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Sparsity

Inside APFS: from containers to clones

How APFS containers and volumes work. What hard links, clones and sparse files are, and when they break down.

January 2, 2023 Macs, Technology

Copying a Mac volume to another file system (and back)

Tired of HFS+? Disenchanted by APFS? Why not copy or back up to a different file system? Here are crocodiles waiting to bite you.

November 25, 2021 Macs, Technology

Explainers: Sparse things

Sparse bundles, sparse files, and sparse matrices explained in a nutshell, and how a sparse bundle could have a band which is a sparse file containing a sparse matrix.

April 10, 2021 Macs, Technology

Exploring sparse files and potential clones with Sparsity 1.2

T T Read More

New version searches for sparse files and clones, reporting their individual sizes and totals for the folder or volume examined.

April 5, 2021 Macs, Technology, Updates

Last Week on My Mac: APFS and pursuit of the free lunch

Can APFS really store more on disk using sparse files and clones? Is there such a thing as a free lunch, or do these tricks have a cost?

April 4, 2021 Macs, Technology

How can you tell whether a file has been ‘cloned’ in APFS?

APFS can ‘clone’ files when copying or duplicating them within the same volume. But how can you tell whether any given file is a clone?

April 2, 2021 Macs, Technology

Sparse files are common in APFS

If there’s one thing we’re learning about APFS, it’s that file sizes are flexible. That means that free […]

March 29, 2021 Macs, Technology

How sparse files can explode backups

How to bring a Time Machine backup to its knees: get it to back up a sparse file to an HFS+ disk. It’ll take forever and run you out of free space.

March 27, 2021 Macs, Technology

There’s more to files than data: Structure and data forks

Looking in more detail at newer tricks used by APFS on the data of files: sparse files, which can squeeze vast empty files almost to nothing; file clones; and compression, opening up in Big Sur.

October 20, 2020 Macs, Technology

The Quest for Sparse Files in APFS: do they exist?

T T Read More

An ingenious idea to save storage space: leave out empty areas in large files – make them sparse. Do they exist in APFS as claimed?

April 9, 2019 Macs, Technology
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