Macs with built-in SSDs might be writing to their storage at a frantic pace. Here’s how to see if yours is wearing itself out.
Apple’s latest M1 Macs — and many Intel-based ones, for that matter — all use the company’s T2 security chip, which encrypts the system’s built-in storage. The issue with highly-integrated motherboards with onboard storage is that if the onboard SSD wears out, the whole system becomes a brick of e-waste. And as flash density increases by storing more bits per cell (for example, Samsung’s QVO drives with QLC NAND), its longevity decreases, since it can’t handle as many write operations. That’s why it might be a good idea to keep track of whether a system with built-in storage is wearing itself down. Hector Martin, one of the developers responsible for porting the Linux kernel to Apple Silicon M1 processors, asked the question on Twitter: how much writing has the SSD in your Apple M1 Mac done? The early M1 systems all shipped with just 8 GB of RAM out of the box, and could only be upgraded to 16 GB at the time of purchase. So on top of installing apps, writing documents, and caching files, Macs under heavy use could also be writing a lot to a swap file. One user reported that his Mac mini with a 1 TB SSD and 16 GB of memory was writing to the drive at a frightening pace.150 TB written in two months works out to 2.
