Apple M1 SSD Lifespan - Should we worry about the SWAPPING?
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2024
- How to recover data from SSD: bit.ly/3qGtwfl
Lots of folks are concerned about the amount of memory swapping Apple's M1 computers are doing. Will it shorten the life expectancy of the internal SSD?
In this video, I take a look at some numbers and try to answer that question.
#AppleM1 #AppleSilicon #SSD
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Can we get out of the loop a little bit, and appreciate this guy's perfect verbal skills and nice pink shirt?
Well he is British so it’s a bit unfair, but yeah why not 👏👏 (They’re so much better than us Americans 🤣)
It is a very nice shirt.
@@petethegeek2332 older Mac used swap Also
@@NicVandEmZ yes, it’s been around as a legitimate technique since the 80s, but it seems the M1 makes more prolific use of the method, which has raised concerns. Hence the video 😊
@@petethegeek2332
It seems to me, that the main concern of swapping has shifted with this paradigm.
Previously, it used to be the ridiculous speed penalty due to the hdd access. Now it’s more of a power penalty, as the RAM is integrated within M1’s SoC, whereas the SSD still has to go through the two sets of i/o and the PCB.
Potentially it’s also the SSD lifespan for applications like intensive HDR video editing, where there’s both need for a lot of RAM (thus swapping gets triggered), and the data throughput could be voluminous as well.
Why is there no EDM blasting and why are you not shouting and why are there no meme references every 2 seconds and why didn't you stretch the content out an extra few minutes to fit more ads?!?!? Subbed!!!
Must try harder 😁 thank you!
Comment of a day... Hate the obnoxious overedited shouting videos.
Ok boomer
Because he has a job, so this is a hobby like youtube should be
exactly what I was thinking. So much more relaxing and informative
It's a pleasure watching your videos.
this comment was enought to get subscribed.
This channel is how I imagined the future would be when I was a kid. It’s such a refreshing change from the rest of the noise on UA-cam. I wish I lived in a PBS world. 😊
U nailed it!
The calmness is indeed a fresh alternative to usual attention seeking videos.
Yeah...
Congratulations on reaching 10K! You deserve it, you put out consistently high quality, formative videos.
Thank you 😊
My 8/256 M1 mac mini has already 10.3 TBW in maybe...2/3 months? Only watch youtube and some chrome/google suite apps. If the total lifespan is 150TBW. It seems only 2years to go....
All the you tubers talking and no-one has a word for it.
They all copy each other.
Constant Geekery is good.
They admit they don't know
Really like the way you explain everything !! thanks :D
My M1 MBA is a year old, used constantly for video and animation and the SSD is 99% = practically as new. It only has 8GB of ram so the SSD is in constant use. It's not a problem
Interesting video and very thought provoking, thank you. My wife has been using a MacBook Air since 2011 without issue. I've even installed the latest supported Mac OS on it. My daughter has just purchased a MacBook Air with an M1 chip - largely on my recommendation and the experience her mother has had with her laptop. With over 30 years in IT the SSD lifespan has been something that has concerned me, especially now the SSD is not changeable within Apple devices. She at least followed the advise the advise I gave her and that you have stated here, in respect to getting the 16Gb version and the largest SSD she could afford for that reason. Storage wise a lot of people will recommend you rat tail it with external devices and that's a fair point and a good cost saving but she needed it to be relatively portable without the hassle of extra devices. Coupled with cloud backup. It will be interesting to see how the device performs over the coming years. Fingers crossed it will be no less reliable as my wife's.
I'm watching your video on a 2012 MacBook Pro. 5 years of life is what I expect out of cheap OEMs, not Apple. Notably, I have replaced both the RAM and the drive in this machine, however the lack of ability to do this with the newer hardware is a reason that I will be taking a rather wait and see approach. Furthermore, this lack of ability to replace parts which fail is a reason that I can't imagine I will buy anything as high end as what I'm using from Apple again. If I'm going to pay top end prices, I expect to get top end lifespans.
Suggesting that "normal" users don't even use their computers every day is not a convincing argument to me as that could not apply to me less... Maybe they're release something in their Mac Pro that's no so completely disposable.
I have M1 Mac mini 16Gb/512Gb. Using it as a web bot 24/7 (Python+Selenium via Firefox). During 24h, it opens 21 parallel FirefoxCp's sessions (Intel architecture) 17 times, then around 1Gb is swapped out from RAM each time, means if Apple SSD 512Gb has the same 300TBW rating as Samsung ones, my M1 should last around 48 years. Think I will fade-out first rather than Apple SSD :D
I will Not last any longer than older Intel Mac Minis. I have fourth generation Mac Minis all working fine, M1 will NOT outlast them ; ) For sure.
I need an opinion. I would like to buy the new M1 MBA, for studies in veterinary field, however due to this SSD Issue, shall I just grab the intel version MBA of early 2020? I also wish to use it for 5 years and above. tq 🥺🙏🏻
@@nabilahani3482 I solved this “SSD issue” by transferring my workflow to M1 optimised Python version. And keep in mind, I’m “industrial” user, pushing M1 to limits by automatised processes. As a student if you even will use not optimised software, you won’t have any issue whatsoever. And forget about Intel, they are good as heaters only from now on until they come out with something comparable to M1
@@atvarsgr I see.
There is person advised me that if I want the M1, i shall go for the 16gb and the largest drive I could afford.
However, im just a students and concerned about the budget too. Do you think it is okay for me to have 8GB RAM 256GB SSD? Or should I upgrade either one (RAM OR SSD)
But I would really appreciate if my M1 could used for more than 5 years.
@@nabilahani3482 with regular users’ workloads (web, documents etc.) even 8Gb/256Gb M1 will last ages
I’m fairly certain if you ask Louis Rossmann he would be able to tell you what SSD Apple is using.
No, he won't, the SSD chips are literally built on to the CPU die.
@@davidkorcak The M1 chip can fully saturate its memory bus and the SSDs are easily twice as fast as other mobile parts. Apple did a great job with IO design on the M1 laptops.
@@davidkorcak Apple haven’t been using mlc for years. Not like that would be a problem, 3d tlc with good controller is every bit as good if not better. The problem is m1 seems to much rely on swapping memory than before. According to report it can have up to 2-20tbw for just 2 months of typical usage.
The problem is that my M1 MacBook writes more than 3 TB a day, so it looks like it won't last even two years.
300gb total in 7 weeks with Mon-Fri 8-6 usage
This video lacks actual calculations based on use cases.
@@myday6074 people forget they would use their SSD normally as well. If you do photography or videography where video and raw files can be extremely large. Buying a mac with a soldered on SSD is probably not good value.
Similar here. Already more than 60TB written in less than 2 months. Obviously it is an issue for some users. What programs/apps are you running? I figured out some solutions for my swapping situation so maybe I can help you...
Maybe write it on an external drive whenever you can. Not the greatest solution, but it's a solution.
Thanks for the reassuring video. I intend to keep my M1 MacBook Pro for a little longer than five years, as I have with the machine it replaces, a mid-2012 MacBook Air. Looks like, with the spec I chose -16GB/512GB-, I'll be fine for a long time. Perfect.
Long story short, no you don't need to worry about swap memory shortening your SSD lifespan.
Wrong.
Looking at actual studies done, not just opinion pieces or YT tech reviews. SSD are showing incredibly long lifespans, TBW generally are beyond what manufactures promise as they air on the side of caution and warranty reasons. Take Samsung 850 pro has shown to write 60 times its promised TBW. Even lower end SSD are showing 2-5 times their promised TBW. Again the Samsung 850 pro 256GB is promised 150 TBW. Lets say someone was able to write a massive 50GB everyday for a year they'd only write 18.25 TBW even after 7 years they still wouldn't meet Samsungs promised TBW let alone what studies are actually showing SSDs are capable of.
TBW = terabytes written.
SSDs have their faults especially around data recovery. But swap memory isn't something people should be concerned about.
@@MJ-om6cy nope, 50gb is absolutely nothing when your doing video or audio processing, and all that processing will hit your swap partition. Windows 10 was killing ssd's early by defragmenting the hard drive on every boot until they finally patched that out. Your M1 cpu houses the CPU, the gpu, and your main memory, to allocate any ram it needs it will send the data out to swap to free up space, and since it's a single soc with no dedicated ram for any part of it, that's a boatload of reading and writing happening constantly. Smaller ssd capacities will wear faster since they have fewer overprivisioning cells as a back up buffer. You can't add ram to a M1 device, you have to buy the next model up if you need more. Want more drive space, well your option is a dongle, since none of the M1 devices are upgradeable in any way. Enjoy buying a new machine every time something normally replaceable/upgradeable dies.
@@michaelkeudel8770 At least some Windows laptops are offering removable SSDs including some Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets. It's not just SSD lifespan, it's also good being able to recover data off a damaged or broken laptop by just pulling out the drive.
My m1 mac can write up to 1TB in a week only by swap... (With all the web development tools always running and Xcode with simulator)
But still... i have the 8gb version with 256gb storage, it is my first mac so i bought the cheapest one for the first time use.
If i calculate it it is
4TB/Month
48TB/Year
150/48 = 3 Years
I can’t believe you only have 10k subs.
I can’t believe I have that many! 😁
For a lot of users it could be a problem, as many reported already. For example: My Macbook already written more than 60TB, in 2 months!!! And I am having at least 2% lifespan usage. So far I have these observations: If my swap is around 300-500MB (or maybe under 1GB) everything is ok and the kernel_task is writing normal amount of data, but if swap is more than 0.5-1GB kernel_task is writing few GBs per minute (approx. 2TB in day). And it is doing with all apps (Lightroom, Chrome, Photoshop, or even with emptying Trash can, etc.). I can run Lightroom with no issues in those "green" levels of swap memory, but the GPU acceleration must be off. Doing Photoshop work is heavy and swap memory is in usage and kernel_task is writing like crazy. The worst is that after swap memory once jumps above those 0.5-1GB and you quit those Apps that turned swap up the problem continues (swap is in high numbers and kernel is crazy). Now I am looking for option to clear my swap with some magic trick (command "sudo purge" in Terminal is not working so far for me). Let me know if you figured something or you have similar observations as mine.
(MB Pro M1 16GB ram and 1TB disk)
Why on Earth would you buy a laptop with a soldered on SSD? This is like a 40 dollar fix 4 years down the line in a PC laptop.
How is the laptop doing now? Would you have got more RAM or storage if you were buying now? I'm trying to figure out whether to go 16 or 32 RAM / 1 or 2TB storage
I bought my MBP Retina 2012 - the first retina generation with 512 SSD... Use it every day, just normal user, not heavy. Sometimes dealing with big files... There we are in 2021 and still running with no issues. But anyways regularly do my Time Machine backup, just in case...
I have had my 1tb 16gb MacBook Air for nearly 2 years now and smartctl is still saying that my Percentage Used is 0%, according to this I have only written 3.65 TB of data in that time. One of the main reasons I got the 16 GB model is reduce wear and tear on the SSD, given this, this laptops ssd should last 100 years or more! :) Im a happy Chappy…
Simple answer if you use data is plug an external drive in and keep your document video or whatever large data files you have on it. It's alot easier to replace
Samsung X5 T3 as boot drive on m1 mini :)
One data point which is important is the fuller the drive the less available free space there is for wear leveling. So a drive which is very full will wear out much quicker!
Best to leave at a minimum of 1/4 of the drive free for OS and app use for swapfile/page file, caching & app scratch space.
Very well done otherwise!
Something to consider: the amount of data that you write to memory doesn't fully reflect the amount of writing to the SSD that occurs. The way that a SSD works is that it only writes individual ones or zeros. It initializes large areas of memory to one or the other and when it needs to write to an individual memory location, it flips the bits that are not already the correct value. Changing just one bit in memory could require resetting multiple bytes and rewriting all of it to the correct value.
An excellent, thoughtful video. So refreshing to have someone who makes UA-cam videos on M1 Macs that don't involve hype, yelling, or constant sarcasm. Thank you.
Five years is a very short lifespan for an entire computer. Many people replace their computers when the machines are around 4-7 years old, but they don't just throw them in the trash. If a non-replaceable vital part of a computer can die near the end of a normal users needs, then that really hurts the second hand market, since you have no real way of knowing if the computer you buy can last for years or months.
Furthermore I don't really feel the video delves enough into the consequences of the Swap-usage. 80 GB / day seems like quite a lot if we are talking about normal usage, but part of the worry is that there has been reported more than 80 GB per _hour_ for some users.
Apple ALWAYS had a thing about decreasing their product life spent.
From nerfing older devices with newer OS updates.
Or preventing repairs on their device by pairing them into their wearable or breakable parts like batteries and screens
So a common repair wont work or wont work properly.
And when u take them to Apples repair service they ask u for an expansive repair that would make no logic to pay and make buying a new product more reasonable.
If u repair / replace every part in your device with apple repair service the cost of the device would be 5 to 10 times its original price.
And they don't do some very basic repairs like replacing charge ports.
Its their way of getting u to buy new when u dont need to
The biggest problem I have with this is, why can't we replace the SSD? The enclosure of the M1 Mini has more space than ever.
Despite the greenwashing, they are not environmentally friendly at all.
this would never have been a problem had Apple decided to use a swappable SSD.
they already charge a thieving amount for their storage and storage upgrades which puts them right up with enterprise grade SLC drives if not more expensive.
And it is more of a problem for an average consumer since they generally want to buy a product and keep it for as long as possible while a professional user knows about this stuff (most likely) and their work would warrant and allow for a repeated expense.
I have a 8 year old laptop and I just got a new laptop this month. Do the math I don’t up grade until the computer can’t run the programs I need. The big question is why Apple started to integrate the ram and ssd on the motherboard? I think to stop resell of older computers. And that is why my old computer is a MacBook and my new computer is A Asus g14 I like the clean look and the removable ssd. And the amd cpu that give me 8 to hours of battery and that is replaceable as well. But my poor iPhone someday I will switch to a android don’t know when i think it is when they stop sell a phone with out a fingerprint reader. I miss the headphone jack. And the new Asus phone has all of them to bad I’m not a phone gamer but to can do everything I need as well.
Long story short - more RAM will assist the longevity of your SSD drive 👍
You are assuming equal level wear, the problem is worse because unless you reserve capacity which samsung recommends. Let's say you have a 1tb drive the lifespan is based on the free capacity/reserve space not total capacity of the drive
Thank you once again for the informative and very thorough videos. I purchased my first Mac computer a Mac mini M1 this past December and I keep my computers on average of 8 to 10 years so it was very important to me to know that whichever device I decided to buy it would last for many years. I decided to go with the 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB hard drive mainly because ram was the primary concern to me and I honestly do believe that there are much faster external SSDs that are on the horizon.
Your videos have been a tremendous resource for me..... Definitely worth a sub!
Thanks for your support 😊 I’m sure the Mini will last just fine.
I’m subbing because he didn’t push it on to me like every other sweaty UA-camr
"what is uuuup youtube! it's ya boii Geekery here!"
I hate it so much when they say "only 0.0003% of people watching my videos are subscribed" like how is that my fucking problem?
I have an Intel MacBook Pro 2015... now 2021 I figure that it will be a year or so away before I upgrade to a new machine. I don't think Apple would cheap out on the SSD either. However, that would limit the resale and vintage computer market as when the drive is "used up" then that will be it for the whole system. That said even 80GB / day is a lot (and I would suspect it would be much more). I am surprised at the amount of data I use when I let the activity monitor do it's job I would expect much more than 5 years for the drive.
I think they will last longer. Bear in mind those TBW figures will be set way below the actual averages the manufacturer finds in testing.
So when the lifespan does run out... the M1 has to go to landfill? Because we can’t replace the drive... so it can’t be used after that point.
With a traditional laptop, I’d pass it on, or donate it. Can’t do that if the SSD is dead
hmm was interesting video and made me think so here is what i got after this video. My current drive is Patriot Burst and it has been installed in the system about 391 days ago, its been running for 363 days, the drive TBW is around 160TB my current use is around 6TB so i use daily around 16,65GB that means i need to go to sleep but was fun looking at my laptop this way. One side note is that my drive has had 604 power on counts in that time frame hmmmm thats odd
This was extremely informative. Thanks for sharing this. I was worried and was frequently checking swap usages on my M1.
I just ordered a MacBook Pro m1 256gb , I still can return it , should I or the ssd doesn’t have issues on the long term
@@jad6342 Currently it’s difficult to know actually as many there is no any official confirmation from Apple. But its also true that swap usages are higher on M1 macs compared to intel one.
Don’t cancel your order and enjoy your laptop... Even if there the issue, we are covered under warranty.
I would expect that most people expect their overpriced apple hardware to last more than 5 years, if only for re-sell value.
Just a quick note: do not use the Spotify app on macOS. That electron shit just eats your ssd lifespan by writing and deleting tons of cache
Oh? Can you point to maybe an article or a page indicating that this is the peculiar case?
@@poopsie117 you can check disk under system monitor and see it by yourself
I do not like apple anyways because i advocate for the right to repair.
#louis_rossmann
I have an old ThinkPad T420S with a 160GB SSD. I bought it used like 4 years ago and it's perfectly fine even today, the SSD is still kicking. My M1 MacBook Pro is on its way, beacuse I want to do some heavier tasks, but its still nice to know I shouldn't be worried, because it's really expensive where I live, about 2260 dollars for the 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM version.
Great explanation on the SSD swapping issue. One question - does larger RAM say from 8GB to 16GB cut down or eliminate swapping?
Thanks 😊 You’ll see less swap usage going from 8 to 16GB. With the GPU sharing the RAM, 8 to 16 makes quite a difference.
Great, I just bought my m1 MacBook Pro
Enjoy - it’s an awesome computer!
With a 256gb apple drive, with trim, the less of that drive you have filled up, the longer your SSD will last. Use thunderbolt external storage for photos, apps, downloads, and basically all directories and your internal soldered down SSD chip will last a lot longer. The difference in life expectancy by keeping 20% free disk space vs 10% disk space is huge. Also its easier to upgrade to new tech with an externally mapped thunderbolt drive, the only TM backup to make is the OS and settings.
Good to know with my 512gb ssd I can write 164gb everyday for 5 years which I won’t come anywhere close to.
Thank you for your unbiased insight in layman’s terms.
Long story short: We don't need to worry about SSD lifespan.
Slight edit.. We *probably* don’t need to worry about SSD lifespan.
Oh this is a typical apple answer ‘don’t worry, we know what you need’
@J Fz More RAM will help. if the Pro Models don’t have 64gb they are not professional
@J Fz understandable
@J Fz Well i mean it’s not like you have to write to the internal storage. You could just get an ssd cabinet and put in whatever ssd you want in there and then write to that instead. If the ssd in the cabinet fails you can just replace it and keep going.
That way you never have to worry about the internal SSD failing and you wont be handicapped by its size or the fact that it’s sorted in either.
The very best channel of tech stuff. On the point and no obsessive repeating of facts to extend the video play time. ❤️
I have a Mac Mini 16 gig. I surf the net. Email, and watch UA-cam videos mostly. I am always using about 8 gig of ram or more. I would highly recommend 16 gig of ram. It’s worth the money.
macbook 2012 8gb until today fpcx pr and etc.
I still want a psion / diamond mako 🤦🏾♂️
My m1 16/512gb MBP consumed 4.5TB in 10 days. That translates in 2 years of work. Not enough for its money. I work in Lightroom Classic and browsing UA-cam only. I hope native ligthtroom classic will be out soon.
Have you noticed any improvement with macOS 11.4?
I just bought a Macbook Pro M1 with a 1TB SSD. My plan was to have the system and my business info take up half the SSD and the other half, to run my Lightroom and Final Cut Pro weekly projects. I shoot wedding stills and drone footage. Once the job is complete, off load the finished job to an external and start all over again. It this a bad idea? Should I be running the jobs externally? I use 3.5" internal drives(docking system) to archive my jobs. Thanks so much and I did subscribe.
Thanks for the sub 👍🏻 When I do video editing on the M1 I run off an external SSD. It’s fast enough, and saves copying things off. I do leave caches on the internal SSD though.
this is why on my PC i bought a simple 500GB 7200rpm sata HDD, and adjusted my cache files on Windows via mlink command to be written to the HDD instead of my nvme SSD, preserving it`s livespan to it`s optimal potential.
the problem isnt ssd lifespan but you not being able to replace it
idk man, I still have the first retina macbook from 2013, replaced the battery and the keyboard, and the machine is still useful for study and classes, I don't want to trash something very functional as this just because the vendor offer a better hardware with a couple of thousands of dollars. Apple generates a huge pile of tech trash that can't be repurposed as of now with the VLSI approach. (I will mention that other companies like Motorola, LG, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei also do the same on cell phones). But my point is, it is a very expensive piece of hardware and should last more. This kind of "hardware" planned obsolescence is depressing.
Completely agree. Way too much e-waste being generated by these companies, and there’s no reason why your laptop shouldn’t be useful for a long time yet. It’s not a hardware limitation - it’s Apple’s conscious choice to get people to keep buying new. Like you say, all the big tech companies are doing the same thing... and then making life hard for repair shops. I like some of Apple’s products, but I am not a fan of their corporate behaviour.
I deleted my previous comments.
Still stand by them as there is an issue with kernel_task writing constantly to ssd on m1-16gb.
We can use words like swap and wear level but the question is why is all this data is being written.
Yes we should worry ! ! - Using X5 Samsung T3 as boot drive. NOW, no need to worry !
Agreed I'm worried about getting one for this very reason.
I HAVE A SOLUTION, just after 2 years buy a external SSD and duck tape it at the back of your MAC, your'e welcome :)
or dont buy a mac :)
Big Sur is seeming to be a large problem with swap being used all the time even when you have left over ram wether you have 8 or 16 gigs but Monterey does things different and I have yet to ever see swap being used at all on my 8 gig air or 16 gig mini m1 systems so I would recommend everyone doing these videos start with installing a fresh copy of Monterey as Big Sur on m1s seem to have a problem where as on the intel Mac systems Big Sur is fine just as Monterey is fine on both intel and m1 Mac systems
The answer to your question can be found in early generation iPads and iPhones which uses early versions of the M1 SOC. The SSD's on these chips are different from ordinary SSD's in that they are part of the chip. I'm not aware of high failure rates of the SOC's on early iPads so I wouldn't worry too much as they all have less memory than typical PCs and do just fine. The point of failure is more likely to be the battery during the usable lifespan of the product rather than the SSD.
iPhones and iPads kill apps when ram runs out they don’t swap them to the ssd. I’d prefer that happen on the macs too
Soldering on an ssd is like welding in spark plugs for your car
Yet still this is something that potentially could bite apple in the back in a few years.. for me its a reason to choose 16GB on my mac mini.. problem is we don’t know how much impact it will have, but this could potentially ruin the used apple products market
I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t embrace the used market more. Having more consumers in their ecosystem and buying subscriptions to their services is good business. They should stop being d-bags and support right to repair!
Great video Sir, thank you!
M1 Mac with 16 gb ram shows zero swap usage even when playing multiple games on it and even if an app is left open for couple of days in the background it handles it really well left it on standby it has amazing battery life. Always have latest updates installed on your device and any bugs will be fixed automatically and go for the 16 gb variant if you’re using it for heavy tasks.
I would pay more if they used 3D Xpoint
I wish there were more tech UA-cam channels like this one. Sensible and we'll researched information delivered in a simple and down to earth way. Keep up the good work.
Good video. I agree with your analysis. I've been using SSDs for 10 years and I have yet to see one fail. The first drive I bought was a Crucial M4 512GB in Sep 2012 for my mid-2009 Apple MacBook Pro 15. The MacBook Pro failed with a display fault in Dec 2019, but the SSD still works and is now being used as a file store. In contrast I've had several hard disk drives fail, along with couple of SD cards and USB drives. My favourite SSDs have always been Crucial, and I typically by their higher tier product with the better-quality NAND chips. They are not as fast as the higher-end Samsung drives, but they offer reliable performance Vs cost. I replaced the mid-2009 MacBook Pro with a four port 2019 MacBook Pro 13. The 2 TB SSD is extremely fast and I am sure it will still be working in 5 years+, though I suspect I will have made the switch to an Apple silicon Mac before then!
Nice analysis - good to see some objectivism on this controversial subject.
I do worry about that, especially because I am daily heavy user... I will probably invest in the 16GB Air or wait for their newer pro models without the touchbar and with the good keyboard back.
We have to remember that this is a consumer product that any prospective owner will use for approximately 5-8 years. As the video says, the 16Gb M1's still SWAP, but not as much as the 8Gb. If people are using the 8Gb for web browsing/every day use which is not memory intensive then they probably won't have any issues. I'm sure that when the professional models of the M1 based Macs, whether they are M1X, M2 etc, they will have more memory (32Gb, 64Gb etc) and be less reliant upon SWAPPING. I'm sure that the SSD's will be fine.
It'd be nice if this was revisited though, everyone made their videos on it a year ago and now everyone's onto the new macs. :/
The odd behaviour is mostly resolved. Much of the problem seem to be caused by an issue in Rosetta, which has been fixed. It is still the case that an 8GB M1 will swap quite a bit more than 16GB, so go for the extra RAM if you are doing more professional workflows.
We also know that Apple has its own SSD controller and they are no doubt using a combination of techniques to ensure that the lifespan of the SSD is not compromised by normal swap behaviour.
In summer 2013 I put a OCZ Vertex 4 into my 2009 Macbook Pro 15", the Macbook and SSD are still going on strong. And I used to use it heavily with VMware Fusion.
Man, I really loved my PSION's. ;-)
I’m trying to resist the temptation to go shopping on eBay... nostalgia is not good for the wallet 😁
I wonder how much information I can store in my brain cells before I need a new brain !
Not all SSDs are NAND-based.
I suspect that we are seeing the swap usage on the Apple Silicon now because the SOC is powering a computer with a desktop OS. iPad has probably been doing this for a long time which allows even the pro model to get away with just 6GB of ram. iPads last a very long time so if we assume that a Mac is using a higher quality flash storage in addition to the higher capacity, you have nothing to worry about.
Thanks for running the numbers. Truth.
Popular video and well done. Subbed and I’m no longer worried about my M1 Mini with 16Gb of RAM :-)
Why I am the only one to ask why you cannot change the SSD inside an Apple M1 computer ?
Thanks for the very useful information. I am deciding whether to buy a M1 mac mini as a second, backup computer at a remote worksite and was a little concerned about this issue. I'm a lawyer, not a tech person so apologies if following the comments/questions are off-base. First, hasn't the Apple SOC been used for years in phones and iPads? Wouldn't the issues with swapping have shown up there already? Second, in other industries I'm familiar with, "failure" when applied to a product usually refers to some level above a mean (or median) failure rate around which there is a normal distribution. For government contract (which I do know about) a rated "failure" @ 10,000 operations usually means that the mean expected mean failure is a standard deviation (or more) higher--say 100k operations. The logic is that you want to have an above 90% confidence that the product will last to the rated failure. Is this also true with computer memory?
I'll do my best to answer...
1. Yes and no. The M1 is designed specifically for Macs and there are differences. iOS tackles multi-tasking in a different way to macOS, so I'm not sure we can draw comparisons. Additionally, people tend to keep an iPad or iPhone for shorter periods than a laptop.
2. I think you'd want more like an above 99% confidence. Silicon chips are tested and graded during production. Those which don't make the grade are either recycled, or "binned" as a different product. With SSDs, the best chips go into enterprise grade models with longer warranties, and the lower performers go into consumer grade SSDs. The worst probably end up in cheap off-brand products. A similar thing happens with CPUs. If you're making an 8-core and one or two of the cores are not making the grade, the chip will be sold as a 6-core etc.
SSD failures are not commonplace. They are significantly more reliable than traditional spinning hard disks.
Thanks for the very detailed response. When I said 99%, I don't think I expressed myself well. I'm well aware that that's way low for a critical component. Electrical components are typically 4 “9s” of 5 “9s” in critical applications. The point I was trying to express is that a rating of say 100k operations in civil engineering (which I know about from my contract work) means that mean failure is several standard deviations above that number. Only a small fraction of the components will actually fail at 100k operations. Most will last many times longer. Roadways, for example, are rated at 50 years or so, but most last much much longer. The thing I don't know is whether the rating for life of SSD's is similar. It the rating a mean failure rate or a lower boundary of expected performance? If the latter, comparing the data use to the rated performance may not be meaningful in the real world, right?
Save you all time... no.
As a collector of vintage Apples, I have working computers between 10 and 40 (!) years old. Some of these machines were well used before I acquired them and required replacement drives, etc., to restore them to working order. I worry that in the coming years, well-loved vintage Apples from the 2020s onward will be irreparable junk, victims of their disposable design. It is unconscionable but not especially surprising that a company that boasts its commitment to the environment builds machines that have a fixed lifespan (measured in TBW) and there’s nothing that can be done to extend it.
You don't know my cousin... She kept her laptop for 10 years
Thanks. I've been wondering about this lately. Perhaps one of those "phone in a blender" or destructive teardown people could run some tests before destroying an M1 Mac?
I'm not too bothered, because I've thrashed my Intel MBP for years without an issue, and because my M1 MacMini seems to be able to drive Samsung's T7 drives pretty fast, so booting from an external drive is an option if the internal drive becomes toast.
I've taken to buying smaller internal SSD configs (because of Apple's ridiculous pricing), and using external drives for bulk data processing. But I always bite the bullet and get as much RAM as I can afford.
Perhaps it is sometimes worth buying a larger drive and then under provisioning?
I think there’s wisdom in buying the largest SSD you can afford, but I’m with you on Apple’s pricing! I do most of my work on external drives too.
overprovisioning?
Hey great video!, I'm using MAC mini M1 machines and notebooks. Very efficient architecture. What i do in my case (music production, and video editing some times) My working drive is an external SSD and also my cold storage is external. So i use internal ssd just for OS and apps and memory swap, all caching from my apps are located in the external drives. Running in the smaller config Apple offers for the M1 generation is a very good experience, for the specifications I did not expect such a great performance.
No idea how much time the drives will last but i did notice some optimizations made by Apple over the time using OS UPdates. Memory consumption become very predictable. If you are going to manage huge projects i recommend going for more memory. Apple Mini M1 was in a point the most efficient and powerful computer per watt i ever had on my desk and that's very impressive.
As i work in the Datacenter and Cloud industry for 25 years i did try everything in terms of hardware, in storage i test many brands and tech, i don't spect the ssd's to last so much , we will see. Just backup your data on daily basis :D Thank you for sharing! best regards from Santiago Chile!.
cool calm and informative - subbed :)
Thank you 😊
Go for 16GB model with largest SSD - so basically pay Apple what $600 extra? ($200 for memory upgrade, $400 for SSD upgrade - at least for the desktop model). No thanks.
Phones 2021: 16 GB LPDDR5.
Apple LAPTOP 2021: 8GB DDR4.
Obviously Swap file will make sure your SSD degrades quickly but the problem is SSD cannot be upgraded so only choice = Buy new laptop. #ShameOnYouApple
Apple stock Photos App just wrote at about 130MB/sec/swap for more than 15 Minutes and ongoing ... without actually downloading anything just analyzing pictures! Thats more than 100GB written to my SSD for doing NOTHING apart from scanning through my library.
You are the real example to show how to explain the technical things. So called Tech UA-camrs don't have one percent of knowledge what you are sharing with us. Kindly keep up.
Is Swapping not a standard process with Windows since decades? Why being so angry with Apples Unix adaption? SSDs are built of cheaper and cheaper TLC and QLC cells. But with internal tricks and reserved 15% for died cells, hides this problems. You go and buy 1024 GB or 1 TB and do get 831 GB inside the PC. 85 GB are missing.
M1 based macs are throw away machines, it's obvious. no replaceable RAM and drives, no graphic cards...
I hope that smartctl is giving some wrong data... I'm using my M1 Air since January 2021, and what I get is: Data Units Written: 134 293 990 [68,7 TB]
and I'm not using it for video editing or anything like this - rather console + chrome...
This problem should not occur with the Mac Studio because its SSDs are socketed. No one knows how to buy these proprietary Apple SSDs. However, presumably Apple could easily replace your Mac Studio SSD if this problem occurred.
Always solid advice!
The sheer politeness and articulateness of the request for subscription had me subscribing and looking for a second thumbs up button.
the content itself was brilliant, mind
apple is a fucking rip-off.... apple m1 can't even handle multi-monitor support, i have absolutely zero faith anymore in their other hardware.
Why this is a subject in 2020? Operating systems don't use memory swap since forever? At least windows do, and an HDD is much more prone to fail than a SSD.
Well explained.I really doubt lifespan is at all a concern.I have filled 500 gb just once in owning laptop for 6 months.that mean at this rate would need 30 yrs to deplete it.more concern is around batteries though which are bound to fail in 1000 charge cycles or less
lol...says who now ? xD
@@asdbef3667 lithium ion chemistry dude it will degrade after 1000 cycles
Most owners of an 8 GB M1 will probably never hit their swap but they should learn how to find out. The issue with the SSD is that it's soldered in. With respect to terabytes and gigabytes they are base 10 values with respect to the SSD, so 0.082 TB is 82 GB.
That was informative, I do not regret to have buy the MacBook air 512G model. Well done
They can keep it. If I can't change the memory and SSD I don't want it. They lost me. I want one but I won't support their planned obsolescence. Too many Windows laptops out there to give Apple my money.