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APFS

Can APFS special files save storage space?

Deleting clone files saves no space, but converting copies into clones could free up plenty of storage. Sparse files can also be highly efficient, and squeeze 285 GB into just 16.5 GB.

April 2, 2025 Macs, Technology

External boot disks: structure and problems

T T Read More

Systematic and thorough account of the structure and function of bootable external disks and dual-boot systems from High Sierra to Sequoia, and how to diagnose their problems.

March 31, 2025 Macs, Technology

Take control of disks using APFS

Speed up your hard disk by partitioning it so that its innermost 20% remains unused. Reserve space for the SLC write cache on an SSD by limiting the size of volumes.

March 18, 2025 Macs, Technology

Friday Magic: How to make disk space unpurgeable

When it started up after its macOS update, available space on its internal SSD had shot from about 160 GB to nearly 400 GB. Where had all my files gone?

February 28, 2025 Macs, Technology

FileVault and volume encryption explained

How FileVault and APFS Encrypted are enabled and managed differently, and details of how they work internally. Concentrates on T2 and Apple silicon Macs, but also covers older Intel models.

January 10, 2025 Macs, Technology

Why use APFS?

Deciding which file system to use for hard disks can be difficult. Here are the advantages and disadvantages explained in detail, for HFS+ and APFS.

January 9, 2025 Macs, Technology

Why all the snapshots?

How snapshots are created from a volume in around 0.01 second, why they will grow in size over time, how they can only be of complete volumes, and can’t be edited.

January 7, 2025 Macs, Technology

Last Week on My Mac: How Apple silicon came so quickly

It’s September 2016. Apple has just released the iPhone 7, with its first big.LITTLE CPU cores, then 4 days later macOS 10.12 Sierra. How does it transition from there to release the M1 in four years?

January 5, 2025 Macs, Technology

How macOS has become more private

T T Read More

Frameworks provide much of the macOS API. Over the last 5 years, the percentage of Private Frameworks has risen from 76% to 84%. Why is macOS becoming more private?

January 2, 2025 Macs, Technology

How do APFS volume roles work?

What separates System and Data volumes, and how does macOS know they’re part of a boot volume group? What distinguished backup volumes, and what is Sidecar?

November 21, 2024 Macs, Technology

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