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Ask HN: Has the Apple Silicon excessive disk read/write issue been fixed?
125 points by cool_hw on Sept 29, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 135 comments
This was a discussion when M1 macbooks were launched, and Apple supposedly addressed it in an OS update (macOS 11.4).

But I'm seeing really high read/write numbers. I'm aware that SSD lifespans are long and TBW spec is pretty generous. Still, compared to my linux machines, this seems extraordinarily high.

On my newish M1 MBA, with the latest updates, with barely any use, 98%+ sleep, I'm seeing about 3 to 5 GB reads per day and 2 to 4 GB writes per day.

Latest report from smartctl.

----------------------------------------------------

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
    
    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        27 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    716,195 [366 GB]
    Data Units Written:                 616,232 [315 GB]
    Host Read Commands:                 9,108,273
    Host Write Commands:                6,947,397
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       95
    Power On Hours:                     5
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   11
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
---------------------------------------------------- M1 Air 16GB 1TB.

Is this normal?



Wow...looks like I don't do much disk I/O compared to most people here. I'm on a 2017 iMac that I use for both personal stuff and work. It seems like most people here can do in a few months what it took me 5 years to do.

  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        39 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          10%
  Percentage Used:                    2%
  Data Units Read:                    163,453,178 [83.6 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 96,776,875 [49.5 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 4,760,816,278
  Host Write Commands:                3,237,489,546
  Controller Busy Time:               7,045
  Power Cycles:                       16,947
  Power On Hours:                     2,307
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   109
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
I've got 64 GB of RAM so don't have much swap usage which probably helps.

I see everyone posting data for M1 Macs has an "Available Spare Threshold" of 99% whereas I've got 10%. What's the story there?

My understanding is that you want "Available Spare" to be as high as possible, and "Available Spare Threshold" is how low "Available Spare" can go before it is considering to be a failure, so the lower "Available Spare Threshold" the better.


I'm an 2017 iMac as well, use it every day for work and personal stuff... sometimes literally hammer the stuff and my numbers look nothing like some the other ones displayed here... bit of a shocker.

   === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
   SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
   
   SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
   Critical Warning:                   0x00
   Temperature:                        36 Celsius
   Available Spare:                    100%
   Available Spare Threshold:          10%
   Percentage Used:                    1%
   Data Units Read:                    27,459,395 [14.0 TB]
   Data Units Written:                 34,559,091 [17.6 TB]
   Host Read Commands:                 864,546,880
   Host Write Commands:                1,257,234,100
   Controller Busy Time:               3,486
   Power Cycles:                       4,595
   Power On Hours:                     1,882
   Unsafe Shutdowns:                   74
   Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
   Error Information Log Entries:      0
   Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
   Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    72858


Thank you for the data point, and your usage on an M1 will probably yield crazier numbers. This is why I asked, Apple silicon machines look like they're using the disk far more than older macs.


I'm surprised by the numbers here as well. I have a late 2016 MBP 512GB (used daily) and the numbers are nowhere similar. It's a bit worrying though that I'm the only one in this thread with error log entries.

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        30 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          10%
  Percentage Used:                    3%
  Data Units Read:                    59,731,850 [30.5 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 78,972,837 [40.4 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,676,492,248
  Host Write Commands:                2,466,236,096
  Controller Busy Time:               3,456
  Power Cycles:                       42,547
  Power On Hours:                     2,616
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   131
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      16


Is there a way to look up that error log?


  Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)
  Num   ErrCount  SQId   CmdId  Status  PELoc          LBA  NSID    VS
    0         16     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    1         15     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    2         14     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    3         13     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    4         12     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    5         11     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    6         10     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    7          9     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    8          8     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
    9          7     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   10          6     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   11          5     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   12          4     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   13          3     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   14          2     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
   15          1     0  0x0000  0x4016  0x004            0     1     -
  ... (48 entries not read)
To be honest I'm not sure how to interpret it. There are some tools on Linux to read this information but the output doesn't really seem more useful.


I did a quick search earlier and it seems these are informational only and not necessarily persistent warnings. Some discussion suggested that some unsupported requests to the disk can result in these, but I don't know for sure.


I had a 16GB M1 MBP for about 9 months and I was very happy with it, but once I started using Docker, I decided I needed more RAM. Bought a 64GB one and.. wow.. it's the same CPU but the machine feels so much snappier (and it's not a clean install). macOS really seems to like having all that RAM about even if it claims to not be leaning on it heavily.


Perhaps one day when Apple prices the RAM upgrades reasonably..


I noticed that on my linux machine the available spare threshold number is 10% too.

Thank you for posting, this (and the sibling posts and some google searching) confirms to me that older macs were not using disks this much for the same tasks.

I still may be wrong about this, but I am yet to see a counterpoint from Apple Silicon machines.


Another anecdata for the pile; M1 MacBook Pro, December 2020 (~22 months old, heavy usage.)

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
    
    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        43 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    24%
    Data Units Read:                    2,572,188,062 [1.31 PB]
    Data Units Written:                 1,431,628,344 [732 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 24,927,069,158
    Host Write Commands:                5,308,198,627
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       283
    Power On Hours:                     3,605
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   37
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


> 1.31 PB

Wow, that's a large number.


Are people generating their read/write results by install & running the 'smartmontools' utility?


yes, and running `smartctl -a disk0`


Mac Studio M1 Max / 32 GB RAM / 2TB SSD / April 2022

Used daily for moderate "office" usage (Slack/Teams/Firefox/RDP) during office hours. Heavier usage (XCode/AndroidStudio/Lightroom/FCP) on weekends/evenings.

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  
  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        27 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    49,821,690 [25.5 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 29,653,584 [15.1 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 773,908,710
  Host Write Commands:                352,429,221
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       214
  Power On Hours:                     428
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   9
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
I had to turn off Powernap to convince the thing to sleep. But whatever non sense it was doing (apparently stuck in Photos and Push Notifications), it has thankfully not burned the SSD!

Addendum. I just wrote 1.7GB in the last 30mins while reading HN on Firefox, and a few other web pages. Based on that, I would say the 2GB–4GB write a day from OP are fine.


> I just wrote 1.7GB in the last 30mins while reading HN on Firefox

To be fair an HN page can consume hundreds or even thousands of bytes


> Addendum. I just wrote 1.7GB in the last 30mins while reading HN on Firefox, and a few other web pages.

Thanks for sharing this. I need to see if linux does this.


Wow. My primary SSD on linux (with 32gb ram) has 2598 hours uptime logged and only 2.4 TB written so far.


This is exactly the kind of comparison that prompted me to post this topic. I suppose macOS just uses the SSD far more.


M1 Mac Mini. I beat the heck out of this thing.

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        28 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    5%
    Data Units Read:                    83,875,891 [42.9 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 70,257,403 [35.9 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 881,926,045
    Host Write Commands:                530,490,261
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       3,350
    Power On Hours:                     496
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   13
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
One thing that really stands out to me here is everyone else has a `Power Cycles` measurement in the hundreds... but mine is 3,350 which seems odd. Especially because this is not a laptop and it never goes to sleep. It has only been rebooted maybe 10 times since it was purchased about a year ago.


I think in some cases the drive goes to "sleep" when idle and it counts a power cycle when it detects keyboard/mouse movement as a wake. I have an older 2016 MBP with a 2TB drive that has just shy of 50,000 power cycles… which doesn't seem possible, since that would average out to over 20 reboots a day, which doesn't happen. And in 6 years I only have 361 unsafe shutdowns.

There was a time period where I had this docked with displays and the MBP would often wake up from sleep randomly, or from mouse movements. Never did quite figure it out.


That’s power cycles of the disk firmware, isn’t it, not power cycles of macOS? I don’t know how things work, but guess it might decide to shut down when idle.

It also could crash often, but if that’s the case, I guess you’d have seen data loss. If you run disk repair in Disk Utility, does it find problems with the SSD?


How are your power on hours 496 then? Something is fishy...


I think that's because `power on` hours is talking about the disk being in the power on state, not the rest of the machine.


    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   13
That's a bit worrisome. Has your mac been freezing/crashing?


I hold the record for "unsafe shutdowns."

One reason, is that I am constantly using Xcode, which is a bug farm, and SourceSafe used to crash like crazy.

Also, some of the apps I'm developing don't start off, perfect. I spend a lot of time crashing.

The advent of the M1 seems to have ushered in a new threading system. The threads act weird, now (look at how long it takes to resolve your stack, on a breakpoint). I'm pretty sure it really doesn't like crashes.

And I stopped playing Borderlands 3, because it liked to crash hard.


> And I stopped playing Borderlands 3, because it liked to crash hard.

In all fairness, it also does this on underpowered Windows/Linux hardware. It really is just a poorly made game, not Wine/Apple's fault here.


Not SourceSafe. SourceTree.

I did use SourceSafe, but it has been many moons.

In any case, SourceTree just released an update that seems to have fixed all the crashes.

Xcode still has some issue with the source code analyzer. Sometimes, it just hangs. In some cases, it’s not force-quittable.


Yeah, that'd definitely do it. I'm really interested in knowing if people see that stat going up without crashing/power loss.


I'm not sure but I wonder if it happens when you do the macos install / recovery mode where it does repeated reboots.


I only see that counter going up when a system hard freezes/crashes or the system loses power. I'm not sure macos recovery/install would cause that.


2020 M1 Air 16BG/1TB. Still running OS X 11.3 - looks like I should upgrade...

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        42 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    28%
    Data Units Read:                    1,704,591,506 [872 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 1,502,526,446 [769 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 6,434,009,809
    Host Write Commands:                5,290,485,916
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       207
    Power On Hours:                     2,500
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   89
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


Wow, that's a well used machine!


2020 M1 Air (8GB/256GB)

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 34 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 99%

Percentage Used: 4%

Data Units Read: 181,700,939 [93.0 TB]

Data Units Written: 123,234,692 [63.0 TB]

Host Read Commands: 2,190,216,039

Host Write Commands: 1,482,884,502

Controller Busy Time: 0

Power Cycles: 159

Power On Hours: 1,480

Unsafe Shutdowns: 16

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Error Information Log Entries: 0

----------------------------------------------------

I don't really know how to interpret this but I've been getting consistent crashes once my battery hits around 25% charge and the widely reported "AP watchdog expired" error message. Battery capacity's now at 71% and dropping rapidly after sub 500 charge cycles. Couple months out of 1 year warranty. Any advice is appreciated, would hope I'm not just shit out of luck for such an expensive device after ~15 months.


You have a bad battery and need a new one. Should be fine afterwards.


M1 Air 16GB 1 TB, probably like 𝟹̶ ̶𝚖̶𝚘̶𝚗̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚜̶ ̶𝚘̶𝚕̶𝚍̶ 5 months old

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        38 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    15%
    Data Units Read:                    864,095,867 [442 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 856,395,960 [438 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 2,546,210,282
    Host Write Commands:                2,241,066,233
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       97
    Power On Hours:                     1,389
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   7
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


Wow. What kinda operations are you performing? It's at an indicated 15% of its life in 3 months! (I understand that it can go past 100%)


Need to remember the actual date I got it, but it's definitely not longer than 5 months or something.

Edit: My user folder was created May 26, 2022. So 5 months.

Basically I was completely unaware of this problem to start with.

I'm a generalist, and so typically:

- have Blender open doing some 3D modeling, then forget to close

- make some music on Ableton with hundreds of tracks and plugins

- designing a UI on Sketch

- Davinci Resolve is open cause I'm color grading a shot I just rendered

- After Effects is open cause I'm compositing something

- Atom or VSCode or sometimes both are open cause I'm writing some code for Blender (creative coding) to render online, or for anything else code-related, etc. etc....

- oh and Chrome is open with hundreds of tabs cause I'm researching a bunch of stuff + watching videos.

I understand that I don't need to have all these apps open at the same time, but typically that happens for 2 reasons, either 1. I forget to close, or dont want to close just yet or 2. I'm working on a single project that's using all these apps.

I'm a very very very heavy user. I like my computer to be able to handle me doing stupid things like this. Anyway it's good that I'm now aware of this, will make sure to not try to exceed the RAM my computer is capable of, but I honestly see it as a design flaw and less my own 'irresponsibility'.

I do see this as a temporary computer though until I somehow make enough money to buy a much more powerful one. Will make sure to get an M1 with the highest TB drive then.


I'm impressed that you can do all that with only 16Gb RAM.


Oh barely... sometimes I hear clicks when switching between apps


Bought my M1 right after launch and that’s crazy to do in 3 months. I’ll post my numbers when I get back. Mine is personal use only, no work.


I feel like it's mostly been fixed. There are probably individual applications and setups that trigger excessive writes, so a reboot from time to time makes sense to kill any application that might be abusive (assuming it doesn't start on login).

At 5GB/day, a 1TB drive will last at least 10 years… assuming 5GB every day for 10 years, which is unrealistic. Apple will drop latest release OS support in 4-5 years… will you still be doing 5GB per day in that case? Probably not.

I honestly think that all SSD/NVME chips need to post their TBW so that people can make their own decision. I also feel like this would benefit Apple, since people will choose their storage solution based on lifespan and not size. Because while a 1TB drive might last 5-10 years, an 8TB drive will basically last forever. Feels like a good sales tactic, honestly, for those with anxiety about drive failure.


M2 Mac 500gb about 2-2.5 months old

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        33 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    19,753,049 [10.1 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 9,383,782 [4.80 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 367,211,629
  Host Write Commands:                64,343,144
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       126
  Power On Hours:                     77
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   5
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00  
  Temperature:                        34 Celsius  
  Available Spare:                    100%  
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%  
  Percentage Used:                    8%  
  Data Units Read:                    1,464,393,120 [749 TB]  
  Data Units Written:                 442,313,981 [226 TB]  
  Host Read Commands:                 21,452,008,572  
  Host Write Commands:                3,394,045,680  
  Controller Busy Time:               0  
  Power Cycles:                       288
  Power On Hours:                     2,173
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   18
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0 
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
Very much abusing my M1Max lately having it run some heavy data scripts & docker 24/7


Wow. What is the SSD capacity?

So 226TB is ~8% for this capacity, i.e., about 28.25TB per 1%, so about 2825TB expected TBW. Ignoring the fact that this is ignoring many factors contributing to the life span, it's still quite an interesting capacity.


My M1Max 1TB:

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        39 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    1%
    Data Units Read:                    139,236,989 [71.2 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 58,514,871 [29.9 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 6,104,303,185
    Host Write Commands:                716,889,789
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       392
    Power On Hours:                     1,311
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   121
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
I keep it busy (I'm on it for, like 12 hours a day).


> Unsafe Shutdowns: 121

Holy shit, that's like once a day?


Sometimes, more.

<He says, with a note of pride>


    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        34 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    33,233,061 [17.0 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 63,502,177 [32.5 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 1,054,789,960
    Host Write Commands:                1,703,081,155
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       184
    Power On Hours:                     921
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   18
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
Even after 32TBW i'm at 0% used? Wow.


another data point:

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        30 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    1%
    Data Units Read:                    53,345,304 [27.3 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 59,621,038 [30.5 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 349,163,066
    Host Write Commands:                218,226,588
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       109
    Power On Hours:                     225
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   8
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
MacBook Air (M1, 2020) 16GB 512GB


Your read/writes seem to be comparable to the parent, but your power on hours are significantly lower, really hard to draw any conclusions here.

I wonder if this whole issue is simply MacOS dumping the stuff in memory to disk when going to standby, and then reading it all back.

So for a 16GB machine, for simplicity, let's say you always have RAM saturated, and you open/close the lid 5 times in a day, you have 16GB * 5 = 80GB per day read/written. For 365 days, that is 80 * 365 = 29200 GB or 28.51 TB read/written.


Launch day purchased M1 MacBook Pro with 4TB SSD.

I have custom pmset setup to NOT dump to disk (mostly) with two aliases:

    pmset-fast: sudo pmset -ab hibernatemode 0 sleep 0
    pmset-secure: sudo pmset -ab hibernatemode 25 sleep 0 displaysleep 1
First one is memory only, if the battery dies, the battery dies and the OS goes away.

The second one is hard drive only, closing the lid writes to disk only and puts the laptop into deep sleep.

I know I'm weird for having this but since I run the first one (fast) 99% of the time I can basically say I almost never write hibernation files to disk.


Thank you, this is useful. I think I'm going to try the memory only option. Your Read/Writes seem lower than others (still pretty high, but much better than other Apple Silicon)


Is there a noticeable difference in battery life usage with option 1?


>open/close the lid 5 times in a day

It's a bit smarter than that, it only writes memory contents to disk after a given period in standby. So in your example you'd only be incurring it twice a day probably.


Indeed, I intended to say letting it get to standby. :)


What model of Macbook is this? And how big is the SSD?


Launch day purchased M1 MacBook Pro with 4TB SSD.


That is good to note, I wonder how accurate it is. Can you share how long you've had it and the typical usage (hours and disk activity)?


Macbook Pro 14 M1 16GB/512GB

Used for around 3 weeks for light development, browsing, etc

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        30 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    2,248,989 [1.15 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 2,286,963 [1.17 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 55,208,855
  Host Write Commands:                62,154,580
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       128
  Power On Hours:                     43
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   7
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0

  Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745


M1 Air 16G 1TB (Bought on Nov 2020 - 1y 10 months old) I think I'm second on this page with "unsafe shutdowns" with 62. It's used by 4 people, 2 adults, 2 kids and heavily used pretty much all day and night.

Lots of web, and video watching. Some very light development and a ton of email :)

I think the unsafe shutdowns are due to my kids trying to run Steam and other games that may or may not work properly, e.g. Farming Simulator that didn't play nice, and cause the computer to freeze forcing us to do a hard shutdown.

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  
  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        24 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    1%
  Data Units Read:                    68,237,533 [34.9 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 40,504,255 [20.7 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,281,536,088
  Host Write Commands:                810,117,030
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       332
  Power On Hours:                     892
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   62
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


This is a lot lighter usage than what other people posted here. Are you rarely opening many apps at once until your ram almost full?


re: unexpected shutdowns, don't forget thunderbolt hotplug/hot-unplug failures. they happen even on Apple silicon. I've had at least a couple on my M1, I had them with my work Dell, my work MBP i9 (lolrip) actually has been probably the most stable tbh, but even still it happens occasionally.


2016 MBP, reaching its end of life. Power cycles and unsafe shutdowns are worrying, not to mention the failed S.M.A.R.T. status. It has become almost unusable the last few months. I will purchase the new M2 MBP as soon as they release it.

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
    - NVM subsystem reliability has been degraded

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x04
    Temperature:                        29 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          10%
    Percentage Used:                    134%
    Data Units Read:                    646,194,436 [330 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 642,615,704 [329 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 6,646,415,427
    Host Write Commands:                5,882,338,165
    Controller Busy Time:               34,784
    Power Cycles:                       86,652
    Power On Hours:                     4,505
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   1,060
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      932


Replace the SSD asap. It's not worth saving $80 to deal with the random IO lag well worn SSDs have.


Forgot to specify that I have the 15" model. So I would have to replace the entire main board since the SSD is soldered onto it...


Wow, the touchbar MacBooks from 2016 onward are literally disposable. Glad not to participate in that ecosystem!

Yeesh, did not realize Apple was this into making ewaste, but that is definitely their fetish.


Wow. I haven't even had this laptop for two weeks, and it's written 311 GB.

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        27 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    1,318,438 [675 GB]
    Data Units Written:                 608,401 [311 GB]
    Host Read Commands:                 19,089,015
    Host Write Commands:                9,721,576
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       129
    Power On Hours:                     7
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   6
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
For comparison, my most recent Linux install (Pop!_OS 22.04) on a fresh hard drive, is at 800GB read and 1.2GB written over a four month period.

I am very concerned for the longevity of this Mac.


This is why I asked here. Most folks don't seem to mind it, but it is an order of magnitude, if not more, higher disk usage than linux.


M1 Macbook Pro, about 4 months old, used for work which involves lots of file data volume, only 8G RAM so there's a lot of swapping going on. The lifetime percentage value is a bit worrying. Also the "unsafe shutdown count" is entirely due to hard crashes / blank screen of death that happen randomly every few weeks

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
    
    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        33 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    6%
    Data Units Read:                    379,131,189 [194 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 378,539,362 [193 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 1,090,496,552
    Host Write Commands:                883,626,255
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       129
    Power On Hours:                     673
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   8
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


That is pretty crazy, going by that, (and I know this isn't how it works), you have a projected total use of 5.5 years.

Due to the onboard SSD, the machine will be dead.


2020 M1 Air running whatever the latest beta macOS is. Not too shabby all things considered... I mostly do light dev work and music production (primarily live instrumentation so not too much in the way of sample-based plugins) so this kind of makes sense.

   === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
   SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
 
   SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
   Critical Warning:                   0x00
   Temperature:                        26 Celsius
   Available Spare:                    100%
   Available Spare Threshold:          99%
   Percentage Used:                    0%
   Data Units Read:                    21,793,717 [11.1 TB]
   Data Units Written:                 13,227,049 [6.77 TB]
   Host Read Commands:                 307,014,870
   Host Write Commands:                219,603,100
   Controller Busy Time:               0
   Power Cycles:                       124
   Power On Hours:                     211
   Unsafe Shutdowns:                   6
   Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
   Error Information Log Entries:      0
 
   Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745


I got mine at the start of july, I am at 3.27tb/2.12tb for my 16GB/256GB M1 Air in 78 hours, 11 unsafe shutdowns. I use it as a browser (excessive firefox tabs) and discord client and terminal mostly, light dev stuff (fast in intellij lol) etc. Kinda whatevs, that's what the swap is there for, I'm not worrying about my SSD getting used up in only 15 years or whatever.

I keep half an eye on the task manager (put it on the dock) and if you see red (kernel time) start to really spike up it can indicate swapping and it's time to reconsider your tabs. It can be other things too but it's one thing to keep an eye on. It's 16gb, it's not infinite, and if you have 1000 tabs open then yeah you're probably going to want to close some before you start something else, but, it's reasonable for consumption or light personal dev work (especially if you have a fileserver that could run containers/DBs). It's not gonna omg burn out the SSD the first time you have 100 tabs open.

8GB would be really really tight though, I'd imagine those machines might be swapping quite a bit more, that's a very low RAM spec other than for a consumption machine or terminal. And I wouldn't say no to more at 16gb either, too bad there's such a price increment on M2 24GB or MBP 14"/16".

Someday it'd be nice to move up to a 64gb spec and just have all the RAM, but there's other things I'd rather do, the MBA is fine for around the house etc, and I wanted to build a beefy fileserver to host services/containers anyway.


Mac M1 Air | 16 GB RAM | 1TB SSD | Purchased Dec 2021, used daily since

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        35 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    4%
    Data Units Read:                    268,644,677 [137 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 259,969,878 [133 TB] 
    Host Read Commands:                 1,213,441,896
    Host Write Commands:                981,264,397
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       125
    Power On Hours:                     793
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   7
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0

    Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745


How does your workload look?


I'm a researcher, so I do move/access a lot of data locally (10s of Gbs, not Tbs usually). Lots of Jupyter/IPython interactive workflows. Starting to run some more web development stuff/Docker containers.


  smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [Darwin 21.4.0 arm64] (local build)
  Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, 
  www.smartmontools.org

  === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
  Model Number:                       APPLE SSD AP2048R
  Serial Number:                      0ba0160b818c6a36
  Firmware Version:                   387.100.
  PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x106b
  IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x000000
  Controller ID:                      0
  NVMe Version:                       <1.2
  Number of Namespaces:               3
  Local Time is:                      Thu Sep 29 21:33:52 2022
  Firmware Updates (0x02):            1 Slot
  Optional Admin Commands (0x0004):   Frmw_DL
  Optional NVM Commands (0x0004):     DS_Mngmt
  Maximum Data Transfer Size:         256 Pages

  Supported Power States
  St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
   0 +     0.00W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        30 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    18,714,682 [9.58 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 30,888,220 [15.8 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 405,056,519
  Host Write Commands:                791,606,107
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       519
  Power On Hours:                     425
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   21
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0

  --------------------------
Macbook Pro M1 Max - 2021 16" 64GB Ram 2TB SSD


Is this saying you restart more than once an hour on average?


I'm not sure how it works for Apple's built-in SSD behaves, but in most laptops it is typical for the SSD to be fully powered off when the lid is closed and the system goes to sleep.


2021 16" MacBook Pro, Apple M1 Pro silicon, 16gb / 1TB, purchased March 2021. Personal laptop, super light web dev (hobby projects):

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        27 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    6%
    Data Units Read:                    509,334,138 [260 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 394,959,651 [202 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 4,719,463,111
    Host Write Commands:                1,312,261,606
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       178
    Power On Hours:                     938
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   9
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


An update if people are still watching the thread. Got the following output today (~2 days later):

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        28 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    6%
    Data Units Read:                    510,433,533 [261 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 395,139,884 [202 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 4,755,060,485
    Host Write Commands:                1,317,327,139
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       180
    Power On Hours:                     944
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   9
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
So looks like my MacBook did an average of 87GB /day over the last 2 days (approx).

Which seems a lot better than the 18 month average, which was 700GB /day.

Hopefully means it's since been fixed, and I haven't destroyed my SSD too much!


3 months old, macbook m1 pro:

        === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
        SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

        SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
        Critical Warning:                   0x00
        Temperature:                        31 Celsius
        Available Spare:                    100%
        Available Spare Threshold:          99%
        Percentage Used:                    0%
        Data Units Read:                    2,487,557 [1.27 TB]
        Data Units Written:                 3,113,562 [1.59 TB]
        Host Read Commands:                 53,266,591
        Host Write Commands:                89,763,325
        Controller Busy Time:               0
        Power Cycles:                       131
        Power On Hours:                     68
        Unsafe Shutdowns:                   6
        Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
        Error Information Log Entries:      0


Was it ever really an Apple Silicon issue or a macOS issue? I thought this was a macOS and SSD issue even before Apple Silicon came out?


Something I have noticed is that a few Mac services related to spotlight have a propensity to be very heavy on the system writes.

corespotlightd and suggestd in particular seem to do some kind of indexing operation after some trigger, which can write tens of gigabytes to the SSD.

I managed to narrow it down to an RSS reader app (from the app store, so presumably not doing anything untoward), which appears to be getting indexed. despite having turned almost all indexing in spotlight off, and even excluded ~/Library and /Library from spotlight.

After the main writes are done (150 MB/s for a period of time), corespotlightd and suggestd then continue to generate a background load of around 50 MB/s of writes for a sustained period of time.

Console logs show there's "ProactiveHarvesting" going on in suggestd, but no clear way to switch this off. I suspect (based on watching it write 16 GB over 5 to 10 minutes), others could be encountering this, or other similar behaviour.


I'm not sure, but you may be right. In either case, going by the results here, it seems this is expected usage. That is quite something, especially comparing it to linux. No idea how windows plays into this.


Another data point: 2020 M1 MBA, 16 GB, 1TB. Mostly used for web browsing, email, text, some writing.

     === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
     SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

     SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
     Critical Warning:                   0x00
     Temperature:                        32 Celsius
     Available Spare:                    100%
     Available Spare Threshold:          99%
     Percentage Used:                    0%
     Data Units Read:                    115,962,722 [59.3 TB]
     Data Units Written:                 17,185,040 [8.79 TB]
     Host Read Commands:                 1,291,690,131
     Host Write Commands:                338,681,101
     Controller Busy Time:               0
     Power Cycles:                       193
     Power On Hours:                     316
     Unsafe Shutdowns:                   4
     Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
     Error Information Log Entries:      0


MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) with M1 Pro

Heavy daily development use.

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        24 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    21,429,577 [10.9 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 22,150,889 [11.3 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 542,140,492
    Host Write Commands:                469,241,132
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       155
    Power On Hours:                     587
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   10
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


512/16 M1 Air used for about 9 months for video/photo editing and Xcode and some other dev.

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  
  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        30 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    1%
  Data Units Read:                    73,619,047 [37.6 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 47,465,560 [24.3 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,293,036,940
  Host Write Commands:                657,873,357
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       353
  Power On Hours:                     529
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   10
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


MacBook Air, M1, 512GB, purchased December 2020, 16GB RAM, as you can tell quite hammered for a web developer who doesn't use the main JavaScript frameworks or Docker almost ever.

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        30 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    2%
    Data Units Read:                    139,890,354 [71.6 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 100,146,689 [51.2 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 1,957,345,039
    Host Write Commands:                1,121,330,045
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       724
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   85
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   85
What does this mean? and looks like it is very high compared to others in the list


That’s my fault. I have two or three kernel extensions for different types of hard drive file systems and sometimes they react badly to disconnects or quirks. Apple’s Blu Ray UDF handler also needs work and likes occasionally crashing.


Thanks for sharing, that's a lot of reads/writes.


M1 Max 64GB 4TB. Honestly surprised about this. I was expecting MUCH more use since I do video editing/coding/remuxing. I got this at launch

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 31 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 0% Data Units Read: 48,482,411 [24.8 TB] Data Units Written: 32,693,167 [16.7 TB] Host Read Commands: 570,658,787 Host Write Commands: 280,299,147 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 216 Power On Hours: 265 Unsafe Shutdowns: 12 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0


Hm... well you've got plenty of RAM for that, so not surprising


My MacBook Air (M1, 2020):

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        32 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    1%
    Data Units Read:                    8,843,213 [4.52 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 12,256,532 [6.27 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 229,897,011
    Host Write Commands:                452,963,852
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       208
    Power On Hours:                     258
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   3
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
Seems fine to me!


As I shared in another post, compared to my linux machine, most of the posts, including yours, have atleast 5x-10x the usage. I understand that disk usage can vary wildly, but the linux machine I'm comparing with has been used through the work week for the past 6 years with VMs/docker and other large files.


On the other hand my linux Thinkpad has worryingly high numbers:

    Available Spare:                    100% 
    Available Spare Threshold:          10%
    Percentage Used:                    6%
    Data Units Read:                    123,210,825 [63.0 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 59,502,097 [30.4 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 1,335,288,785
    Host Write Commands:                740,649,667
    Controller Busy Time:               3,494
    Power Cycles:                       3,069
    Power On Hours:                     5,339
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   155


Power On Hours seem to indicate the disk has been on for a good chunk of time, so I would think you're doing fine. Percentage used says 6%, so that seems decent too.

What model SSD is this?


Honestly I’ll probably replace this computer much before this becomes an issue.


I think most folks will.


M1 Max Mac Studio

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        27 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    13,080,985 [6.69 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 14,773,075 [7.56 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 235,532,909
    Host Write Commands:                232,742,604
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       218
    Power On Hours:                     230
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   11
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0
Is this a lot? I have no idea.


I don't think so. M1 Max Studio here, too:

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        26 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    72,850,196 [37.2 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 27,537,988 [14.0 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,890,170,768
  Host Write Commands:                834,294,305
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       222
  Power On Hours:                     668
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   10
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0

  Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system=0x38, sub=0x0, code=745
The thing at the end, though... that's odd and troubling.


I got that too on my Mac Studio. And I don't know if it's a bug or something real.

Seems the code that generate this error is something like this: https://github.com/mirror/smartmontools/blob/0df69a95136fd42...

It simply calls `GetLogPage()` on the `IONVMeSMARTInterface`. Apple documentation is as usual devoid of content. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit/ionvmesmarti...

But I found this `745` value `0x2e9` might be

  #define kIOReturnDeviceError  iokit_common_err(0x2e9) // the device is not working properly!
https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-344/iokit/IOKit/...

Device not working properly?! Or is it just a shit driver?


M1 Mac Mini. Bought in July 2021

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        40 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    7%
  Data Units Read:                    254,524,681 [130 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 240,394,604 [123 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 2,181,881,304
  Host Write Commands:                1,873,053,378
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       107
  Power On Hours:                     1,681
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   36
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


This is from a Macbook Air (M1, 2020, 16GB/1TB):

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        42 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    13%
  Data Units Read:                    788,079,439 [403 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 731,596,572 [374 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 6,353,571,120
  Host Write Commands:                2,866,603,247
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       224
  Power On Hours:                     2,521
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   35
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


M1 Pro 16" 500GB

    === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
    SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        34 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    18,809,609 [9.63 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 18,091,004 [9.26 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 431,191,695
    Host Write Commands:                334,856,144
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       191
    Power On Hours:                     384
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   15
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


MacBook M1 Pro 32 GB RAM 1 TB from November 2021

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        28 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    29 661 010 [15,1 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 25 608 898 [13,1 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 658 892 494
  Host Write Commands:                516 682 526
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       186
  Power On Hours:                     526
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   14
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


The two relatively lower posts I've seen here are both higher RAM, 32GB and 64GB. I wonder there's anything to read into this.


Well... 8 Gb should be enough for everyone? :)

I seem to be using 12 Gb on this mbpro with just firefox, mail and a few chat apps open. But it has 16 G ram.

On my 32 Gb mac mini that has work stuff open i use 26 Gb atm.

Both are Intel, not brave enough to make the architecture jump yet.

If you use more than the physical ram the Mx machines may be more responsive than the intel ones, but they're still going to swap.

Said 2018 mbpro intel smartctl says:

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        34 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    5%
  Data Units Read:                    138,517,507 [70.9 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 111,676,933 [57.1 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,625,559,618
  Host Write Commands:                968,996,058
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       89
  Power On Hours:                     1,363
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   30
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
It should be a little over 4 years old now.


Thanks for sharing, is this a 1TB drive?

Going by the percentage used, looks like an expected lifespan of 1200TBW.


It's a 512 G drive.


Thanks.


M1 Max MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021)

About a year old

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        34 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    1%
  Data Units Read:                    484,554,045 [248 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 81,389,728 [41.6 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 6,125,629,006
  Host Write Commands:                1,758,008,262
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       146
  Power On Hours:                     1,795
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   6
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


M1 Macbook Air 2020 8GB 256GB bought August 2021

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        27 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    9,136,753 [4.67 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 4,296,299 [2.19 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 123,750,226
  Host Write Commands:                65,201,990
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       212
  Power On Hours:                     94
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   27
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


A couple hundred gbs write and read per day seem normal to me for a developer machine.

Spinning up a new VM from scratch itself will take around 10gb read and write.

If you are building containers or loading up a lot of data, can easily reach that.

I'm surprised your figures are low because I always see tens of gbs of write and read normally without doing much.


I'm doing none of that on this machine yet.

In generak, it can reach it easily on a dev machine, but it seems like the norm. And my linux experience is at 1/5th or 1/10th the amount of data read/write tha comparable tasks.

Looking at this thread, it seems this is the way with macOS.


M1 Pro

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        28 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    14,683,648 [7.51 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 15,448,997 [7.90 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 198,962,886
  Host Write Commands:                199,550,695
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       172
  Power On Hours:                     196
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   15
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


M1 Air, 8Gb/512Gb, used as a daily driver since release.

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        44 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    6%
  Data Units Read:                    443,320,843 [226 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 362,278,642 [185 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 4,372,886,373
  Host Write Commands:                2,111,809,609
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       474
  Power On Hours:                     2,228
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   37
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


M1 Pro 16" 1TB/32GB:

    SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
    Critical Warning:                   0x00
    Temperature:                        33 Celsius
    Available Spare:                    100%
    Available Spare Threshold:          99%
    Percentage Used:                    0%
    Data Units Read:                    35,019,801 [17.9 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 16,172,066 [8.28 TB]
    Host Read Commands:                 792,786,606
    Host Write Commands:                270,657,694
    Controller Busy Time:               0
    Power Cycles:                       292
    Power On Hours:                     320
    Unsafe Shutdowns:                   13
    Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
    Error Information Log Entries:      0


Mac Studio - 2TB disk - daily desktop/workstation

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        26 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    0%
  Data Units Read:                    44,959,209 [23.0 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 21,443,041 [10.9 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 494,728,880
  Host Write Commands:                379,601,575
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       291
  Power On Hours:                     469
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   18
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        32 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    1%
  Data Units Read:                    19,533,293 [10.0 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 37,837,167 [19.3 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 643,692,760
  Host Write Commands:                1,112,961,675
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       215
  Power On Hours:                     505
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   23
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0

 seems fixed?


> seems fixed?

My linux machine that I have used for professional development for 6 years now reports (typed out the relevant bits by hand).

    Data Units Read:                    ...[4.44 TB]
    Data Units Written:                 ...[5.40 TB]
    ....
    Power Cycles:                       811
    Power On Hours:                     1142
16GB 512GB SSD

This is a machine that has been used for full time development, running virtual machines and docker and all sorts of activity.

After all that, it reports only ~5TB read/written. That is mind blowing to me.


M1 MBP (2021) 16GB 512GB 3 months old, just web dev

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 28 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 99%

Percentage Used: 0%

Data Units Read: 13,728,991 [7.02 TB]

Data Units Written: 4,555,309 [2.33 TB]

Host Read Commands: 364,464,746

Host Write Commands: 94,259,168

Controller Busy Time: 0

Power Cycles: 239

Power On Hours: 111

Unsafe Shutdowns: 12

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Error Information Log Entries: 0


November 2021, macbook pro m1

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 31 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 99%

Percentage Used: 0%

Data Units Read: 5,641,034 [2,88 TB]

Data Units Written: 5,080,733 [2,60 TB]

Host Read Commands: 133,355,019

Host Write Commands: 71,299,866

Controller Busy Time: 0

Power Cycles: 138

Power On Hours: 98

Unsafe Shutdowns: 6

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Error Information Log Entries: 0


my cheapest m1 mac mini that is on all day long and is my main entertainment computer that has multiple drives connected to it... but this is the built in apple drive

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  
  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        33 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    4%
  Data Units Read:                    115,425,776 [59.0 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 124,921,655 [63.9 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,914,424,208
  Host Write Commands:                2,555,952,944
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       418
  Power On Hours:                     3,500
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   56
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0


What is your RAM/SSD config?


I have no idea how people are punishing their MacBooks that hard.

My M1 MacBook Pro (mid 2020, 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD) has been used as a daily driver for my personal stuff (not work), so while usage may be light compared to a work machine, it has seen it's fair share of C/C++/C#/Swift/Go/Python code come through (studying for a master degree), as well as papers being written.

My battery is in a much worse state than my SSD with 92% capacity remaining.

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  
  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        31 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    1%
  Data Units Read:                    58,248,816 [29.8 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 33,161,373 [16.9 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 1,190,184,018
  Host Write Commands:                543,373,537
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       242
  Power On Hours:                     688
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   30
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
My "server" (iCloud content cache and backups) which is a M1 Mac mini (2020 model from 2021, 8GB/256GB), which has been running 24/7 seems to be in a "worse" state:

  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

  SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
  Critical Warning:                   0x00
  Temperature:                        32 Celsius
  Available Spare:                    100%
  Available Spare Threshold:          99%
  Percentage Used:                    5%
  Data Units Read:                    177,894,168 [91.0 TB]
  Data Units Written:                 132,856,403 [68.0 TB]
  Host Read Commands:                 2,792,877,903
  Host Write Commands:                825,466,116
  Controller Busy Time:               0
  Power Cycles:                       239
  Power On Hours:                     1,391
  Unsafe Shutdowns:                   46
  Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
  Error Information Log Entries:      0
Something is fishy with the power on hours though. Despite having run for over a year, it reports just under 2 months of power on hours, so it's probably not being reported correctly.


That's how long the drive has been powered up, not the CPU. It sleeps pretty aggressively, and why not, no disk to spin up.


I would presume this is an OS issue, and switching form macOS to Asahi Linux would solve this problem?


My numbers are nowhere near that crazy, but the first thing I always do on a Mac is disable spotlight for everything except applications and the calculator. Spotlight has always been a steaming pile of useless poo in my experience, ever since its inception.


I was previously unaware of this issue, but wow. Seems like a good case for a class action against Apple for replacement SSDs.


Yes. Seems that power cycles also affect these numbers.


Is this affecting M2 systems also?


Going by some reply to this post, looks like it.


Running EGACS?

8 GBs And Constantly Swapping?




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