QuarterSwede
macrumors G4
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"Purgeable" space is killing my Mac
- Thread starter kirbyrun
- Start date
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- Tags
- mac mini purgeable space tahoe
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BSDnostalgia
macrumors 6502a
Is there a storage cleanup tool for iOS that is similar to Daisy Disk for MacOS? I need a way to clear the junk buildup on my iPad.
No. iPadOS and iOS don't allow full disk access which is required to scan the disk. Put another way, all apps are sandboxed.
jdw13
macrumors regular
I was bothered more by it in older MacOS versions, when sometimes the "purgeable" portion of "Available" space was no really available to some applications. When it became an issue for me, I would just write to a large dummy to overwrite all the 'Available.' The writing would abort as the system disk was full and then after deleting my dummy file, only a small amount of 'purgeable' would remain. Example of the shell command I would use (from Terminal or XQuartz xterm):
$
$ head -c 36000000000 < /dev/random > ~/Downloads/myfile
$ rm ~/Downloads/myfile
The writing of such a large file this way can take some time. That large number "36000000000" should be at least as big as your 'Available' space in bytes.
Right now on a 256 GB 2020 M1 MacBook over half of my 45 BG Available space is purgeable and nothing has aborted due to lack of disk space.
Note: my way of dealing with it is free but not be as good as some of the tools because it writes unnecessarily to the SSD.
$
$ head -c 36000000000 < /dev/random > ~/Downloads/myfile
$ rm ~/Downloads/myfile
The writing of such a large file this way can take some time. That large number "36000000000" should be at least as big as your 'Available' space in bytes.
Right now on a 256 GB 2020 M1 MacBook over half of my 45 BG Available space is purgeable and nothing has aborted due to lack of disk space.
Note: my way of dealing with it is free but not be as good as some of the tools because it writes unnecessarily to the SSD.
BSDnostalgia
macrumors 6502a
Yes, back when disks were disks, I would do the same thing. Only, sometimes I would create a smaller file of random bytes and then cat together as many as I needed for the big file without a fail because, sometimes, a little messy. Random bytes because stuff was getting smarter about compressing out redundant zeroes. The thing is, that old strategy isn't necessarily a good idea in the world of SSDs. Writing flash uses up write cycles, and, deleting and cleaning random blocks takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. That is why I wish MacOS would do a much better job of cleaning the kitchen when it is done cooking. But, the real problem is with iOS because there just isn't an easy way to do this.
