MacOS – the difference between `IO` and `Data` in the Activity Monitor

activity-monitorhard drivemacos

In the Activity monitor, under the tab Disk,

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at the bottom center, there is a small graph which can be set to either IO or DATA

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The two graphs look somewhat similar. I understand that I/O very likely stands for Input / Output.

What is the difference between IO and DATA?

I am on macOS 10.11.3 (El Capitan)

Best Answer

Apple provides an explanation on their Support site:

The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and written to your disk. It also shows "reads in" and "writes out" (IO), which is the number of times that your Mac accesses the disk to read and write data.

  • Disk I/O is the number of reads/writes that are done (how many)
  • Data is the aggregate amount of data transfered (how much)
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