Is there any way to protect the M1 SSD by sacrificing space / How to over-provision an SSD on MacOS? I've seen all the news around the M1 Mac writing the SSD excessively and I also have very high write counts on my SSD already.
I do know SSDs do have a spare capacity they can assign to blocks once an original block is damaged. But this is only a few blocks as far as I know - is there any possibility to for example Mae the official capacity of the SSD smaller by 10GB and give those blocks as additional spares to the controller so it can prolong the live of the SSD a bit longer once blocks start dying?
Or how would you go about securing the SSD Life? Is it a possibility to shrink the partition and zero out the rest of the drive so the controller can use these blocks? Would this include a firmware update of the ssd controller? I'm a bit lost about where to start with this.
SSDs just don't work like that.
Formatting &amp; partitioning aren't placed in 'zones' like on an HD. The sectors/cells that the drive keeps as spares aren't even accessible to the OS, only to the drive's internal firmware. SSDs 'spray' data right across the usable sectors using complex algorithms really only known to the drive itself to prevent excessive wear.
The way to ensure an SSDs life is to keep a lot of free space on it. The smaller the drive, the larger the percentage. 10-15% minimum free on large drives; teeny ones, 128GB &amp; 256GB, I'd keep a minimum of 25-35GB free.