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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Operating System
password required to move a file to a folder??
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<blockquote data-quote="MacInWin" data-source="post: 1952225" data-attributes="member: 396914"><p>Rod, I got my information from an explainer at <a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/02/can-apfs-special-files-save-storage-space/" target="_blank">Can APFS special files save storage space?</a> </p><p></p><p>That was the best explanation of how APFS "copies" files I have read. The article even references a tool that can recover drive space if there are any files with really two copies on it. I used it and saved a few GB in my MBP. </p><p></p><p>One thing I would say is that age of the file is immaterial. The drive itself is formatted and managed with APFS, and it doesn't matter how old the file is when it is first put on APFS, as it is then totally managed by APFS itself.</p><p></p><p>As for TM backups, the old reasons for restarting as you do is not valid, either. TM has changed how it makes backups to be snapshots and the old hard links are now changed to be references to the original blocks on the drive and only the changed blocks are copied to any given backup. A restore then looks at the first FULL backup snapshot on the backup drive, which is the only one with ALL of the information, then applies the changes to blocks in that snapshot going forward to the most recent backup, or the one chosen to be restored. Then those block are copied to the drive being restored and whatever blocks they now occupy are recorded in the directory. None of that has much to do with the issue of the OP, but the permissions on the restored files are probably the issue. And TM backups are a good bit more complicated than that brief statemnt, but that is the 50,000 foot view of it and about all that is needed to understand the process. Again, Howard has good explainers at EclecticLight.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MacInWin, post: 1952225, member: 396914"] Rod, I got my information from an explainer at [URL="https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/02/can-apfs-special-files-save-storage-space/"]Can APFS special files save storage space?[/URL] That was the best explanation of how APFS "copies" files I have read. The article even references a tool that can recover drive space if there are any files with really two copies on it. I used it and saved a few GB in my MBP. One thing I would say is that age of the file is immaterial. The drive itself is formatted and managed with APFS, and it doesn't matter how old the file is when it is first put on APFS, as it is then totally managed by APFS itself. As for TM backups, the old reasons for restarting as you do is not valid, either. TM has changed how it makes backups to be snapshots and the old hard links are now changed to be references to the original blocks on the drive and only the changed blocks are copied to any given backup. A restore then looks at the first FULL backup snapshot on the backup drive, which is the only one with ALL of the information, then applies the changes to blocks in that snapshot going forward to the most recent backup, or the one chosen to be restored. Then those block are copied to the drive being restored and whatever blocks they now occupy are recorded in the directory. None of that has much to do with the issue of the OP, but the permissions on the restored files are probably the issue. And TM backups are a good bit more complicated than that brief statemnt, but that is the 50,000 foot view of it and about all that is needed to understand the process. Again, Howard has good explainers at EclecticLight. [/QUOTE]
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password required to move a file to a folder??
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