M4 Mac mini SSD (only 500 GB written) Available Spare dropped to 99%

I have been using my M2 and M4 minis booted from externals for the past 2 years but last week I reset them to boot normally from their 256 GB SSDs.


I SMART tested them and the M2 had 1.1 TB written and the M4 had 500 GB written.


The Available Spare on both of them was 100% as expected.


However, today I noticed that the Available Spare on the M4 had dropped to 99% the same as the Available Spare Threshold.


Is this likely to be a glitch (can SMART produce glitches?) or is something more sinister occurring?


I retested to check and it was still 99%.

Mac mini, macOS 26.7

Posted on Oct 6, 2026 5:46 AM

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Posted on Oct 6, 2026 10:34 AM

FYI, I've rarely seen any Apple NVMe SSD to be at 100%. Most of them which I've checked are 99%.


Also, sometimes the manufacturer's don't always implement SMART reporting correctly. In fact, many times the manufacturer may implement these items backwards.


Usually any small changes should be ignored except for the values associated with "Media & Data Integrity Errors" which I find will usually show up where the user will actually encounter system related issues. These "Media & Data Integrity Errors" is the SMART attribute to be most concerned about. And possibly any "Error Information & Log Entries".


Like I said before, most SSDs will write PBs of data before wearing out so the "Available Spare" value should not really be much of a concern. I've rarely seen this value lower than 99% (unless the values were implemented in reverse of course where it would indicate "used" instead). Plus many of these NVMe SSDs (especially Apple's) don't show enough health information to really understand the true health of the SSD. Since you are paying close attention to this information, then just observe & learn how Apple's SSDs and the SMART information changes over time. This will tell you exactly how Apple has implemented these features.


Most SSDs will fail suddenly with absolutely no warning due to the SSD's controller failing. There is no health monitoring of the SSD's controller. Otherwise the "Media & Data Integrity Errors" and the "Error Information & Log Entries" are going to be the attributes of most concern for you at least from my own more limited observations of the Apple USB-C Macs' internal SSDs. You will drive yourself crazy otherwise. I've been using SMART to monitor HDs & SSDs for over 20 years to support my organization's computers (SSDs since around 2010/2012+).

13 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 6, 2026 10:34 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

FYI, I've rarely seen any Apple NVMe SSD to be at 100%. Most of them which I've checked are 99%.


Also, sometimes the manufacturer's don't always implement SMART reporting correctly. In fact, many times the manufacturer may implement these items backwards.


Usually any small changes should be ignored except for the values associated with "Media & Data Integrity Errors" which I find will usually show up where the user will actually encounter system related issues. These "Media & Data Integrity Errors" is the SMART attribute to be most concerned about. And possibly any "Error Information & Log Entries".


Like I said before, most SSDs will write PBs of data before wearing out so the "Available Spare" value should not really be much of a concern. I've rarely seen this value lower than 99% (unless the values were implemented in reverse of course where it would indicate "used" instead). Plus many of these NVMe SSDs (especially Apple's) don't show enough health information to really understand the true health of the SSD. Since you are paying close attention to this information, then just observe & learn how Apple's SSDs and the SMART information changes over time. This will tell you exactly how Apple has implemented these features.


Most SSDs will fail suddenly with absolutely no warning due to the SSD's controller failing. There is no health monitoring of the SSD's controller. Otherwise the "Media & Data Integrity Errors" and the "Error Information & Log Entries" are going to be the attributes of most concern for you at least from my own more limited observations of the Apple USB-C Macs' internal SSDs. You will drive yourself crazy otherwise. I've been using SMART to monitor HDs & SSDs for over 20 years to support my organization's computers (SSDs since around 2010/2012+).

M4 Mac mini SSD (only 500 GB written) Available Spare dropped to 99%

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