M1 Mac users report excessive SSD usage, potentially affecting component life

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Some advanced users have reported overuse of the SSD for writing and reading data on Macs newly released with M1, Apple’s first computer chip based on the ARM architecture. The problem could possibly affect the life of the internal SSD used in M1 Macs – not to mention the machine itself.

As reported by users on Twitter and also on the Linus Tech Tips Forums, macOS reports that the internal SSD of Mac M1s recorded “extremely high disk writes in a relatively short period of time.” One user points out that in some extreme cases, the SSD has already consumed around 13% of the guaranteed maximum total of written bytes (TBW).

Some more professional users of the new M1 Macbooks experience extremely high drive writes in a relatively short time. The most severe cases “consumed” approximately 10 to 13% of the maximum guaranteed TBW value of SSDs (taking into account their capacity and using values for equivalent NVMe drives available in the market).

Since SSDs are based on chips rather than mechanical parts, they all have a predetermined lifespan depending on their use for writing and reading data. The more data you write to an SSD, the faster it will display bad behavior such as slowness or even data corruption. Since the internal storage of Mac M1s is soldered to the motherboard, users will have to replace the entire computer if they are affected by an SSD fault.

With regular use, it may take up to 10 years to take effect, but today’s reports suggest that the life of the internal Mac M1 SSD can be reduced to as little as 2 years due to the behavior of macOS. Another user says that a MacBook Pro M1 with 2TB of storage and 16GB of RAM has already registered 3% total internal SSD usage after just 2 months.

2 TB 16 GB model. 3% used.

This means that for a 256GB model, proportionally you would expect around 30% usage.

If this is correct, some of these machines will not last 100% six months.

And that’s a 16GB model. 8GB should be worse.

Holy shit. https://t.co/9HcmaYgJPT

– Hector Martin (@ marcan42) February 15, 2021

Unfortunately, the reasons for this problem are still unknown. It could be the M1 chip constantly using the Mac’s internal storage for memory swap (which basically uses the SSD as virtual RAM) or just another bug found in macOS Big Sur.

Apple has yet to comment on this issue, but hopefully the company fixes it with a future macOS update.

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