When buying a Mac computer, you must pile all your budget on the memory, and you must remember it.
by Poster
Jan 25, 2025
75
My last generation intel mbp16 had a hard drive mounted on the wall. I don't know why. Of course, this has been a long time ago.
Recently, I was going to sell the M2 Mini with 8G memory and replace it with the M4 Mini. When I checked the life of the hard drive through smartmontools and told my group friends that the hard drive had written 10T after one year of use, something a group friend said made me very unhappy. He said that his computer could not write 10T even after 5 years of use.
When I get angry, well, I'm selling equipment here. If you say this, how can I sell my equipment? He was kicked out of the group when he got angry.
However, the more I think about it, the more wrong it is. What is the concept of 10T? If you write 10 T a year, and if you don't stop every day for 365 days, you will write 28GB a day. However, my M2 mini is a backup machine, and if you really use it for no more than 100 days, 365 days a year, then this is scary. According to 100 days, it means writing 102GB per day.
This is very, very, very scary. A computer that can only browse the web has a hard disk of 102GB a day. I was surprised myself.
So, I checked the iMac with 8G memory I bought in 2022 through smartmontools, and I was confused when I checked it. The hard disk write capacity was 57T.
What is the concept of 57T? The theoretical TBW of a 256GB hard disk should be 100-150TB, which means that 57T has consumed half of the theoretical life of this hard disk.
I checked the [Disk] through the [Activity Monitor] that comes with the Mac and found that the largest writing process is the kernel _ task process with a PID of 0. Almost if the computer puts it there and doesn't operate anything, the daily writing is more than 20GB.
Recently, I traveled for 5 days, and I came back to take a look at [Activity Monitor]. The disk write volume is 1.25 TB
https://i.imgur.com/G1rnijs.jpeg
I have looked through a lot of information and asked a lot about GPT, and the basic conclusion is that [insufficient memory will cause macOS to frequently use memory compression and Swap files (Swap), thereby increasing the amount of hard disk writes, which is manifested in the frequent writing of data by the kernel _ task process.]
In other words, when choosing a Mac computer with 8G memory, you should not only worry about whether it is enough for daily use, but also consider whether the hard disk life is enough to borrow.
Therefore, when buying a Mac computer again, please pile all your budget on the memory, and try not to buy a beggar's version of the memory device.
Of course, posting this article is not to create hard disk life anxiety for you, but at least, this feature should be well known.
Replies
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Anonymous503 Jan 25, 2025That's true
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Anonymous136 Jan 25, 2025In the third paragraph, I can see that you are not a good person
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Anonymous129 Jan 25, 2025The only hard drive I've ever seen writing to hanging device in reality is MacBook
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Anonymous504 Jan 25, 2025I took a look at a 16 +256 M1 MBA purchased in 2022 that I received a few days ago. The read volume is 179T and the write volume is 102T. The previous owner may be under a lot of pressure to use it
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Anonymous347 Jan 25, 2025If there is not enough memory and performance is affected, there is nothing wrong with adding memory. If you want to protect cheap and durable hard drives, it's really unnecessary to spend more money to buy large memory. I haven't seen one at the end of its life, and even if it is broken now, it is very cheap to expand and replace the hard drive
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Anonymous130 Jan 25, 2025tbw is conservative
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Anonymous505 Jan 25, 2025If only in terms of writing life, Isn't it just as important to add a hard disk? If the hard disk capacity doubles, the tbw will also double
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Anonymous506 Jan 25, 2025TBW is just an index used for warranty of a single hard disk. If it exceeds it, it is not necessarily bad, and if it does not exceed it, it is not necessarily bad. For the whole machine, especially the whole machine whose hard disk is soldered dead, if it is not written when it is sold, it is not available. You can try to write it down during the warranty period and then replace it with a brand new motherboard (
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Anonymous507 Jan 25, 2025If you don't use an Apple computer, you won't have this trouble. 16G memory only costs 100 yuan
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Anonymous249 Jan 25, 2025Group friend:?
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Anonymous508 Jan 25, 2025So did you pull it back?
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Anonymous287 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous507 It is indeed, 32Gx2, only 600 yuan.
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Anonymous509 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous507 only apple can do (only apple can sell memory to the price of gold bars)
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Anonymous510 Jan 26, 2025So did you pull it back?
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Anonymous511 Jan 26, 2025I laughed to death, even kicked people. How many people are there in your group? Can you find the suckers by kicking people?
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Anonymous512 Jan 26, 2025My conclusion is that there is no need to be anxious
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Anonymous513 Jan 26, 2025The same is true if the memory is a little larger. I have a MacBook Air M2 with 24GB memory. Even if I only browse the web and work with text every day (LaTeX, and automatic compilation is turned off), the average daily write volume for a period of time is 50GB +, and 30TB for a year and a half. More writes than your M2 Mini. Isn't 24GB RAM enough for text work?
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Anonymous514 Jan 26, 2025It has little to do with memory. My last year Intel mac book with 32G RAM. I just checked and found that the power-on time is 681 hours, and the hard disk reads 35TB and writes 33TB.
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Anonymous515 Jan 26, 2025I have a feeling after reading the comments: Windows plus Nvidia is the future
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Anonymous252 Jan 26, 2025I have 36g of memory but I can't stand safari memory leaks and often swap