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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Anonymous117 Jan 26, 2025The 24G m3 Macbook was purchased in April last year and used for 9 months. Power On Hours: 833 Read 35.6 TB Write 24.8 TB
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Anonymous118 Jan 26, 2025The M1 32G, which was first launched in 2021, has written 85 TB. I don't feel anything special, just use it with high intensity as usual...
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Anonymous119 Jan 26, 2025The current window, 1T SSD power-on time: 1 year and 127 days, and the write volume is 19.046 T (not bad). But the health status of the hard disk is 89%, and there is something wrong with it
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Anonymous120 Jan 26, 202516G should be the lowest configuration Now all we need is an iPad upgrade
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Anonymous121 Jan 26, 2025The OP must be the kind of person who feels particularly good about themselves.
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Anonymous122 Jan 26, 2025To sum up the previous message, it should be that the system characteristics of macos itself are like this, and it has little to do with the memory size.
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Anonymous123 Jan 26, 2025Percentage Used: 50% Data Units Read: 846,332,073 [433 TB] Data Units Written: 796,561,783 [407 TB]
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Anonymous123 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous123 # 47 are you all using so little?
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Anonymous124 Jan 26, 2025This is dictatorship, and you can't listen to any bad words, even if it is the truth.
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Anonymous125 Jan 26, 2025Percentage Used: 2% Data Units Read: 117,440,080 [60.1 TB] Data Units Written: 83,358,068 [42.6 TB] What are you worried about? 32GB Anyway, when it comes to changing devices, the SSD can't be bad
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Anonymous126 Jan 26, 2025If you are sensible, just give yourself a knife. Ignorant people kick group friends and laugh to death.
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Anonymous127 Jan 26, 2025= = = START OF SMART DATA SECTION = = = SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02) Critical Warning: 0x00 Temperature: 24 Celsius Available Spare: 100% Available Spare Threshold: 99% Percentage Used: 0% Data Units Read: 14,141,149 [7.24 TB] Data Units Written: 15,955,938 [8.16 TB] Host Read Commands: 378,865,175 Host Write Commands: 356,583,160 Controller Busy Time: 0 Power Cycles: 468 Power On Hours: 234 Unsafe Shutdown: 8 Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0 Error Information Log Entries: 0 Read 1 entries from Error Information Log failed: GetLogPage failed: system = 0x38, sub = 0x0, code = 745 m1 pro 32g Reading and writing is not so outrageous
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Anonymous128 Jan 26, 2025What's the matter? I haven't seen a hard drive hanging yet.. On the contrary, intel's cpu failed after a year of use
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Anonymous129 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous130 The 256GB Kioxia solid-state is generally labeled at 200 ~ 250TBW, but the actual writing is about 700 ~ 800TB, which is indeed conservative. But it actually only took two and a half years, and the one that broke was an M1 MacBook Air. And I also learned that if the Intel Mac hard drive is broken, it can be turned on, and a flashing folder icon with a question mark will appear. After M1, the hard disk is broken, and the symptoms are the same as the motherboard is broken. The screen is black when booted, but in fact only the hard disk is broken.
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Anonymous129 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous127 macOS in the past two years does not have the serious memory leak problem in 2021. If used during that time, it can write an average of 10TB per day
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Anonymous131 Jan 26, 2025It's okay, for m4, 16G started, Cook's conscience found out
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Anonymous132 Jan 26, 2025> What a group friend said made me very unhappy. He said that his computer could not write 10T after 5 years. This description alone can't explain anything. It's possible that the other party just said it like a normal chat, or it's possible that the other party's way of speaking is very unfriendly, which is aimed at the disgusting landlord or pure EQ low-mouth addiction. The former shows that the landlord is a * *, but it doesn't look like it; The latter cannot be blamed on the original poster, so all the team members upstairs personally think it is not advisable
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Anonymous133 Jan 26, 2025Percentage Used: 8% Data Units Read: 1,460,745,803 [747 TB] Data Units Written: 422,246,888 [216 TB] Power On Hours: 8,853 m1 mbp 2021
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Anonymous134 Jan 26, 2025Can't the new mini be replaced with the hard disk? Use it casually. If it breaks down, just replace it. I thought it was memory anxiety, but it turned out to be just life anxiety. Maybe it will be replaced with a new mini after two years of use. Is it really useful to spend an extra 2k to buy gold memory? Only 3500 for a single machine
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Anonymous135 Jan 26, 2025@ Anonymous136 hahaha