Spotify’s app has a curious bug that writes extremely large amounts of junk data to storage drives for absolutely no reason. Tests have revealed that the problem results in hundreds of gigabytes of data being written in about an hour. To make things worse, the problem affects the app on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
Users are concerned that the problem has taken years off their SSDs; as these storage devices have a limited number of times they can be rewritten. There has not been any cases of failing SSDs just yet.
The problem isn’t even tied to the playback of media, as it still happens when the app is left idle and not streaming any content. It just so happens that it wants to keep writing data over and over again. Some users have reported that the problem lies with any database files that include the string Mercury.db, and have proposed manual solutions for the bug.
Spotify has not commented on the issue, and doesn’t look like it’s going to say anything. At least not after the numerous reports on its own user forums and support page. Chances are that a fix is in the works; although the problem was first reported back in July with few taking notice of it.
[Source: Ars Technica]
