Running High Sierra? Do you keep your Photos Library on an external drive? Do you realise that backing it up using Time Machine is likely to be a waste of time?
APFS
General account of xattrs, their storage, types, tools for working with them, and common problems.
Changes include frequent timechecks by timed, harder access to info about keychains, a couple of possible AppleScript bugs, and APFS snapshots.
What happens next with Apple’s new file system is a strong indicator of its commitment to the Mac as a computer platform. Copy-on-write is the issue.
Effectively a Combo updater with the Supplemental Update, many apps are updated in a total payload of around 4.5 GB. And there’s the new emoji too.
Does APFS support its major new features – clones, snapshots, etc – yet, and how can you use them?
A new tool for performing full analysis of metadata for an APFS volume is now available – on an early bird offer.
For now, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS volume. There are many problems with backing up APFS to HFS+, though. Time Machine needs to be revised.
Troubled at times, we have used Disk Utility through thick and thin. Now it has changed to support APFS, with some weird behaviour.
You may still have plenty of space on your backup volume, but if it has millions of files and hard links from years of backups, it will be very slow. Here’s how to fix that.
The Eclectic Light Company 