As spotted by iMore, several M1 Mac owners have shared extremely troublesome health readings from their solid state drives (SSDs) on LTT forums, suggesting that the life spans of these hard drives could be in real danger.
Users report that the new M1 Macs are experiencing extremely high drive writes over a relatively short time. “The most severe cases have “consumed” about 10-13% of the maximum warrantable TBW value of the SSDs,” notes one user. The issue of ‘TBW’, or total bytes written, refers to the lifespan of an SSD.
If the readings being given out from these machines are correct, developer Hector Martin believes that some machines “aren’t going to last half a year.”
2TB 16GB model. 3% used.
That means that for a 256GB model, proportionally, you’d expect ~30% usage.
If this is accurate, some of these machines aren’t going to last half a year to 100%.
And that’s a 16GB model. 8GB should be worse.
Holy shit. https://t.co/9HcmaYgJPT
— Hector Martin (@marcan42)
The developer, however, states this is “definitely” a bug, although it remains unclear if that relates to the readings being given, or macOS behaviour which is causing the readings to be abnormally high.
Apple has not yet acknowledged or issued any comments regarding the matter.
