Need help: Does the 2023 M2 Mac Mini use TLC or QLC NAND flash for storage?
I am hesitant to purchase a new Mac Mini until I can find out what type of flash it uses. The following APPLEINSIDER story reported that the M1 Macs used Toshiba TLC NAND flash:
Questions raised about M1 Mac SSD longevity, based on incomplete data
What type of flash does the 2023 M2 Mac Mini use?
Do all 2023 M2 Mac Mini models use the same type of flash? If so, is it TLC or QLC?
Or, do the less expensive models use QLC and the M2 Pro models use TLC?
Or, do all models now use QLC?
Apple specs don't disclose the flash type, but I think it's a fair and legitimate question, especially for anyone who hopes to keep a Mac for a long time.
Thanks in advance if you can help!
Comments
It would be safe to assume the SSD will have over 100TB TBW endurance for the 256GB. You would be able to write the whole drive over 400x. Most people will write less than 10GB per day so it would easily last over 10 years.
People working with movies can write more data but even then it would be rare every day and they’d be best using external drives.
Running out of RAM and paging can cause this problem too so make sure to get enough. If someone gets 8GB when they need 16GB, it can write out multiple GBs per day.
I actually have an old Mac laptop from 2014 that exceeded its TBW and makes the laptop unusable from the internal drive. Drive writes randomly cause kernel panics. It’s annoying that the hardware can only be used by booting externally and would need a logic board change but after such a long time, the hardware isn’t worth much and it’s not expensive to buy older replacement laptops.
If you plan on using the Mac for a long time, buy as much RAM as you can to avoid paging, buy the larger SSD models and use external drives for caches like render caches. There are tools to monitor drive writes and health so you can see heavy writes and avoid them.
https://www.macworld.com/article/338844/how-worried-should-you-be-about-your-m1-macs-ssd-lifespan.html
https://www.macworld.com/article/334283/how-to-m1-intel-mac-ssd-health-terminal-smartmontools.html
In general, plan to get a usable lifespan of 8 years from a computer.
https://www.techinsights.com/blog/teardown-apple-macbook-pro-16
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/apple-silicon-soc-thread.2587205/page-124
https://www.techpowerup.com/267018/gigabyte-announces-updated-ud-pro-series-high-endurance-sata-ssds
""vendor-name"="Toshiba" and "nand-marketing-name"="itlc_3d_g4_2p_256" would indicate that we're looking at 256 Gbit 4th generation 96-layer 3D TLC BiCS NAND flash dies from Kioxia (formerly Toshiba). All of the ≤ 1 TB Q series SSDs in M1 Macs and ≤ 2 TB R series SSDs in M1 Pro/Max/Ultra Macs that I've seen thus far use those same dies."
"96-layer KIOXIA 3D TLC NAND flash memory, with increased endurance rating across the board. The 1 TB variant offers a staggering 750 TBW endurance (for perspective, the NAS-optimized WD Red SA500 1 TB is rated with 600 TBW); while the 512 GB variant offers 370 TBW; and the 256 GB variant 175 TBW."
The drives use an SLC cache that reduces wear, they won't necessarily have worse endurance than older MLC.
Even if the entry mini used QLC, it would likely still have TBW around 100. If there was 1TB written every month, it would last about 8 years and the entry price is $600. Losing $600 in 8 years isn't a huge loss.
The M2 Pro model with 16GB/1TB is $1799 and will have SSD endurance well beyond 20 years for average use.
For people working with 4K ProRes film (~0.5TB/hour), maybe heavy virtual machine creation, docker images, software builds etc, there could be more than 1TB written per month. Writing 10TB per month could wear out the higher endurance SSDs in 6 years. That's why it's best to use external drives for write caches for Photoshop/After Effects/Da Vinci.
If someone was working on a 15 minute After Effects animation, it can write over 100GB per render. Render 10 changes in a day and that's 1TB of writes per day, 20TB/month. Those heavy use cases should use external/disposable drives.