These MacBooks DIED from SSD Failure & How To Prevent It (Not for RICH dudes!!)

okay this is gonna be a serious topic.  Believe It or Not, these are all dead MacBooks, even though their physical  appearance looks pretty good but you're not gonna be able to use it just because  the onboard soldered solid state drive died if you want to buy a new Macbook you can choose  the SSD size from the smallest to the largest capacity available but no one's gonna tell  you no matter how small or big your storage size is all of them have a limited lifespan so  technically on one fine day it will certainly die keep watching if you want to know what that  means if you open up the bottom case of the Mac you will see these two rectangle chips  here so these chips literally are the dead onboard storage and of course these are the  ssds for the M1 Mac family but the question is why would they die too soon or maybe the  right question to ask is what can we do to extend the lifespan of these soldered ssds and  maybe you also want to know how can you repair and replace these soldered ssds when they're dead  we will discuss several solutions to this issue by showing you some real case scenarios that  we're dealing with pretty much every week for now part one the problem with onboard ssds according to the Apple schematics diagram these  250 Gigabyte of SSD storage was produced by either one of these Brands it could be Western Digital  SSD brand formerly known as SanDisk or it could be kioxia SSD brand that was formerly known as  Toshiba or maybe the hynix brand a part of SK Hynix product or the very least we can find in  these contemporary Macs is the Samsung SSD so none of these manufacturers claim that their ssds will  last and live forever furthermore they actually release technical documents explaining  the maximum lifespan of their SSD lineup in other words they also claim that their ssds  will certainly die when it reaches its maximum lifespan so here's where the nightmare begins  knowing this fact Apple still decided to make them soldered and not easily replaceable so you as  the end user can do nothing about all these soldered components including this pre-configured 250  Gigabyte soldered SSD you won't be able to upgrade it yourself to higher capacity if it's too small  and the worst case scenario is you cannot even replace it if the SSD is dead so here's the truth  you need to digest the main reason why soldered SSD storage is a bad idea is not purely because  they're not upgradable but the main concern that you should worry about is when the SSD decides  to die on itself people can generally accept nowadays that you cannot upgrade the soldered SSD  yourself but little do they realize that these soldered ssds also have a finite lifespan a lifespan  that gradually deteriorates every single time you copy a large file to your desktop location we  will explain more details regarding the SSD lifespan and how to preserve it later so when your  SSD is finally depleted all of its usable lifespan the ssds will just die usually no signs or warning  no clicking sound no smart failure notifications it will just die one of many reported symptoms  that the SSD failure is imminent that your Mac will become unusually slow frequent hanging beach  ball when loading files and a couple of days later Our client's Mac suddenly shut off during a light  usage and you'll never be able to turn it on again another client reported to us that his MacBook was  working fine last night he just did some paperwork and after completing his job he closed the LCD  lid and set it to sleep mode but guess what the Mac refuses to turn on the next day in the morning  P Ram reset and all combination Keys didn't work at all we performed several diagnostic steps and  voltage measurements on the logic board before confirming is the SSD issue this situation is very  similar with the ones we had for the 16 inch 2019 that was sent all the way from Hong Kong through  International priority shipping by FedEx he said I remember that morning I was still able  to use it and then I just closed the top cover without doing anything to bring it out this is how  I usually use it and I was trying to use it on the train at the time I didn't get any response after  opening up the top cover this was the last moment I used the MacBook after performing a detailed  diagnosis on his mac's logic board we found out that all six SSD chips were dead and shorted to ground  I'm not sure if that sabotage or what because it's really peculiar for all of them to die at once  so what can you do to prevent this issue from happening at the end of this video we will explain  two major reasons why your SSD dies and how you are going to deal with it as well as what kind of  upgrade you can do if your SSD dies the following principle we're going to explain to you today is  also applicable to all newer M1 Macs family as well part two the reasons why your onboard SSD dies in this section we will separate the cause of  death into two different categories the first one is the one that you cannot control and the  second one is the one that you can control well sort of so you as the end user the easiest  way to understand why you cannot control some SSD death is simply because of manufacturing defects  from the local components around the SSD itself these local ICS and components are actually  the supporting circuit vital for SSD operation so this kind of defect is usually beyond our  control because this issue originates from the factory that produces literally thousands  of IC chips in a day so it could be any faulty ICS or capacitors or components but the best  example for this IC chip we're talking about is the tps62180 a buck converter for the SSD  made by the Texas Instruments so when these buck converters are randomly assembled to the mac's  logic board on the assembly line it really depends on your luck whether you're getting a chip with a  battery life span or maybe your life hates you so much and you'll always be the Unlucky One then  you're gonna get defective ICS with a shorter lifespan this explains why we've had a very  pristine MacBook logic board but still the tps62180 exploded like there was some liquid spill  on it so it really depends on your luck and the major problem when this tps62180 exploded is that  it will usually pass the 12 volt PPbus directly to SSD storage and thus killing all of them so  90% of the cases where the tps62180 exploded usually you're going to end up with some dead ssds  too when you remove the IC from the logic board you can clearly see the chip is totally fried  with burn marks on it if this unfortunate thing happened to you you don't have to blame yourself  because it's not your fault but still you need to send it to the repair shop to replace the fried  ssds but keep in mind your datas are long gone next let's move on to the second reason why your  SSD dies and that is because your SSD has reached the end of its lifespan this one you kind of  have control over it because we can take several preventative measures to slow down the aging  process of the SSD now let's just assume if every circuit is perfect no IC chips explosion Etc the  very first thing we want you to understand is that the ssd's lifespan is directly proportional to the  storage size a much bigger capacity relates to a much longer lifespan and this lifespan metric is  measured in tbw for example take this chart from the SSD manufacturer we've shown earlier you  can actually see the pattern that describes the increase in tbw with every increase in capacity  say 250 Gigabyte SSD capacity will have a 150 tbw then 500 gigabyte capacity doubles the tbw  value to 300 and the one terabyte capacity further doubles the tbw limit to 600 tbw and so  forth now what on Earth is the meaning of tbw tbw is an abbreviation for total bytes written or  some people call it as terabytes written but all these terms are basically the same thing that  simply means the maximum amount of data that a solid-state drive can write in its lifetime in  simpler words a 250 Gigabyte SSD will die after you wrote 150 terabytes of data to it or maybe  you want to say a one terabyte SSD will die after you copy 600 terabytes of files to the SSD so the  second reason why your SSD dies would be revolving around this tbw quantity of how to preserve and  minimize the tbw usage so let's say if you have a wd brand SSD with a total of 250 Gigabyte  capacity inside your MacBook and the online data sheet over the internet says that a typical 250  gigabyte WD nvme ssds will have a 150 tbw limit this 150 tbw limit means that this SSD is only  able to write 150 000 gigabyte of data during its whole lifetime before losing its ability to  store data and possibly die so when you save a 100 gigabyte movie file to your desktop it will  consume 100 gigabytes from the total space inside the 250 Gigabyte SSD at the same instantaneous  time it also means that you have consumed 100 gigabyte SSD tbw from the total capability of the  150 000 gigabytes limit then you continue to copy a huge raw video files to your desktop say another  140 gigabyte so now your storage only left another 10 gigabyte free space and of course the same  behavior would reflect on the tbw bar on the right side so right now you realize that you only have  10 gigabyte remaining free space then you finally decide to delete all of them and clear the SSD  so here's what most people never realize yes you finally get the 250 Gigabyte free space again but  the value on the tbw bar on the right here Remains the Same and not the decreasing like the storage  space what makes it worse this value will keep climbing every single time you copy more files  to the SSD bit by bit time by time until over a long period of time it reaches the 150 tbw  limit and the soldered SSD will finally die well this is all because you relied on the internal  storage too much you copy a lot of files to it and thus consuming its remaining lifespan  much faster with that being said the very first thing you want to do to preserve the lifespan of  the SSD is you have to stop copying huge files to your desktop you need to minimize the internal SSD  usage or maybe download a lot of movies to your internal storage or maybe to backup your personal  photos and videos from your iPhone to your Mac this is the reason why some people overcome this  problem by relying on the external USBC drive to store their important data everything they  downloaded from the Internet is directed to a specific folder on the external USBC drive and  thus preserving the free space and tbw of the internal SSD inside the MacBook only crucial  applications will be installed to the internal drive and usually they will buy and use cloud  storage to store all the important things several video editors we know also use external nvme drive  to keep the project files externally and edit them directly from there this might sound like  Cheapskate solution but if you're not someone Rich who regularly changed your MacBook just like you  change your clothes then maybe you should consider to practice this method well another factor that  considerably eats your tbw is the memory swap issue the easiest way to know if you're having  the memory swap issue is by opening the activity monitor switch to the memory Tab and look at the  bottom most of the window and find the swap use during normal circumstances this value should be  zero bytes but if you find this value is not zero like this one right now around 200 megabyte swap  use then this is usually because you don't have enough physical RAM if you're gonna say Ahhhh that's  just 200 megabytes of swap use it's just a small swap amount no big deal well you want to hear what  I'm gonna say next this M1 MacBook has 8 gigabytes of RAM the hardware for this 8 gigabyte physical  memory is located on top of the M1 package itself and it is actually an lpddr4x dram chip let's  just be honest right nowadays 8 gigabyte of physical RAM is not enough there's no way on Earth  to run the latest Mac OS and apps with the basic 8 gigabyte configuration so when you boot a MacBook  to the Monterey desktop and not doing anything the CPU will usually allocate around 2 gigabytes  of RAM to the Mac OS then you open a lot of tabs on Google Chrome and it will consume another 3  gigabytes of RAM and next you open a lot of apps simultaneously at the same time and the RAM usage  will continue to spike up reaching the 8 gigabyte until it doesn't have enough free memory left and  starting from here the Mac OS will start to swap a small portion of your SSD as RAM this is the 200  megabyte swap you saw in the activity monitor just now now I want you to remember that this small  portion of 200 megabyte is always coming from the SSD and it will never be a part of physical RAM so  what's really really bad about this is this small amount of 200 megabyte here is used as random  access memory or RAM and the word random here means the data coming in and out is continuously  changed it is randomly moving in and out when the CPU says so so it's not just a static 200 megabyte  when a new data comes from the CPU it will delete the old data inside the SSD and write another 200  megabyte of new data this cycle will continue as long as you turn on the computer and as long as  you still see the 200 megabyte swap used in the activity monitor if this still looks nothing  to you look at the tbw bar on the right here it will keep increasing over time just because a  200 megabyte is continuously swapping inside the soldered SSD so theoretically by looking at these  numbers and the tbw limit it has your soldered SSD will certainly die when all the remaining tbw  is used all of these troubles are happening just because you don't have enough physical RAM during  the final QC stage we've checked the drive DX apps and you can see that this Mac has a 250 Gigabyte  of SSD storage and it is out of warranty and it says here the SSD has consumed a whopping 278 tbw  or 278 thousands gigabyte of data to the internal soldered SSD so when you look at the tbw chart it  really has surpassed the limit outlined by the manufacturer that is 150 tbw of data and that is  the reason why you can see the SSD lifespan has decreased from 100 to 80 percent all of these  troubles are happening just because you don't have enough physical RAM miraculously it still  seems to work but personally we don't think this SSD will last really long from now and I  hope it's not going to return back in here with the same pile of these dead MacBooks the only  good thing about this Ram compensation method is the Mac OS will run smoothly even when  you don't have enough actual physical RAM so we have told this client to minimize  his multitasking behavior and try to do only one or two things at a time to minimize  the RAM usage then we suggested to him to back up everything on his SSD and store everything  in the external drive to minimize further tbw usage because with 80% lifespan left you never  know if the SSD is going to fail anytime soon this Ram swap principle also applies to all Intel  MacBooks so it would be better if you can upgrade your 8 gigabyte soldered Ram to 16 gigabyte with any  expert technicians well you can try to ask your local techs whether they can do it or not let's  just take another M1 Mac with 16 gigs of RAM as an example this MacBook also just finished  its one year warranty but the SSD status Still Remains 99% healthy lifespan with only 5.5 tbw of  SSD usage this is because the 16 gigs physical RAM is already enough for General multitasking so  that it doesn't require further Ram swap from the SSD but be careful the 16 gigs of RAM will start  choking too if you are open x100 Google Chrome tabs as well as huge project files so please monitor  the RAM usage using the activity monitor after all these explanations you might think we will  suggest you to stop buying Apple products but yeah the problem with apple Fanboys is that when you  told them no more Apple they will end up buying a lot more so maybe it would be better if we  give a real suggestion and solutions so if you do not own a Macbook yet or may be planning to  buy a new one here's how you should spend your budget first make sure to maximize the solid Ram  capacity first it should be at least 16 gigabytes of RAM whatever highest plus and only then you  can choose the storage capacity you could afford with whatever kidney you have left while the SSD  itself is replaceable and upgradable and we will discuss it in part three just one more thing to  add the same tbw principle actually applies to your iPhones or Android or any smartphones  larger SSD size literally means higher tbw limit and thus your phone will have a longer  lifetime so if you are a Sentimental Man and love to keep these devices for years make sure  to choose the maximum SSD size available hoping that it will last longer so here's just a quick  recap of the reasons why your onboard SSD dies part 3 replacing the dead onboard ssds in this  section we will show you the SSD replacement methods for the M1 Mac T2 Mac as well as the  T1 MacBook all of them are closely related to each other but honestly this video has been a  bit longer than what we usually do so I think it might be better to reserve this topic in  our next video where we will explain all the available choices for your soldered SSD upgrade  as well as the rules applied to replace them we will touch several things like The Landing Pads  Rule and the requirement it takes to successfully replace the soldered ssds so I guess that's all  we've got for today make sure to subscribe to not miss this next video and hit the like button  if this video helps you somehow and see you again at IBoff RCC Channel reverse engineering at its  best have a great day and thanks for watching

Channel: iBoff RCC

Views: 681,667

Keywords: dead ssd, ssd replacement, soldered SSD, ssd macbook, mac pro, imac pro

Id: MZuv4TIjk-I

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022