I had this issue where I had clearly lost >300GB of space on my drive via a lost snapshot for Time Machine.

[forums.macresource.com]

In the end, the solution was simple - using CCC to manage snapshots!

Was awesome, easy, and far nicer than dealing with terminal.

Found the tip here in this thread:

[forums.macrumors.com]

Thought I'd post it here as CCC was far easiest solution I've read dealing with this over several sessions.

Good stuff!

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BigMcGuire @ MacRumors -
I found whenever I deleted something, Disk Expert would show that space in the Guest account. No amount of restarting or other magic would fix it. Eventually, I found out it was Time Machine snapshots. I use Carbon Copy Cloner --- so that AND Time Machine are doing snapshots on my drive. With Carbon Copy Cloner, I can remove Time Machine snapshots as well as CCC snapshots. That and a reboot fixes my free space issues.

[forums.macrumors.com]

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Thanks for the shout out! We're really proud of our snapshot features.

If anyone wants to know more about CCC snapshots, probably more than you'll ever want to know, we have a really long, comprehensive article here: [bombich.com]

Sarah

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FormerlySaleenl
Thanks for the shout out! We're really proud of our snapshot features.

If anyone wants to know more about CCC snapshots, probably more than you'll ever want to know, we have a really long, comprehensive article here: [bombich.com]

Sarah

Was just re-reading that. I'm still a bit muddy on all of it, but the article makes a lot much clearer.

The main problem I have with snapshots is not space, per se (I have space to spare in my setup) but how they affect the speed/timeframe of a CCC clone process. My cloning seems to be on the uptick in how long it takes to complete. FWIW, setup is a SSD (internal) --> HDD (clone). Used to take 8 to 10 minutes to update the clone, that's been steadily increasing for a while now and, looking at the Task History, it doesn't really seem to correlate to amount of data copied.

Second, snapshots completely hose the speed of running Disk Utility when booted from the Recovery HD. I'll have, say, 40 snapshots and Disk Utility will check them all. What used to take about 10 to 15 minutes at the most (still too long; c'mon, DiskWarrior, fully update for APFS) now takes about an hour or more.

I know I'm missing something in the setup to fix this situation.

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Thanks Sarah for the link. Very interesting information.
Zoidberg, straight from @theLnk, not a good idea to use apfs on non-ssd drives, nor bootable backups. Snapshots can and should be disabled under this circumstances.
I’m still getting up to speed w/this tech, but unless you go all in on CCC, time machine may be an easier solution for MY day to day snapshot needs, which are actually just for my own peace of mind.
Backups rule.

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• back to confinement






Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2019 10:56AM by rich in distress.

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rich in distress
Thanks Sarah for the link. Very interesting information.
Zoidberg, straight from @theLnk, not a good idea to use apfs on non-ssd drives, nor bootable backups. Snapshots can and should be disabled under this circumstances.
I’m still getting up to speed w/this tech, but unless you go all in on CCC, time machine may be an easier solution for MY day to day snapshot needs, which are actually just for my own peace of mind.
Backups rule.

Yeah; reading same re/non-SSD as the backup. Was a little confused re/the terminology in the article on that.

I have a multi-level backup system; I do Time Machine backups to a single-HDD external and CCC clones to a pair of NewerTech Mercury Elite Pro Dual Minis (too many words for a small drive, eh?) with internal HDDs, one of which is always rotated off-site to a friend's fire-proof safe. I hope to eventually get everything all-SSD, but prices are still keeping that way out of reach.

That said, my aggravation with the repair routine in Disk Utility, snapshots, and the internal SSD remains. Used to be I could run it from the Recovery Drive in less time than it took me to walk to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee; now, I need to start it when I leave for lunch & errands and *maybe* it will be done by the time I get back.

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I definitely am not the best person to help troubleshoot specific performance issues but if you submit your logs, Mike or Rob can take a look and probably narrow down the source of the slowdown. It might just be hardware but there might be a small tweak or two that could help.

Sarah

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Zoidberg
...my aggravation with the repair routine in Disk Utility, snapshots, and the internal SSD remains. Used to be I could run it from the Recovery Drive in less time than it took me to walk to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee; now, I need to start it when I leave for lunch & errands and *maybe* it will be done by the time I get back.

In my experience...

CCC snapshots don't slow down the DU.

Time Machine snapshots do. They can add several minutes per snapshot.

So, before running the DU, I thin snapshots. That's all you need to do. Use the Terminal command:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 99999999999 4

(I don't even bother to count the 9s anymore. Just tap the key until it looks like a nice long string of them.)

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Quote
Sarcany

Quote
Zoidberg
...my aggravation with the repair routine in Disk Utility, snapshots, and the internal SSD remains. Used to be I could run it from the Recovery Drive in less time than it took me to walk to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee; now, I need to start it when I leave for lunch & errands and *maybe* it will be done by the time I get back.

In my experience...

CCC snapshots don't slow down the DU.

Time Machine snapshots do. They can add several minutes per snapshot.

So, before running the DU, I thin snapshots. That's all you need to do. Use the Terminal command:

sudo tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 99999999999 4

(I don't even bother to count the 9s anymore. Just tap the key until it looks like a nice long string of them.)

That's my understanding, too, based on the Bombich article (re/CCC vs TM snapshots). Did what you said, and it appears they've been deleted. I'll run DU in a bit and see what's what.

I'm actually kind of surprised deleting snapshots isn't a utility in something like TinkerTool or the like.

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