Hi there 🌸
I bought in April this year a MacBook Pro 13" Space Gray on M1 chip. However, I bought it as used. Drive condition when I start using it was 83%, now it's decreased to 81%. So, how to prevent fast decreasing of SSD lifespan? How to make this drive to use it more effective, with extending their lifespan?
Greetings đź’ś
Eliza
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.4
Normal amateur usage would only be about 2% per year.
If it has lost 2% of its expected lifespan in a month it is probably writing too much to disk.
This could be because you are doing a tremendous amount of work or there is something running in the background.
Open Activity Monitor (found in your Utilities folder) and click on "Disk".
A normal figure for "Data Written" would probably be 10GB - 20GB per day unless you are downloading or copying large files which could account for the extra usage.
The processes writing the most will be shown on the left.
As you can see in my example kernel_task and launchd are the 2 biggest users.
One culprit I have found in the past is spotlight and mds_stores writing over 100GB per day.
FYI, most SSD failures occur due to issues with the SSD's controller, but the controller's health is not being monitored. I have personally seen multiple SSDs write PBs of data before they actually wore out. There was an SSD endurance experiment back in 2013 where they ran a dozen SSDs for 24/7 for a couple of years. Most of them were able to write PBs of data before they failed completely. Here is an archived version of the final concluding article for that SSD endurance experiment since it is no longer on the actual site:
I have several SSDs which have reported SMART errors and have even triggered a "Failed" status, but they are still working just fine. Unfortunately most of the current NVMe based SSDs only report very basic SMART health details which is not sufficient for properly interpreting the health of the SSD. Unless you are nearing PBs of writes, or you see a lot of SMART SSD errors listed, then there should be no problem with the SSD. Even those generic SMART errors may be alleviated possibly with a DFU Firmware Restore which would reset the internal SSD....hard to say if will also reset the SSD to defaults, but that is the only chance we have of trying to fix any generic errors reported by SMART for the M-series SSDs.
@Ian is correct that leaving extra Free space on the drive can help lessen the wear on the SSD....it also can help with SSD performance as well.
SMART health monitoring for SSDs is more about being alerted to changes and looking for any sudden increases which is not easy to do with the Apple SSDs which report only very basic & limited information. SMART health monitoring of Hard Drives is way more useful since apps like DriveDx have a very easy time alerting users to problems very early, but SSDs are different since a change in an SSD's SMART attribute is usually not showing impending decline & doom like it usually is for a Hard Drive. With the Apple SSDs, the generic "errors" attribute is probably the SMART attribute to be most concerned about.
The previous owner may have been a heavy user.
My 2% figure was based on my own usage and was an estimation for a casual user.
The first time I used my old M2 mini with a boot disk running Sequoia I discovered Spotlight and mds_stores had written 1.2GB in the first month. It had shown no problem in the previous 12 months running Sonoma.
I "cured" it by switching off Spotlight in the System Settings and telling it to ignore all the drives I have connected.
I was expecting a similar problem when I got an M4 mini last month but that was OK even though both minis are set up the same way.
Ian R. Brown wrote:
The previous owner may have been a heavy user.
My 2% figure was based on my own usage and was an estimation for a casual user.
The first time I used my old M2 mini with a boot disk running Sequoia I discovered Spotlight and mds_stores had written 1.2GB in the first month. It had shown no problem in the previous 12 months running Sonoma.
I "cured" it by switching off Spotlight in the System Settings and telling it to ignore all the drives I have connected.
I was expecting a similar problem when I got an M4 mini last month but that was OK even though both minis are set up the same way.
Thank you for the additional details and comparisons between M2 and M4 machines
Still have the old M2 Mac Mini hooked to Tv for streaming purposes
The M4 Mac Mini from Oct 2024 is now the go to machine
Like yourself and from the M4
Latest Etrecheck of May 3
S.M.A.R.T. Details: 0% used, 1.79 TB written, 100% health, 2 unsafe shutdowns over 7 Months, so far
The Activity Monitor readings are only from the last time the computer was booted . . . in the case of my screenshot that was just under a day.
If Eliza could post a similar screenshot and say when her machine was last booted we could get an idea of what might be going on.
Here is one of my " Go To " for most things Hardware related - HWTech
" way more useful since apps like DriveDx have a very easy time alerting users to problems very early,
The DriveDX application was the one referencesd earlier
If you were to run the application and post the report
I am confidence at least one or more contributors would have a look at the report.
The more free space you have the longer the drive will last, ie an SSD with 100 gb free will last at least 4 times longer than the same SSD with 25 gb free space.
The only thing you can do to extend the life of an SSD is to leave a fair amount of free space on the drive. That way you aren't writing to the same areas over and over.
Question " How to prevent decrasing SSD lifespan? "
Used is used.
AFAIK - there is not stopping this
A MacBook Pro M1 from 2020 is already 4 - 5 years old and previously owned by someone else.
How much data was written to the drive and how much was removed from the drive will have a toll on the heath of the drive
There are some contributors who may suggest running an Third Party Application to evaluate the drive health
They maybe able to understand the results and off more insight on the report
Sadly, I am not one of those persons
Predicated on @Ian R. Brown previous posting 👍 regarding 2% per year for “ Normal amateur usage “
OP wrote “ Drive condition when I start using it was 83%, “ >> after 4 years usage by previous owner
That would have to meant.
The Previous Owner was using an average 4.25 % usage per year or double the Normal Usage
Not a really good place to start from.
Just saying
FWIW, I purchased an M3 iMac a little over a year ago and the SSD health indicator is at 99.0%. And I write to it a lot. But, it's less than half full.
How to prevent decrasing SSD lifespan?
