Skip to content

The Eclectic Light Company

Macs & painting – 🦉 No AI content
Main navigation
  • Downloads
  • Freeware
  • M-series Macs
  • Mac Problems
  • Mac articles
  • Macs
  • Art

Time Machine

Which extended attributes does macOS Tahoe preserve?

A complex set of rules with optional flags determines whether any given xattr is preserved when copying, saving, syncing with a cloud service, backing up, and more. Here they are.

December 17, 2025 Macs, Technology

Beware the full startup disk

What do you do when you discover your Mac’s Data volume has run out of free space? A guide to working with snapshots, iCloud Drive, and other tricks to salvage your Mac. And how to prevent this from happening again.

July 24, 2025 Macs, Technology

Updates to Cirrus (iCloud), Revisionist (versions), Spundle (sparse bundles) and T2M2 (Time Machine)

T T Read More

Four updates to popular tools, aimed mainly at compatibility with Tahoe, covering iCloud Drive tests, tools for document versions, creating sparse bundles, and checking your Time Machine backups are working properly.

June 27, 2025 Macs, Technology, Updates

Save space on the internal SSD by adding another volume

T T Read More

If you’ve got large files like Virtual Machines or media libraries on the Data volume on your Mac’s internal SSD, use this method to keep the size of its snapshots smaller.

May 28, 2025 Macs, Technology

What isn’t backed up?

Backups don’t include everything. Here are details of those items excluded from Time Machine backups, and why they’re excluded.

May 2, 2025 Macs, Technology

Versions in motion: how to preserve document versions

The rules for preserving document versions are based on their being associated with the document’s inode number, and on the same volume. Here are the details and a way to preserve them whatever.

May 1, 2025 Macs, Technology

A brief history of Mac native file systems

A brief start with MFS for 400 KB floppies, followed by HFS intended for the first hard disks, upgraded to HFS+ in 1988, and followed in 2017 by APFS for all the OSes.

April 12, 2025 Macs, Technology

How robust are APFS clone and sparse files?

How do clone files and sparse files cope with being backed up and restored? Can they save space in iCloud Drive? Some of these answers may surprise.

April 7, 2025 Macs, Technology

Watch your background: automatic Time Machine backups

How DAS gathers its budgets and loads lists of activities. When rescoring permits, it then dispatches the process to initiate backup. Re-scheduling has changed in Sequoia, as shown here.

February 14, 2025 Macs, Technology

Watch your background: background activities with DAS-CTS

There’s normally more than 500 background activities, like Time Machine backups and XProtect Remediator scans, waiting for dispatch in the list maintained by DAS. How this works.

January 29, 2025 Macs, Technology

Posts navigation

Previous1 2 3 … 36 Next
Blog at WordPress.com.
Footer navigation
  • Free Software Menu
  • About & Contact
  • Macs
  • Painting
  • Downloads
  • Mac problem-solving
  • Extended attributes (xattrs)
  • Painting topics
  • SilentKnight, Skint, SystHist, silnite, LockRattler & Scrub
  • DelightEd & Podofyllin
  • xattred, SpotTest, Spotcord, Metamer & xattr tools
  • 32-bitCheck & ArchiChect
  • XProCheck, T2M2, LogUI, Ulbow, blowhole and log utilities
  • Cirrus & Bailiff
  • Precize, Alifix, UTIutility, Sparsity, alisma, Taccy, Signet
  • Versatility & Revisionist
  • Text Utilities: Textovert, Nalaprop, Dystextia and others
  • PDF
  • Keychains & Permissions
  • Updates
  • Spundle, Cormorant, Stibium, DropSum, Dintch, Fintch and cintch
  • Long Reads
  • Mac Troubleshooting Summary
  • M-series Macs
  • Mints: a multifunction utility
  • VisualLookUpTest
  • Virtualisation on Apple silicon
  • System Updates
  • Saturday Mac Riddles
  • Last Week on My Mac
  • sysctl information
Secondary navigation
  • Search

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • The Eclectic Light Company
    • Join 8,891 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Eclectic Light Company
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...