On my system (2018 Intel Mac mini, Big Sur), I make bootable backups using Carbon Copy Cloner. Since we’re on the subject of Disk Utility, I was wondering if you could check to see if a problem I often see has been fixed in Monterey. This way you don’t have to disrupt a running system in order to perform a routine check. unmount it or boot into recovery mode) in order to repair the problems. You can’t repair any problems, but if it finds problems you can then take necessary actions (e.g. The -y argument means “always answer yes”, which will auto-repair every problem it finds (which is probably what Disk Utility is doing).Īlso of possible interest is the fsck_apfs argument “-l”. The -n argument means “always answer no”, so it will check-but-not-repair. You can provide CLI arguments to avoid this. Regarding direct calls to fsck (which will, in turn, call fsck_apfs on APFS volumes), by default, it runs interactively, asking you if you want to repair each problem found. (And, let’s face it, we should all be making regular backups whether or not there are problems with a device.) when recovering from an abruptly-disconnected storage device in the days before journaling file systems), but it may simply be a matter of over-caution today. This was definitely a concern in the past (e.g. I think the intent behind check-but-not-repair is that you may want to back up certain critical documents before starting the repair, in case they get damaged by the repair process. I’m very grateful to Miles, for pointing this out. It has been a long journey, but Disk Utility has finally arrived. Maybe one day that will be mature enough to be added to Disk Utility.Ĭongratulations to the engineers at Apple who have finally made Disk Utility complete. Currently, that’s only available as part of the mechanism by which Time Machine backs up to APFS. Although this might appear simple, copying the file system metadata of the snapshot itself is of no use, and it needs to be accompanied by the data referenced by the snapshot. The remaining technique using snapshots is copying them to another volume. Restoring a whole volume from a snapshot should normally be performed in Recovery. These enable you to maintain snapshots and to copy items from them. But the man page has still been updated, honest!) (Thanks to Pico for pointing out that I hadn’t noticed these commands, which have apparently been there for some years. man diskutil, updated in January 2021, provides additional detail. The command to delete a snapshot is deleteSnapshot. Will list all snapshots, no matter what created them, on disk13s1. These commands have been added to the apfs verb there, so Deletion is irreversible, as you’d expect, and only to be undertaken when you’re certain that’s what you want to do.Īccompanying this is support for the listing and deletion of snapshots in the diskutil command tool. Select a snapshot from the list and you can mount it, show it in the Finder, rename it, and delete it, using the More button and the – tool at the bottom left. The most recent snapshot has a Partition symbol shown against its Tidemark, a value which isn’t explained in the Help page, unfortunately. Most important among those are the name, date of creation, and cumulative size. This opens a new table view in the lower part of the main view in which the selected volume’s snapshots are listed.Īlthough their order is fixed, with the most recent at the bottom of that table, you can customise the columns shown. To engage its new powers, select a volume and use the Show APFS Snapshots command in its View menu. This new feature is cunningly hidden so that you don’t notice this huge leap forward when you first open the app. After four years in which it had offered frustratingly limited support for the new features of APFS, Disk Utility is now complete: this version has excellent support for snapshots, no matter which app created them. I’m delighted to announce not just a nomination, but an outright winner: Disk Utility 21.0, bundled with Monterey. As it’s getting towards the end of the year, I’ve been on the look out for nominations for the title of the most improved utility of the year.
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