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
-
Anonymous257 Jan 26, 2025Another big killer of macOS writing hard drives is the spotlight index, which is embodied in the mds _ stores process, which writes hundreds of gigabytes from time to time.
-
Anonymous258 Jan 26, 2025It's not a big problem, and it's not a family heirloom, so use it. You were kicked directly by someone I didn't think
-
Anonymous259 Jan 26, 2025Hahaha laughing to death
-
Anonymous260 Jan 26, 202532G + 1T purchased in October 2021 and written to 55.8 T. More than 1 year in the middle is considered light use and the rest of the time is heavy use After calculating, the average daily writing is about 48.9 G. Compared with the original poster's, it's pretty good. If the memory is small, you have to sacrifice the hard disk. I don't think it's surprising that windows also eats the hard disk through page files
-
Anonymous260 Jan 26, 2025There is reason to wonder if it is used as an edge node by some websites to run pcdn or something like that
-
Anonymous261 Jan 26, 2025That's an exaggeration. I have used M1 air 16 +256 for more than 4 years, and I usually do iOS development. Data Units Read: 67,212,404 [34.4 TB] Data Units Written: 47,279,230 [24.2 TB]
-
Anonymous262 Jan 26, 2025You got kicked for just that? What birds
-
Anonymous263 Jan 26, 2025Is 10T too much? My two Windows computers average about 10T a year, which is only 20 P/E times, and the pressure on SSD is not great. However, I often use the hibernation function (S3 was hacked, S0ix is unstable on my machine, so I have to go to S4). Maybe hibernation accounts for less than half of the write volume, but I don't care.
-
Anonymous264 Jan 26, 2025Two-year-old 32GB m1max, read 32.1 TB, write 19.8 TB, use it when you need it.
-
Anonymous265 Jan 26, 2025After looking at the 2022 m1 pro 32 + 512, it is already 216 TB, which is a bit too exaggerated
-
Anonymous266 Jan 26, 2025An 8g computer is simply torture
-
Anonymous267 Jan 26, 2025Ah, yes, memory changes pages, people don't change pages if they have large memory, he's right
-
Anonymous268 Jan 26, 2025I don't think there's anything wrong with kicking, it's cutting off people's money
-
Anonymous269 Jan 26, 2025My former main machine had 16G of memory, and the average daily disk write caused by swap was about 0.5 TB. Later, I changed to the black apple with 64G memory. Now the 64G mac mini can be purchased for about 14,000. When the economic situation gets better, you can consider switching back to White Apple.
-
Anonymous238 Jan 26, 2025My m3 max has mbp and 128G memory. I have been using it for more than a year. It reads 75TB and writes 44.3 TB. It only accounts for about half of the memory for daily use. What about my memory + hardness reading and writing?
-
Anonymous270 Jan 26, 20258G is definitely not enough these days, at least 16GB On the mobile phone, it has become bigger because of the need to run AI, otherwise it has to be deducted
-
Anonymous271 Jan 26, 2025Why are you born like this in the group and come here to be a good person? It's too outrageous
-
Anonymous272 Jan 26, 2025You might as well not say anything about paragraph 3
-
Anonymous273 Jan 26, 2025It took 1 day to write 100G. I just posted a few days ago, 280G in 1 day... although it is windows.
-
Anonymous274 Jan 26, 2025The Macbookair with 8G memory works well without any problems