From High Sierra’s four-volume group to macOS 12 on Apple silicon with three containers and 11 volumes, and both regular and fallback Recovery volumes.
APFS
A simple worked example showing the effect of snapshots and changes in hidden system files in consuming free space on APFS.
When Time Machine makes its backups to APFS storage, just what can and can’t you do? How can you prevent large temporary files from stealing space on storage?
Dragging a file to copy/move it from one location to another used to be simple. Now it’s complicated by iCloud, dropbox behaviour in AirDrop and Universal Control, and more.
How to do this using macOS and free tools. Introduces a new version of Dintch which lets you control its speed, particularly on Apple silicon.
Apple could have chosen to make APFS open source or to document it fully, to help third parties develop maintenance tools. It chose not to, but Disk Utility still doesn’t work as it should.
APFS backup disks offer different possibilities for adding volumes for your own use, alongside the backup volume. How do you decide what’s best?
It depends whether you’re going to boot macOS from it, on the space required for snapshots, and how large they could become. And there’s more.
File data stored towards the periphery of the disk is read and written nearly twice as fast as that near the centre. How to take advantage of this.
Which is faster with a hard disk: using APFS or sticking with HFS+? Are there any differences in their performance on SSDs?
The Eclectic Light Company 