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M1 Mac users report alarming hard drive health readings – iMore

35 points| thedday | 5 years ago |imore.com | reply

16 comments

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[+] supermatt|5 years ago|reply
FUD.

Everyone is spouting TBW when percentage used is what manufacturer set to be the warranties lifetime. Go read the smart specs.

No one talking about NAND types (SLC,MLC,TLC,QLC) or one of the hybrid types (pSLC, iTLC, etc) which can be difference between 1k and over 100k P/E cycles.

My guess is this behaviour is (mostly) by design, using high bandwidth mass storage as some awesome high performance virtual memory.

Why are people complaining about 1-3% wear in 2 months when used as a dev machines, or running a hundred tabs in chrome? That’s still over 5 years usage within expected lifetime on very heavily used machines, and it could be even higher in reality.

[+] my123|5 years ago|reply
It actually swaps much more than the older machine that I have, at 3% wear already. And the indicator isn't linear. (at 30TB written currently, 250TB and the machine risks failure when estimating from a machine which actually failed from this already)

In those machines, Apple just uses TLC flash from Toshiba/Kioxia (off-the-shelf).

There's already some pathological cases where the drive actually died from this: https://twitter.com/lunixbochs/status/1366209143824998405?s=...

For some reason, it goes crazy after about a week and a half of uptime in desktop use, after which it starts thrashing the SSD at a crazy rate.

The 256GB model of the 980 Pro, a top-of-the-line TLC SSD is rated at just 150TBW.

[+] anfilt|5 years ago|reply
The SSD in these macs are soldered. So its not like you can just swap out the drive like other solid state drives.

I think thats also part of the problem. You have a device that wears out, but basically is unserviceable.

[+] foerbert|5 years ago|reply
I think think your last sentence answers your own question. People are worried their new machine might only last 5 years.
[+] kingnothing|5 years ago|reply
As a counterpoint, I've had a 16GB M1 MacBook Air since launch for casual use and light experimental home dev work. 0% wear so far.
[+] wil421|5 years ago|reply
Not far from you at 1% wear with similar use.
[+] jonplackett|5 years ago|reply
Defo waiting for 32GB Ram. 8GB always looked unnatural!
[+] withinboredom|5 years ago|reply
> any mac experts know why my SSD just fills up throughout the day, frequently going from 65%ish percent free to 100% over the course of 8 hours?

My phone does that, I’m not surprised the desktop version does it too...

[+] trestenhortz|5 years ago|reply
If Apple put more memory in these machines there would less thrashing.
[+] rasz|5 years ago|reply
We are witnessing repeat of Tesla infotainment NAND wear fiasco by Apple.