Mac mini running out of memory

[HDFan]

What seems to be the culprit, according to this forum thread, is the sheer number of files I've selected for backup—over 4.5 million

Not a problem. Have no issues with

Haha, that's nothing,

Wow. That's a ton of files. Do you need to back all of them up? Wondering if excluding them from the backup might make a difference.

I have never run out of memory with Backblaze, but have only a handful of files > 100 GB. Happens nightly with Carbonite. If I pause the Carbonite backup and then resume it memory is cleared.

 

[Boyd01]

Yeah, that's something I've considered. But I don't want to exclude any of the file types. I could move all my temporary/working files to one directory but that wouldn't fit my workflow very well. And it just seems backwards to change my system to fit their software.

At least I now know what the issues are, and it seems to be working well to just let it eat all the memory it wants unless I need it for a VM. It's pretty weird that it can grab so much memory though.

 

[Iwavvns]

For whateer reason the new OS need more RAM to do the same things.

And this is going to keep happening because companies such as Apple keep adding "features" just to stay relevant and remind us that macOS is still alive and has "shiny new stuff that you need". I feel that junk, yes.. junk, like Stage Manager should have been an optional add-on that we could have installed from the App Store for those who want it - I never use it. The same goes with the ever-growing emoji library.. which I don't use because I'm not 5 years old. If apple split the non-essential stuff into optional downloads then the OP's computer wouldn't be having such a hard time of things. Linux gets along quite well these days with 4 GB of RAM, at least for me, but that doesn't seem to be enough when it comes to macOS.

/rant

 

[giffut]

Monterey is a memory hog. 4GB is not enough here anymore or dealable with cheats.

The Mac Mini M1 with 8GB/256GB is great, but don´t try to run too many applications side by side. Close the ones you do no longer need. Many applications, especially web browsers, add huge ram loads (with increasing tabs you are concurrently using). That´s how ours is chugging along perfectly fine.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Monterey is a memory hog. 4GB is not enough here anymore or dealable with cheats.

The Mac Mini M1 with 8GB/256GB is great, but don´t try to run too many applications side by side. Close the ones you do no longer need. Many applications, especially web browsers, add huge ram loads (with increasing tabs you are concurrently using). That´s how ours is chugging along perfectly fine.

Agree but unfortunate. I can testify that Mojave on an 8GB Mac Mini could handle simultaneously SQL Server running under Docker, Azure Data Studio (strangely a memory hog), Excel, Safari, iTunes, Calendar, Mail, Notes..and for fun throw in Tableau Desktop. Yeah it wasn't optimal but iTunes still never skipped a beat (literally).