The new Macs based on the Apple M1 Silicon have brought many new and exciting things to the Cupertino-based company's computing platform. With this innovation, there are also questions and concerns about the changes that these bring. Recently, several Apple M1 Mac users have been reporting an issue with their device storage and facing alarming SSD degradation, as per health readings.
Apple M1 Macs Suffer From SSD Degradation
According to MacRumors, their forums have been flooded with concerns and comments from M1 Mac users about their device experiencing high drive writes over a short space of time. Several cases found that M1 Macs from Apple end up using 13 percent of the maximum warrantable total bytes written (TBW) value of the SSD storage.
For those unaware, flash memory on solid-state drives can only write a certain number of times before they become unstable. The software is used to ensure that the load is spread evenly across the drive's memory cells.
There are times that when a hard drive has been written multiple times that it not reliable and cannot hold data new data and space.
However, there are times that when a hard drive has been written multiple times that it not reliable and cannot hold data new data and space. So while SSD wearing is usual, expected behavior, drives should not be exhausting their ability to save data as quickly as some M1 Macs seem to be.
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9to5Mac points out that SSDs are based on chips rather than mechanical parts and have a predetermined lifespan based on how much the chip is used for writing and reading data. The more a user brings new data to its SSD, the faster it will deteriorate and exhibit poor behavior such as lagging and, worst, data corruption. And if the M1 MacBook SSD is affected, one must replace their unit with a new one due to the internal storage of an Apple Mac is soldered to the logic board.
This can take up to 10 years to take effect with regular use, but today's reports suggest that the M1 Mac internal SSD lifespan can be reduced to two years due to macOS current behavior. An M1 Mac user posted on Twitter that an M1 MacBook Pro with 2TB storage and 16 RAM has already registered three percent total internal SSD usage after only two years.
SlashGear reports that the slight problem with those figures is that they use a third-party SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Tool) program since Apple does not have a SMART program to look in the health of a hard drive SSD.
Although the SMART toll does work reliably on other devices, there is still a chance that Apple has changed things under the hood of the M1 Macs, and it is getting incorrect data.
Apple Stays Silent
Amid this growing concern, no word has been heard from Apple about this incident since mid-February. Also, there is no fix at the moment, but M1 Mac users can expect one to arrive with an update soon. After all, the company does have a track record of putting out quality hardware and lots of quality assurances.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by: Luis Smith
