How does copy on write work, and how do clones grow apart? What effect do they have on the use of space and performance?
HFS+
When you updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 10.3 six years ago, you were among the first to use Apple File System, although you didn’t know it at the time.
Plain read/write (UDRW), sparse image (UDSP), and sparse bundle (UDSB) compared for storage efficiency, performance, and convenience.
In Monterey and Ventura, regular read-write UDRW disk images can now be APFS sparse files, and work more efficiently than sparse images or sparse bundles.
How APFS containers and volumes work. What hard links, clones and sparse files are, and when they break down.
You’re in control of a traditional file system, but with snapshots, clones, sparse files and other volumes sharing free space, APFS isn’t as simple.
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?
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?
Provided in Archive Utility and three command tools, its LZFSE compression even supports APFS special files like clones and sparse files.
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