5 ms·

I think it’s APFS that’s the cause of my biggest frustration, but I’ve not seen anyone else complain about. I normally run with about 50gb free space. After thr

I think it’s APFS that’s the cause of my biggest frustration, but I’ve not seen anyone else complain about. I normally run with about 50gb free space. After three to four days, I’m normally down to about 3gb and nothing will get it to show back up, other than a reboot. I’ve even run a test which supports this - downloaded 35gb of files, deleted them and emptied the trash. Same thing... space is missing till I reboot.

JD557 9y ago
Do you have the Time Machine enabled? I also have this problem in Sierra. If my Time Machine HDD is not connected, it stores the backups locally. I can only reclaim space if I disable the Time Machine and restart my mac.
- christoph 9y ago
  Nope, Time Machine isn't enabled.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    Check the /cores directory, it is possible to waste a few tens of gigabytes there easily.
- ungzd 9y ago
  Yes, this is likely the reason: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015, and maybe (due to bug or by design) these snapshots are enabled always, even if backup partition is not configured. > In macOS High Sierra, Time Machine stores snapshots on every APFS-formatted, all-flash storage device in your Mac or directly connected to your Mac. I'm curious how it's implemented? Does it use whole-filesystem snapshots? Some discussion: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/81171 https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/81171
vonseel 9y ago
And the typical utilities such as du / df or GUI tools like OmniDiskSweeper report the correct information?
mgkimsal 9y ago
the 'missing space' has hit me a few times over the years, but the highsierra/apfs made it worse. it will often slowly reclaim the space. I've deleted a multigig file, and, say, 30-40 minutes later, the space shows as 'available'. 2016 apple refurb SSD (2015 mbp model). It's all their own hardware and software, and it's buggy (or now designed to be confusing re: disk space).
ungzd 9y ago
I converted main partition on hard disk to APFS and now it's very slow. I know I shouldn't use it on hard disks, but installer (which updates 10.12 to 10.13) crashed otherwise, leaving system unbootable (booting to installer again). After converting root partition to APFS installer was able to complete installation. Not sure, however, that APFS is the reason of slowdown, maybe other filesystems are slow too in this version. FS cache, however, still works, and after warmup system becomes fairly responsive (on 16 Gb of RAM).
tomduncalf 9y ago
I had an issue with “purgable” space on a non-APFS system preventing me from creating a Bootcamp partition. Probably not what you describe but thought it was worth a mention. Followed this guide to “fix” it: https://www.jackenhack.com/mac-os-purgeable-remove-clear-space https://www.jackenhack.com/mac-os-purgeable-remove-clear-spa.... Wasn’t best impressed.
mitchty 9y ago
I can't replicate this on apfs at all, though I've also about 10x as much free space. Rather not write out 500GiB of data to try replicating. $ df -k /; dd if=<(yes) of=$HOME/bigfile bs=1024 count=$((35 * 1024000)); df -k /; rm ~/bigfile; df -k / Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 360477544 612444948 38% 1399186 9223372036853376621 0% / 35840000+0 records in 35840000+0 records out 36700160000 bytes transferred in 1038.398720 secs (35343033 bytes/sec) Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 396346588 576575904 41% 1399343 9223372036853376464 0% / Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 360497876 612424616 38% 1399342 9223372036853376465 0% /
maxxxxx 9y ago
They totally have f...ed up the free space indicators. It used it be that when I deleted things the indicator reflected it exactly. Now my indicator goes from 150 to 220 GB up and down for no apparent reason. I really have no idea how much free space I have exactly.
minusf 9y ago
time machine local backups cannot be disabled anymore (was possible in sierra). these backups are going to a hidden volume and can be listed with the tmutil(8) command. it is not possible to delete all local snapshots with a single command either, the delete subcommand takes a single date... for this reason i do only on-demand backups when i connect my external backup drive. another worrying thing is that the time machine backup drives still use HFS+ because APFS does not support directory hard links. so now i am backing up APFS files to HFS+ "bit perfectly".
- Khaine 9y ago
  I'm not sure why you are worrying. APFS doesn't checksum data, only file metadata. So its barely better than HFS+ in terms of data integrity
  - minusf 9y ago
    my worry is backing up from FS A to FS B where these file systems are not feature equal. just the fact that you cannot use APFS to backup APFS is worrying to me.
acdha 9y ago
Use lsof to look for deleted files which are still open. I’ve debugged that problem with third-party software (AV, backups) a few times over the years.

JD557 9y ago

Do you have the Time Machine enabled? I also have this problem in Sierra. If my Time Machine HDD is not connected, it stores the backups locally. I can only reclaim space if I disable the Time Machine and restart my mac.

christoph 9y ago
Nope, Time Machine isn't enabled.
- vetinari 9y ago
  Check the /cores directory, it is possible to waste a few tens of gigabytes there easily.
ungzd 9y ago
Yes, this is likely the reason: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204015, and maybe (due to bug or by design) these snapshots are enabled always, even if backup partition is not configured. > In macOS High Sierra, Time Machine stores snapshots on every APFS-formatted, all-flash storage device in your Mac or directly connected to your Mac. I'm curious how it's implemented? Does it use whole-filesystem snapshots? Some discussion: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/81171 https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/81171

vonseel 9y ago

And the typical utilities such as du / df or GUI tools like OmniDiskSweeper report the correct information?

mgkimsal 9y ago

the 'missing space' has hit me a few times over the years, but the highsierra/apfs made it worse. it will often slowly reclaim the space. I've deleted a multigig file, and, say, 30-40 minutes later, the space shows as 'available'. 2016 apple refurb SSD (2015 mbp model). It's all their own hardware and software, and it's buggy (or now designed to be confusing re: disk space).

ungzd 9y ago

I converted main partition on hard disk to APFS and now it's very slow. I know I shouldn't use it on hard disks, but installer (which updates 10.12 to 10.13) crashed otherwise, leaving system unbootable (booting to installer again). After converting root partition to APFS installer was able to complete installation. Not sure, however, that APFS is the reason of slowdown, maybe other filesystems are slow too in this version. FS cache, however, still works, and after warmup system becomes fairly responsive (on 16 Gb of RAM).

tomduncalf 9y ago

I had an issue with “purgable” space on a non-APFS system preventing me from creating a Bootcamp partition. Probably not what you describe but thought it was worth a mention. Followed this guide to “fix” it: https://www.jackenhack.com/mac-os-purgeable-remove-clear-space https://www.jackenhack.com/mac-os-purgeable-remove-clear-spa.... Wasn’t best impressed.

mitchty 9y ago

I can't replicate this on apfs at all, though I've also about 10x as much free space. Rather not write out 500GiB of data to try replicating. $ df -k /; dd if=<(yes) of=$HOME/bigfile bs=1024 count=$((35 * 1024000)); df -k /; rm ~/bigfile; df -k / Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 360477544 612444948 38% 1399186 9223372036853376621 0% / 35840000+0 records in 35840000+0 records out 36700160000 bytes transferred in 1038.398720 secs (35343033 bytes/sec) Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 396346588 576575904 41% 1399343 9223372036853376464 0% / Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk1s1 976265452 360497876 612424616 38% 1399342 9223372036853376465 0% /

maxxxxx 9y ago

They totally have f...ed up the free space indicators. It used it be that when I deleted things the indicator reflected it exactly. Now my indicator goes from 150 to 220 GB up and down for no apparent reason. I really have no idea how much free space I have exactly.

minusf 9y ago

time machine local backups cannot be disabled anymore (was possible in sierra). these backups are going to a hidden volume and can be listed with the tmutil(8) command. it is not possible to delete all local snapshots with a single command either, the delete subcommand takes a single date... for this reason i do only on-demand backups when i connect my external backup drive. another worrying thing is that the time machine backup drives still use HFS+ because APFS does not support directory hard links. so now i am backing up APFS files to HFS+ "bit perfectly".

Khaine 9y ago
I'm not sure why you are worrying. APFS doesn't checksum data, only file metadata. So its barely better than HFS+ in terms of data integrity
- minusf 9y ago
  my worry is backing up from FS A to FS B where these file systems are not feature equal. just the fact that you cannot use APFS to backup APFS is worrying to me.

acdha 9y ago

Use lsof to look for deleted files which are still open. I’ve debugged that problem with third-party software (AV, backups) a few times over the years.