Any 16GB iPhone user has installed iOS 10.3 with new Apple File System? Please post your results?
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16GB iPhone user with iOS 10.3 Apple File System (APFS)? Does the space free up?
- Thread starter viettanium
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I have not tried the beta personally, but know people who have and have read reports from others that say space does free up. How much space that frees up seems to vary greatly. I have also read reports (and plan to try soon) that the latest beta for MacOS 10.12.4 can be tricked to boot from a converted APFS volume. There are a few things in either case that I have come to conclude myself however.
First, APFS does not have a deduplication feature. This means that the resource intensive task of scanning the filesystem for identical files and deleting all but one and changing its metadata to account for the other deleted versions is not present in APFS. As such I am not entirely sure we can expect to see large space gains. As an extension of this, copying a file onto an APFS volume that already exists on that volume will take up additional space. To demonstrate this I formatted an external USB drive with APFS and placed a ~1 GB mkv file on it. I then copied that file to another directory on that external drive. As expected it copied instantly and did not take up any additional space. I then copied that same file onto my Mac's internal HFS+ drive, then from the internal drive again copied the file and pasted it back onto the external APFS volume. The transfer was not instant and took up additional space.
Second, the amount of space that frees up can vary drastically and I have so far not been able to find out what determines this. I have heard some people say up to almost a GB is freed up on their phone, not including obviously the size of the update that gets deleted after it is run. On the other hand, the individual that was able to boot his 10.12.4 beta Mac from APFS after conversion reported under 300MB was freed in conversion.
Check out this page: http://enterprisemac.bruienne.com/2017-02-27-apfs-boot-quickpost/
Note the following from above link:
44,887,089,152 bytes free (70%)
Mon Feb 27 16:13:23 2017: Unmounting APFS volumes
Mon Feb 27 16:13:23 2017: Flushing transactions
44,887,089,152 bytes free (70%)
267,874,304 bytes freed by conversion
Mon Feb 27 16:13:24 2017: Done
This shows from almost 20GB, 267MB were freed from the conversion.
Long story short, I feel like we're still on a wait and see basis for what is going to happen. I'd love to see Apple implement a manual deduplication feature potentially triggered in disk utility for APFS if they aren't ready to have it we periodic and automatic due to resource usage and the fact that so many still use mechanical hard drives.
First, APFS does not have a deduplication feature. This means that the resource intensive task of scanning the filesystem for identical files and deleting all but one and changing its metadata to account for the other deleted versions is not present in APFS. As such I am not entirely sure we can expect to see large space gains. As an extension of this, copying a file onto an APFS volume that already exists on that volume will take up additional space. To demonstrate this I formatted an external USB drive with APFS and placed a ~1 GB mkv file on it. I then copied that file to another directory on that external drive. As expected it copied instantly and did not take up any additional space. I then copied that same file onto my Mac's internal HFS+ drive, then from the internal drive again copied the file and pasted it back onto the external APFS volume. The transfer was not instant and took up additional space.
Second, the amount of space that frees up can vary drastically and I have so far not been able to find out what determines this. I have heard some people say up to almost a GB is freed up on their phone, not including obviously the size of the update that gets deleted after it is run. On the other hand, the individual that was able to boot his 10.12.4 beta Mac from APFS after conversion reported under 300MB was freed in conversion.
Check out this page: http://enterprisemac.bruienne.com/2017-02-27-apfs-boot-quickpost/
Note the following from above link:
44,887,089,152 bytes free (70%)
Mon Feb 27 16:13:23 2017: Unmounting APFS volumes
Mon Feb 27 16:13:23 2017: Flushing transactions
44,887,089,152 bytes free (70%)
267,874,304 bytes freed by conversion
Mon Feb 27 16:13:24 2017: Done
This shows from almost 20GB, 267MB were freed from the conversion.
Long story short, I feel like we're still on a wait and see basis for what is going to happen. I'd love to see Apple implement a manual deduplication feature potentially triggered in disk utility for APFS if they aren't ready to have it we periodic and automatic due to resource usage and the fact that so many still use mechanical hard drives.
I swear my phone feels faster, but it may just be the power of suggestion (as I had read about a potential speed boost w/APFS).
I don't know what to say, but that's how I see it. I did perform the update using iTunes instead of OTA, but that shouldn't make a difference.
Can't say anything about 16Gb devices. I have upgraded 32Gb and 128Gb iPhones and 64Gb and 128Gb iPads, and on all four I got back between 1.5 to 2.5Gb of free space.
My iPhone SE picked up at least 5 gigs.
iPad Air feels much quicker. I'd been thinking about a new iPad but no need if things stay this fast.
I think I picked up 1-2 gigs on the iPad also, but I forgot to check before upgrading.
iPad Air feels much quicker. I'd been thinking about a new iPad but no need if things stay this fast.
I think I picked up 1-2 gigs on the iPad also, but I forgot to check before upgrading.
I am hopeful it will make a difference. I've read they've shortened the animation giving the effect of speed increase!
Updating tends to purge cached data which will free up a varying about of space. Usually that space will be used again by cache as you use your device.
This has been the case for years.
This has been the case for years.
Yeah, I guess my attitude is cautious optimism for now. This has been the biggest uptick in storage that I've ever noticed, though.
I got 800MB back on my 64GB Air 2 and 1.5GB back on my 128GB 7Plus. This is a combination of increased capacity and available storage.
Air 2 16GB i just gain an entire 1GB after performing a clean ios 10.3 installation and there's no way of getting rid of it... =(
Don't say that! Timmy might be listening!
16GB 6s here, went from 6 GB free to 8 GB!
How do you have that many (6gb) free space on a 16gb iPhone model? How many apps do you have installed? I mean...my top 5 apps take 2.5gb of space by themselves.
Update:
After a month of usage, I've lost about half a gig of free space without installing any new app. So it's more like 1.9gb to 2.8gb in free space.