Question about the quantity of NAND chips in MacBook Pro M4 lineup

Apple does not publish the number of chips included, and also reserves the right to change the quantity and maker of devices included for compelling engineering or quality reasons at any time, including in the middle of a production run.

Readers here have observed that when larger storage sizes are selected, the overall speed tends to be higher, suggesting that at least more devices may be in use, possibly of higher quality or speed.

TalentedScout wrote:

Thx for response.

I consider buying a new one with more NAND chips just to be careful.

That's not going to make much of a difference. If one of the Nands fails then the entire storage space is lost as it's a combined volume. You can't access storage when part of it is missing, since files can be stored in chunks on different nands chips and combined when you request the file. The OS might not even boot up to even get access to the files if part of it resides on the failed nand chip.

Having more chips does not add redundancy or protection.

In general, when SSD drives fail, there are NO SURVIVORS. Typically NOTHING can be salvaged from a failed SSD drive, no matter how many of what kind of chips were used to build it.

That is why it is vitally import that you create a local, disk-based copy of your files. Apple provides the Free Time Machine backup, built into your Mac. All you need to do is provide a suitable drive, and tell it to go.

TalentedScout wrote:

I consider buying a new one with more NAND chips just to be careful.

More NAND chips per se won't make any difference in whether or not the system fails. It could even be argued that more NAND chips only increases the risk of failure due to additional complexity on the SoC.

Rather than being concerned about the NAND chips, make sure to purchase AppleCare+ when you buy your new Mac. It provides hardware & accidental damage coverage as long as you subscribe to it.

Having a single NAND chip will just decrease performance. As for longevity.....it probably won't make much of a difference for the average user. Most SSD failures are due to SSD controller failures and are usually fairly sudden with little to no warning.....other than perhaps issues powering on & waking from sleep.

I've only heard of one M-series Mac model from a couple years ago which only had a single NAND chip. I haven't heard of any others, but I also don't go looking for the tear downs either. Seems like you should know where to look for those tear downs since the moderators will only remove any links we post here.

<< I thought that maybe somebody knows the answer from repairing experience or teardown reviews. >>

As I tried to say, the chips in one unit may not match the next using down the line. So you can not rely on what was shipped previously.