4 ms·

being able to duplicate a 1GB directory in an instant

• untog 9y ago
  Is that a new feature? Isn't that just a performance improvement?
  • zbentley 9y ago
    "What are these 'car' things? Do they really offer new features over horses? Isn't that just a performance improvement?"
  • OskarS 9y ago
    It is most certainly a new feature. APFS is copy-on-write, so when you duplicate a folder, it happens instantly regardless of how big it is because it doesn't have to make a copy until you start modifying the files. Moreover, because of COW, duplicate folders don't take up any extra hard-drive space. I literally just duplicated a 100 gigabyte folder to test, it completed instantly and I'm not using any more drive space than I was before. It will only start using drive space if i start modifying the files. APFS is seriously cool (there are many other features besides this). It's not revolutionary (ZFS and Btrfs did all this before), but it's miles past HFS+. Apple has needed a new filesystem for more than a decade, and I'm glad it has finally happened, even if the OS update that brought it sucks pretty badly.