iMac 2021 M1 possible internal drive replacement

First, I'll remove a whole bunch of videos and pics to free up some space. Then take a backup of my important documents to external drives. I'll run the machine for a few days to see if the errors still keep popping up, especially the Pages + iCloud connection.

If it still does, then I'll run First Aid while booted into Recovery Mode and see what happens.

Thank you so much!

Here's the Disk Utility on the volume Data. It does show errors which it has repaired:

Running First Aid on “Data” (disk3s5)

Verifying the startup volume will cause this computer to stop responding.

Verifying file system.

Volume could not be unmounted.

Using live mode.

Performing fsck_apfs -n -l -x /dev/rdisk3s5

Checking the container superblock.

Checking the checkpoint with transaction ID 22325138.

Checking the space manager.

Checking the space manager free queue trees.

Checking the object map.

Checking the encryption key structures.

Checking volume /dev/rdisk3s5.

Checking the APFS volume superblock.

The volume Data was formatted by newfs_apfs (1933.80.3) and last modified by apfs_kext (2632.40.17).

Checking the object map.

Checking the snapshot metadata tree.

Checking the snapshot metadata.

Checking the document ID tree.

Checking the fsroot tree.

warning: inode (id 6090827): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6091919): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595276): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595278): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595279): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595280): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595281): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595296): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595297): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 6595298): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8012)

warning: inode (id 7224409): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7224604): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7224654): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7224869): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7225048): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7225184): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7225330): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: inode (id 7225425): dir-stats key xf does not exist, despite internal_flags (0x8412)

warning: descendants (26002) of dir-stats object (id 324428) is greater than expected (17678)

warning: physical_size (1194053632) of dir-stats object (id 324156) is greater than expected (20242432)

Checking the extent ref tree.

Checking the file key rolling tree.

Verifying volume object map space.

The volume /dev/rdisk3s5 with UUID CD438273-5748-4D9F-82E6-782F9E2B9F99 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.

Verifying allocated space.

Performing deferred repairs.

The volume /dev/rdisk3s5 with UUID CD438273-5748-4D9F-82E6-782F9E2B9F99 appears to be OK.

File system check exit code is 0.

Restoring the original state found as mounted.

Operation successful.

Here's the etrecheck report.

Basically, this means that in the case of a crash, I will have to replace the whole machine itself. Did I understand that correctly?

Thanks for the clarification on hardware failure!

And yes, I'll uninstall all the VPN's which I didn't even know were there!

I'll get around to this and post.

Is it essential that the machine be restarted every now and again? If so, how frequently?

Yes, that is true! But how does one fix such problems?

Thanks, I will check from time to time from now on!

Thank you!

I will do this shortly.

After the deletion process, I'm now down to 65 files for which I need to change permissions.

That is a pain. Also, is that a good idea?

Sorry, had to go to sleep in this side of the world!

Before I started, I had 3720 items to delete with VPN in the name. Which is 211 items including 38 folders containing 2391 files.

65 files were left which could not be deleted since I needed to change permissions for these files.

I am in unknown territory from here on.