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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> If not, why not?

At least on Apple devices, this is not something anyone has to worry about.

For example, on my 2022 Mac Studio daily driver, on 24/7, DriveDx (https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx) reports my SSD lifetime left at 94%.

(I'm aware of the February 2021 "wear-gate" scare involving the first M1 Macs. This turned to be incorrect SSD-wear reporting.)

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On my personal computers I keep track of this and ensure nothing goes write-crazy.

On my work laptop though (M3 Pro, 1TB), I’m at ~70% health. Iirc the lifetime writes are at >700TB. I do develop on it, but a lot of it is due to the various endpoint security software that’s always there logging every single possible thing but I can’t do much about it. I expect the ssd to die first in this laptop at this rate, so best I can do is ensure everything always synced/backed up from my local work laptop.

With some badly written apps like Codex though, this may be a concern [1].

[1] https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/28224

What about people who want their laptop to last 10 years?

Then you probably want something that has replaceable parts and not an apple product (e.g. framework)?

Not trying to discourage you from building your thing, but just figure that's worth considering.

Also, I could see why developers would want excessive logging in their betas, so that's kind of a catch-22 (without the verbose logs it might be harder to fix bugs found in the beta)

For Macs, treat a renewable AppleCare subscription as part of the cost.

You can replace your SSD without replacing your laptop.

I think people have forgotten what year it is and how ubiquitous SoC and unified memory designs have become.

On some laptops, it requires a complete motherboard replacement.

Really??

I would consider such laptops not fit for purpose and wouldn't buy one in the first place. Of course, that doesn't help if that's the sort you have. Sorry.

It helps reduce size and weight since you can just directly place ssd chips on the motherboard instead of planning for connectors.

Just depends on what your priorities are.

imagine the 2 grams you'll be losing by skipping the m.2 connector

Connectors are points of failure. The less of them, the more reliable.

SSDs are a more common point-of-failure. You want it socketed unless you're shipping redundant flash modules.

If ease of repair is what you care about, then yes.

But in absolute terms, sockets do make things more likely to fail. A socketed design means you have an assembly step where something is put into that socket. Probably manually. Cables and sockets can be tugged at and twisted. Dirt and moisture can get in between. Suppliers can use the wrong metal in connectors. Some errors will be caught by QC, which means that you never see them, but they still affect the manufacturer's bottom line.

Like bot403 said: "Just depends on what your priorities are."

MacBooks are like that.

Well, then I wouldn't buy a MacBook.

Regardless, if you're concerned about the logging of beta software prematurely wearing out your SSD, then don't use beta software. It's not ready for release anyway, by definition. It's there so you can help test it for the developers. Logging is an important part of that.

I have a feeling you missed a giant "/s".

Or maybe not, can't be sure nowadays.

Well if 4 years decrease SSD life by 6%, then 10 years should decrease it by ~15% - so you have plenty of wiggling space.

Then you probably want enterprise level drives, motherboard, ECC RAM, etc.

I know I do!

Last time I looked at Laptops that supported ECC it was a very short and very expensive list. At least I could get enterprise datacenter SSDs... once upon a time...

I know that I DONT want iLO/IPMI/Redfish on a laptop though, the out of band stuff eats up a ton of power.

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