Re: One for Randy: Failing SSD

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No, the problem is, that is was working perfectky …. untill I tried to erase it / format it.?

I can’t seem to do that, so I was just looking for “other ways” to TRY TO erase/reset/revive it?

:-)

On 20 Mar 2025, at 14.02, Randy B. Singer via groups.io <randy@...> wrote:

On Mar 20, 2025, at 3:42 AM, Peter Rasmusen <peter@...> wrote:

As I recall it was something about “resetting” an SSD after extensive use, where it had been filled up or something, and there is no Mac software that can do that,

Correct. ?Is the problem that your SSD is full? ?You didn’t say that.

but apperently there is software for PC.

Correct.

How to Restore SSD to Peak Performance
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088341/how-to-restore-your-ssd-to-peak-performance.html#tk.nl_pwr

But that is not SSD repair software, it is software to erase an SSD when it gets too full and slows way down.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice
http://www.macattorney.com/welcome.html
__________________________________________________

Re: One for Randy: Failing SSD

#113131

On Mar 20, 2025, at 3:42 AM, Peter Rasmusen <peter@...> wrote:

As I recall it was something about “resetting” an SSD after extensive use, where it had been filled up or something, and there is no Mac software that can do that,Correct.  Is the problem that your SSD is full?  You didn’t say that.

but apperently there is software for PC. Correct.

How to Restore SSD to Peak Performance

But that is not SSD repair software, it is software to erase an SSD when it gets too full and slows way down.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Re: One for Randy: Failing SSD

#113130

OK Randy, I have obviously remembered wrong. It must have been someone else then :-) 

As I recall it was something about “resetting” an SSD after extensive use, where it had been filled up or something, and there is no Mac software that can do that, but apperently there is software for PC. 

Disk Utility will not format it. Period. 

Maybe it’s just garbage. Annoying! 

:-)

Peter

Show quoted text

On 20 Mar 2025, at 11.36, Randy B. Singer via groups.io <randy@...> wrote:

On Mar 20, 2025, at 1:05 AM, Peter Rasmusen <peter@...> wrote:

And then in the back of my mind, I seem to remember Randy writing about how to revive a failing SSD - and if I remember right, it would implicate using a PC?Doesn’t ring a bell.

SSD’s should always be formatted as APFS.

Assuming that your SSD was formatted as APFS, the only repair utility in existence that will work to repair while it is attached to a Mac is Apple’s Disk Utility/First Aid.

You should boot your Mac into Internet Recovery and then go to Disk Utility and run First Aid.

Option-Command-R 
for Intel Macs

power button —>  Options —> Disk Utility 
for Apple Silicon Macs

How to Start up in Recovery Mode

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Re: One for Randy: Failing SSD

#113129

On Mar 20, 2025, at 1:05 AM, Peter Rasmusen <peter@...> wrote:

And then in the back of my mind, I seem to remember Randy writing about how to revive a failing SSD - and if I remember right, it would implicate using a PC? Doesn’t ring a bell.

SSD’s should always be formatted as APFS.

Assuming that your SSD was formatted as APFS, the only repair utility in existence that will work to repair while it is attached to a Mac is Apple’s Disk Utility/First Aid.

You should boot your Mac into Internet Recovery and then go to Disk Utility and run First Aid.

Option-Command-R 
for Intel Macs

power button —>  Options —> Disk Utility 
for Apple Silicon Macs

How to Start up in Recovery Mode

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

One for Randy: Failing SSD

#113128

I have this 2 TB Samsung EVO 870 SSD that is use to make a bootable clone of my internal hard drive before I do system updates - so I can go a step back if anything fails. 

And today I was going to make a update from 15.3.1 to 15.3.2 

So I attach the SSD, open Disk Utility and erase the drive before I start cloning

Except - today it wouldn't. It fails. 

So I tried to erase all containers and volumes one by one. No luck.

So I tried to format it as macOS Extended - no luck

FAT32 - No luck.  

Nothing works. 

And then in the back of my mind, I seem to remember Randy writing about how to revive a failing SSD - and if I remember right, it would implicate using a PC? 

I can't find the post on this list ... but I'd hate just to throw this SSD in the bin.

What to do? Any help out there? 

:-)

Peter

Re: Periodic Scripts

#113127

The only “runaway logfile” I have ever metwas once where I by some weird accident had enabled “log connection activity” in Mail - it filled my harddrive completely in a matter of days. 

So don't do that :-)  

Peter

Show quoted text

On 18 Mar 2025, at 08.34, Randy B. Singer via groups.io <randy@...> wrote:

On Mar 17, 2025, at 11:06 PM, Al Varnell via groups.io <alvarnell@...> wrote:

I haven't updated this since Mojave, but these scripts never did anything important for most Mac users.Except that they kept a lot of trash from accumulating and taking up hard drive space.  This isn’t a big deal in the short term, but it can become significant in the long term.

If you have a runaway log file, it becomes important in the short term, as you watch your hard drive fill up suddenly for no apparent reason.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Re: Periodic Scripts

#113126

On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 12:34 AM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

If you have a runaway log file, it becomes important in the short term, as you watch your hard drive fill up suddenly for no apparent reason.

I completely agree, but most of those logs are located elsewhere and should be maintained by a different macOS method. And these scripts actually write more logs than they would likely delete if they were run today.

Re: Periodic Scripts

#113125

On Mar 17, 2025, at 11:06 PM, Al Varnell via groups.io <alvarnell@...> wrote:

I haven't updated this since Mojave, but these scripts never did anything important for most Mac users. Except that they kept a lot of trash from accumulating and taking up hard drive space.  This isn’t a big deal in the short term, but it can become significant in the long term.

If you have a runaway log file, it becomes important in the short term, as you watch your hard drive fill up suddenly for no apparent reason.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Re: Periodic Scripts

#113124

I haven't updated this since Mojave, but these scripts never did anything important for most Mac users. They are just leftovers from macOS' Unix underpinnings.

?

Periodic Maintenance Scripts

?

(Originally posted for Leopard, this list has been updated for Mojave.)

?

Here is what the daily scripts do:

?

110.clean-tmps Delete temporary files in /tmp that have not been accessed for at least 3 days. The most significant thing the daily scripts do (in Leopard) is delete temporary files (in /tmp) that have not been accessed in at least 3 days. But /tmp is cleared as part of the startup process, so there will never be anything to delete on a system that is restarted frequently. The periodic scripts are mostly for "long-lived" systems, i.e., systems that have been up continuously for weeks or months at a stretch.

?

130.clean-msgs Delete old system announcements. This is relevant only for multi-user Unix systems.

?

140.clean-rwho Delete stale rwho messages older than 7 days. This has to do with Unix networks, and is irrelevant for almost everyone.

?

400.status-disks Writes some disk status information in the daily.out log.

Disk status:

Filesystem ? ? Size ? Used? Avail Capacity ? iused ? ? ifree %iused? Mounted on

?

420.status-network Writes some system status information in the daily.out log.

Network interface status:

Name? Mtu ? Network ? ? ? Address? ? ? ? ? ? Ipkts Ierrs? ? Opkts Oerrs? Coll

?

430.staus-rwho Writes a system status message (mainly system uptime) in the daily.out log. This is just reporting, not maintenance.

Local system status:

e.g. 7:40? up 1 day, 11:48, 5 users, load averages: 1.30 1.16 1.14

?

999.local Normally not used.

?

That's it, unless you or your system administrator have defined some local tasks. Unless you are running a Unix cluster or regularly using your Mac as a fax machine -- and shutting the machine down every night, without exception -- there is nothing urgent in the daily scripts.

?

The weekly scripts update one database, of interest only to Unix users. If you are not a Unix user there is never any reason to run weekly.

?

310.locate The locate database is used by the locate command. If you are a regular user of locate, you should evaluate whether the index as built by weekly is complete enough for your purposes.

?

320.whatis The whatis database is an index of Unix man pages. It only needs to be rebuilt if you have installed new Unix documentation. In that case, the logical time to rebuild whatis is as part of the installation process, rather than waiting for the next weekly run. Again, if you are not a Unix user, you do not need to rebuild this database at all.

?

999.local Normally not used.

?

The monthly scripts may do two things.

?

199.rotate-fax Recycle fax logs. If you do not use your Mac as a fax machine, it is never necessary to run monthly.

?

200.accounting Write some accounting information in the monthly.out log.

Doing login accounting:

total? ? ? 972.73

user? ? ? 972.65

root ? ? ? ? 0.08

?

999.local Normally not used.

?

Somewhere along the line someone applied the term "maintenance" to the periodic scripts, leading many to believe that they perform some crucial tasks. In fact, it is only minor housekeeping. And they really do run automatically if needed, and the housekeeping is more minor than ever.

Reply: [iomug] Periodic Scripts

#113123

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I was about to ask Jerald what he needed the periodic scripts for, but I think Randy answered that question. By removing the logs, it makes the scripts unneeded.?

The one time I had a run away log, a restart after removing contrary app was all I needed to fix it. The only ?stronger repairs that I have needed to do in 20 years has been done by either Disk Utility/ First Aid, or a restart into Safe Mode.?

If we need a repair tool, I’m sure a new one will come about. I look at this change like when we no longer needed to resolve Extension Conflicts in System 7.?

Brent

On my iPhone Xr

Begin forwarded message:

Show quoted text

From: "Randy B. Singer via groups.io" <randy@...>
Date: March 17, 2025 at 19:08:39 PDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [iomug] Periodic Scripts
Reply-To: [email protected]

?

On Mar 17, 2025, at 11:49 AM, Jerald Levinson via groups.io <levinson@...> wrote:

Apple doesn’t seem to be saying anything about this, but that’s Apple, I guess. One less thing worry about.

Thank you for pointing this out.

I have mixed feelings about this.

Sequoia no longer runs daily, weekly and monthly "maintenance" scripts. ?I'm assuming that's because the logs that those scripts used to clean up no longer exist.

If they eliminated those logs, they have done away with a valuable tool for figuring out what is going on when your Mac is acting strangely.

On the other hand, runaway log files were a not-insignificant problem for a very few users. ?One that was hard to figure out unless you found someone who recognized the situation. ?No log files means no more runaway logs.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice
http://www.macattorney.com/welcome.html
__________________________________________________

Re: Periodic Scripts

#113122

On Mar 17, 2025, at 11:49 AM, Jerald Levinson via groups.io <levinson@...> wrote:

Apple doesn’t seem to be saying anything about this, but that’s Apple, I guess. One less thing worry about.
Thank you for pointing this out.

I have mixed feelings about this.

Sequoia no longer runs daily, weekly and monthly "maintenance" scripts.  I'm assuming that's because the logs that those scripts used to clean up no longer exist.

If they eliminated those logs, they have done away with a valuable tool for figuring out what is going on when your Mac is acting strangely.

On the other hand, runaway log files were a not-insignificant problem for a very few users.  One that was hard to figure out unless you found someone who recognized the situation.  No log files means no more runaway logs.

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Advanced Notebook App Now Free!

#113121

Obsidian, an advanced, extensible, and shareable note-keeping app, is now free!

Obsidian (free)

__________________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice

__________________________________________________

Periodic Scripts

#113120

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In reading the recent emails about periodic scripts (daily.out, etc.) and Mac maintenance, I looked for them on my MBA (Sequoia) and, lo and behold, Apple has removed them.?