IIRC this was standard advice in the 2000s and early 2010s when SSDs were recent arrivals and misuse could be an expensive mistake. It’s still generally true about flash memory (easily kills thumb drives and certain types of memory used in embedded systems) but much has since been optimized for system drives (cache management, overprovisioning, trim, cell endurance, etc). The idea was sticky though, like battery “memory,” and you’ll still see it repeated occasionally.
The current advice for any mainstream OS is to trust the defaults. SSDs are uniquely well-suited for virtual memory in these environments since ops are mostly small random reads and large sequential writes, which are fine on SSDs just much faster. Macs also use random unallocated space for swap, which slows (spreads) wear more than usual.
Anyway user reports tend to suggest decent longevity. That said, there was a brief scare a few years ago due to a bug in disk health reporting.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Not to mention those SSD are both hardware and software locked to the mother board. Once the SSD goes, the whole machine goes. The same can be said about RAM…once that goes, the mother board does too.
Perhaps the goal is to use the SSD as a sacrifice in order to extend the life of the obviously more important RAM.
T156@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Although RAM is vastly more durable than the flash chips of an SSD, so that wouldn’t make sense.
It might make more sense from a cost viewpoint, since flash is typically cheaper than RAM.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I know. I wrote it as a crap excuse. The SSD that stores user data is infinitly more important than RAM.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
I know they did it with RAM which is bad enough but to do it with SSDs as well. That alone is a reason not to get an Apple device.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They might not specifically software lock the drive, but I do recall somethibg about them enabling disk encryption by default. So you’re data is essentially tied to the system.