD. Even at that, if the daily swap writing is 10-20 GB per day or less there is no real problem.

Some simple math, a 512GB SSD generally in the industry have a TBW spec (terabytes written) of around 300 TBW. There are some that are higher than that but just as a math example I will use that. Say you are writing 30GB a day to that SSD. The simple math says that it will be 10,000 days before reaching that or 27.4 years. 30 GB a day is a lot of data. Even at 60 GB a day that ends up 13.7 years. Chances are that the Mac will be quite outdated by that time.

The last thing to note, is all the TBW specs that manufacturers state for SSDs is solely for warranty coverage. So, just because you reach that level of use does not mean that it will die that is just how long that manufacturers will cover that drive.

SSD wear on the M series Macs is really no cause for concern. The hardware and software are optimized to provide the greatest longevity without the need for special handling.

Older systems, especially those where the internal startup HDD had been replaced with an SSD, could take advantage of what is called the TRIM feature of an SSD to provide wear leveling, a way to increase the lifespan of the SSD. The feature was not available on all third-party SSDs. The feature could be turned on and off in the OS and some SSDs had it built in.

In the case of the M series Macs, I have no doubt whatsoever that Apple have designed their hardware to leverage the feature to the benefit of the user.

If you are really paranoid (like me!) about SSD wear you can buy a cheap 1 TB (or smaller) SSD that connects by USB 3.0, install the operating system on it and run your Mac from that.

There will then be zero wear on your internal SSD.

The USB 3.0 SSD will only be a quarter the speed of your internal but this will have no noticeable effect on the speed of your computer for all normal tasks.

I edit 1080p and 4K video with Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve and there is no difference in performance whether I use the internal or USB SSD. Likewise Geekbench scores are identical.

Agree with the others. You probably have read too much tech babbling about SSD wear. Nothing to worry about. My last Mac was a 2013 iMac with a Fusion drive (which is part SSD) and after 9 years of use it was still perfect.

And if users are interested that sort of thing there is an app called DriveDx that produces copious amounts of data about your SSD, including performance, percentage of life left, errors, etc. And it gets the information from the drive itself using S.M.A.R.T. Here’s a shot of my Studio Max internal drive.

> There will then be zero wear on your internal SSD

zero wear ... hey, but if the occasional silicon Mac forced boot anyway somehow touches the internal SSD causing some of its cells to flip

...no, just kidding but I see your point being a packrat myself and using stuff as long as it lasts, ... and longer

I would not worry about SSD wear.

Is there real data how often, if ever, this happens before the computer is otherwise obsolete?

I use my Mac all day long for the last 6 years and my ssd has no issues