02-24-2021, 08:08 AM
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/32...hey-should
Quote:Concerning reports from Apple M1 Mac users have surfaced in the past few days, as different folks compare notes on how often their systems are writing to disk. Some comparisons display eye-popping levels of drive writes, especially given how long some of these systems have been in use. Evidence of a truly systemic problem, however, is limited — and I’m not sure how much we can trust some of the counters people are using to report data.
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A system losing 3 percent of its functional NAND every two months would see 90 percent of its NAND exhausted within 5 years, assuming linear rates of progression. Many SSDs can run well past their lifetimes, but the risk of hitting the manufacturer-specified limit is going to make a lot of people antsy, no matter what. The fact that these SSDs are soldered down and effectively impossible to replace also concerns some folks. Others have chimed in, claiming this issue affects both x86 and ARM, that it began after Catalina (as opposed to Big Sur), or that it affects x86, but to a lesser degree. At least one user has claimed his power-on hours are incorrect. If that value isn’t accurate, it would wreck any basis for comparison on these systems.
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a consistent explanation for what’s going on here, and some changes Apple made to the M1 storage system may also be concerning. An M1 Mac, unlike an x86 Mac, cannot be booted from external storage if the internal storage completely fails. This, to our eye, is a problem that needs more attention than it’s gotten. SSDs fail for reasons other than hitting their write limits.
It is possible that some tools are reporting incorrect values for certain fields. It’s also possible that Apple has a low-level storage bug that’s drastically inflating drive writes. There’s no sign of this being a near-term problem, since even the most aggressive usage we’ve charted would support more than five years of use. But people keep laptops for longer than they used to, and Apple has aggressively traded on the idea of the M1 as a step up from Intel in every respect. For now, we’re still hunting for a cause or to understand if Apple considers this standard operating procedure and what the associated implications for long-term longevity are.