In APFS, if one of the cloned files is changed, even by a single byte, that changed data 'splits off' from the rest, and the files are now physically, and not just logically, separate-some of the data blocks now have two copies: the original ones, and the modified ones. As far as users are concerned, they're totally separate, even if, at the file system level, they share the same data. They're not like hard linked files, where changing one copy changes the others (not that most users know what hard links are). This is documented in Apple's APFS Guide.įrom the user's perspective, these are different files. Rather, APFS creates new directory entries for the files, but references the same data blocks. I explained back then it was because the files aren't being copied. Remember back in this post where I talked about the demo where Craig showed how fast it was to copy a gigantic amount of data? Doomed! Doomed! (Well, maybe not so doomed.) That doesn't mean the copy is bad! It just means it might not be as space efficient as the original. There are cases where we can't make an exact copy of your APFS volume. So, here's something that you might not expect me to say:īecause of the way APFS "file clones" work, no program operating at the file level, including SuperDuper!, can make an exact physical copy of every possible APFS volume.
Really great movie, though.)Ĭontent warning: some strong language is used in this post. (I really wanted to embed the teaser trailer for Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts above, but alas it's a tad NSFW. The new beta should work better on every system, and it fixes a problem with the beta autoupdate mechanism as well.so the next release's autoupdate should work better.
That way, when the OS problems are fixed, everything continues to operate.Īll of that is a longwinded way of saying, we're happy to release Beta 6 of SuperDuper! 3.0, which has even more workarounds for macOS issues, covering a broad variety of situations we've seen in the past week or so. It can be challenging to do, since you don't want to break "working" setups, and any workarounds should only come into effect in situations where they're needed. With a broad range of different setups and configurations, we can then find issues in the way macOS 10.13 is dealing with those configurations, and try come up with workarounds so, when when we release the GA version of SuperDuper! 3.0, the broader user community will have a smooth experience.Ī lot of these changes have been focused on attached volumes, incorrect state information being returned by macOS calls or tools in some configurations and states, and coming up with ways to prod and probe until macOS returns the correct data. The vast majority of the beta cycle has been focused on getting coverage of as many systems as possible. Most, though, don't have to deal with the huge variation of hardware, software, OS, etc that a program like SuperDuper! has to handle. Or it might be an OS issue that only shows up in some situations (the recent iOS calculator bug is a good example of that). That might be a usability issue caused by default framework behavior, due to the interaction model selected by the designer. Any program of sufficient complexity ends up having to work around behaviors that are undesirable.