Thread

1. iAMkenough · 1790013684 · focus · HN ↗

   Note that storage space taken up by local models is not reclaimed and remains dormant on your Mac until you're nearly out of space.

   1. rgovostes · 1790017039 · focus · HN ↗

      Philosophically, what is the difference between empty space and space that will be reclaimed when you need it?

      The storage medium tracks whether a cell or sector is overwritable. The filesystem tracks whether a block is allocated. And the OS tracks whether a cache is evictable.

      At what layer do you consider the space “claimed”?

      1. kccqzy · 1790017850 · focus · HN ↗

         In practice the difference is whether the code that does this reclaiming is actually working. I’ve never gotten my Mac into a low disk space situation (other than maybe in Leopard days) but on iOS, it is quite frequent for me to trigger a situation where the free space including purgeable space is many gigabytes but actual free space is nil. Trying to commit a transaction in a SQLite database in an app? Sorry you can’t, there’s no space left on device. Now go to settings and observe that you have 15 GB left (which includes purgeable space). Even SpringBoard has trouble showing icons. I do not trust Apple’s OS level disk space purging at all. I trust the filesystem and the storage medium more.

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