Virtual Machines for lightweight virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs rely on sparse files. Here are tips to ensure they stay small and don’t explode to full size.
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Excessive CPU use by mds_stores is a common cause of sluggish performance. Explains what it does and what you can do bring it under control.
Has Ventura brought any relief from Disk Utility’s inability to run First Aid on Time Machine’s backups, and what about changes in Time Machine itself?
In the past, a second, cloned bootable volume on a separate disk was a great advantage. Cloning has become harder, and Recovery better. What should you do now?
Copies, clones and backups are three different things. Here their differences are explained with examples from APFS and modern macOS.
Document versions, accessed through Revert To…, are a major part of the protection macOS provides for dealing with errors. How to get the most from them.
Every time you save a file or build in Xcode, changed source files are added to the version database. Use this powerful tool to go where backups and Git can’t.
If you plan to trade in or pass on your old Mac when you upgrade to a new one, there are pitfalls in ensuring you don’t lose any data, while ensuring your old Mac is completely wiped.
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?
Archiving is very different from backing up, from the storage media used to integrity checks. Here are pointers to help you preserve important documents.
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