Unable to free up purgeable space with APFS on High Sierra GM

[beanbaguk]

I installed High Sierra recently and found I have over 70GB of purgeable space on my SSD, but I can't free this up and I now have less space than I did when I had Sierra.

How on earth can I reclaim this space? As I remove more and more items, that purgeable space grows but I don't see the free space on my SSD.

Is this a bug and can it be fixed? I've tried First Aid twice (once in the OS and once in repair mode).

Not impressed so far. I'm finding it slow and clunky so far on my late 2013 MBP.

 

[robeddie]

I installed High Sierra recently and found I have over 70GB of purgeable space on my SSD, but I can't free this up and I now have less space than I did when I had Sierra.

How on earth can I reclaim this space? As I remove more and more items, that purgeable space grows but I don't see the free space on my SSD.

Is this a bug and can it be fixed? I've tried First Aid twice (once in the OS and once in repair mode).

Not impressed so far. I'm finding it slow and clunky so far on my late 2013 MBP.

Slow amd
clunky. My experiences exactly. And I'm also using a full SSD based system.

Wish I had the answer to your purigable space issue, but hopefully someone will chime in with a solution.

 

[ashleykaryl]

I believe it has something to do with iCloud optimisation and you are not really going to regain that space. There is information here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

I agree High Sierra is not really fulfilling expectations at the moment. Overall it feels slower and seems to be using up a lot more drive space. Perhaps those who have managed to avoid APFS are doing better.

 

[LarryJoe33]

Hmmm...I guess your mileage may vary. My system is running very well and smooth. It did in Sierra too. I actually has experienced a 20GB smaller footprint over my Sierra install. Sometimes a clean install is the way to go.

 

[beanbaguk]

That’s pretty poor though from Apple...but I guess I’m going to have to take that route. I’ll do a time machine backup and try a clean install this weekend

 

[cig0]

That’s pretty poor though from Apple...

That's unfair, think about it: we are talking about a filesystem here, the very foundations and plumbing on which on top lies the OS. I find it amazing that they could deliver such a critical upgrade, from an existing filesystem to a totally different beast, while keeping your data safe and the OS still bootable -- phenomenal.
For the record, I don't know of any other case in which you can do the same thing. Try migrating an EXT4, XFS, JFS or RaiserFS (just to name the best known) to Btrfs or ZFS while maintaining data in place and keeping the OS bootable. Good luck with that. As I said, they did a phenomenal job.

Said that, this conversion wasn't certainly flawless, at least not for me. I experienced some inconsistencies with the way free space was being shown after upgrading from X.12.6 to X.13, nothing serious though to disrupt my daily usage, but when X.13.1 came out I took the opportunity (and the weekend, just like you) to install the new release from scratch.

So far so good, everything's performing well. High Sierra is truly amazing! Now I'm able to lock the system by using a keyboard shortcut (like I've been able to do with my GNU+Linux desktop systems since 2007) and, best of all, now I have the faithful company of a robust A.I. system that helps me get things going through the day:

Jokes appart, since my first step into macOS with El Capitan, this has been a wonderful journey so far.
Granted the OS has its weird things but what system doesn't? I would like to see the Intellihide feature brought to macOS' dock -- or better yet, dump the whole dock thing.
Anyway, Apple does know their business, their products are great.

 

[beanbaguk]

So, you're telling me it's not unfair for them to purge my free space so I can be a guinea pig for their testing?

I wonder what you would say if Microsoft did the same with Windows who for the record managed to create a filesystem upgrade from FAT to FAT32 and then FAT32 to NTFS years and years ago. This isn't new tech.

 

[r.harris1]

So, you're telling me it's not unfair for them to purge my free space so I can be a guinea pig for their testing?

I wonder what you would say if Microsoft did the same with Windows who for the record managed to create a filesystem upgrade from FAT to FAT32 and then FAT32 to NTFS years and years ago. This isn't new tech.

Thankfully, it's not FAT, FAT32 or NTFS and is, essentially, new tech. That aside, a quick google search turned up: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867 - maybe this helps.