WTF? Native Access wants ridiculous amounts of free space on my startup drive

[Mike Greene]

That aside, seriously? What happens if someone needs to download a large Kontakt sample library?

I think they're screwed. Which is why I think NI is taking this seriously.

My rep says they're on it, of course, but you know how that is. (Kinda like when I tell people, "Oh yeah, we're definitely gonna include all the things you've asked for in the next update. And it will be out next week.") I do believe him on this, though, because even though for li'l ol' Realitone, this has been a problem for exactly two people (both of whom are in this thread,) they have some much bigger companies with much bigger libraries who must be screaming bloody murder about this.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

I think they're screwed. Which is why I think NI is taking this seriously.

My rep says they're on it, of course, but you know how that is. (Kinda like when I tell people, "Oh yeah, we're definitely gonna include all the things you've asked for in the next update. And it will be out next week.") I do believe him on this, though, because even though for li'l ol' Realitone, this has been a problem for exactly two people (both of whom are in this thread,) they have some much bigger companies with much bigger libraries who must be screaming bloody murder about this.

I don't think I spelled it out clearly in this thread, but the source of the issue is that APFS (or macOS?) is distinguishing between free and available space, and Native Access is taking its cue from there. The key is how to remove the snapshot file or whatever it is.

Well, the key is for Native Access to let you tell it where to put the damn files. But still.

 

[Mike Greene]

That's weird that MacOS seems to make a distinction between free space and available space. The difference is apparently the "purgeable space." In your case, 86.91 GB. It's free space, but Mac is saving it until they're convinced it has to be used.

On Google, people are saying you can't manually clear that purgeable space, because Apple saves it for your iCloud sync, and only clears it when it needs the space. Apparently "purgeable" space is deleted stuff that's iCloud related.

My guess is that keeping the purgeable items on your hard drive saves Apple some money in bandwidth for the people who constantly upload and download and upload and download the same pix or movies or whatever. So if you download the same pix from iCloud that you "deleted" a few days earlier, Apples saves a few bandwidth pennies because they're already secretly on your computer. So they don't want to delete that space until they're forced to.

So here's my theory on what might clear it. Find something that is 40GB or larger (*not* iCloud related) and copy that onto your desktop. That should force the Mac to delete some of the purgeable space. Then delete that 40GB object (or objects) and since it's not iCloud related, I'll bet you now have 40 GB of "free" space.

You wouldn't necessarily have to copy something from an external source, by the way. You could duplicate an existing file (or files) on your current drive, as long as it isn't iCloud related. Or record a massive Pro Tools session with 80 tracks at 192k. Whatever it takes to force the Mac to make some room.

 

[MartinH.]

That's weird that MacOS seems to make a distinction between free space and available space. The difference is apparently the "purgeable space." In your case, 86.91 GB. It's free space, but Mac is saving it until they're convinced it has to be used.

On Google, people are saying you can't manually clear that purgeable space, because Apple saves it for your iCloud sync, and only clears it when it needs the space. Apparently "purgeable" space is deleted stuff that's iCloud related.

My guess is that keeping the purgeable items on your hard drive saves Apple some money in bandwidth for the people who constantly upload and download and upload and download the same pix or movies or whatever. So if you download the same pix from iCloud that you "deleted" a few days earlier, Apples saves a few bandwidth pennies because they're already secretly on your computer. So they don't want to delete that space until they're forced to.

So here's my theory on what might clear it. Find something that is 40GB or larger (*not* iCloud related) and copy that onto your desktop. That should force the Mac to delete some of the purgeable space. Then delete that 40GB object (or objects) and since it's not iCloud related, I'll bet you now have 40 GB of "free" space.

You wouldn't necessarily have to copy something from an external source, by the way. You could duplicate an existing file (or files) on your current drive, as long as it isn't iCloud related. Or record a massive Pro Tools session with 80 tracks at 192k. Whatever it takes to force the Mac to make some room.

"apple - it just works"

 

[rnb_2]

This is certainly an area where Apple's desire to obfuscate what is happening is unfortunate. For most people who don't install multi-gigabyte sample libraries (the vast majority of users), it probably works fine, but we're not those people, and I can see how Apple's handling of the local iCloud cache could cause major headaches for something like Native Access. The OS won't purge the space until it's needed, and the installer won't let you proceed until the space is available.

This is one of the reasons that I don't really use iCloud for a lot beyond Photos, and why I put my Photos library either on an external drive or create an APFS volume with a small maximum size for it.

 

[jcrosby]

That's weird that MacOS seems to make a distinction between free space and available space. The difference is apparently the "purgeable space." In your case, 86.91 GB. It's free space, but Mac is saving it until they're convinced it has to be used.

On Google, people are saying you can't manually clear that purgeable space, because Apple saves it for your iCloud sync, and only clears it when it needs the space. Apparently "purgeable" space is deleted stuff that's iCloud related.

My guess is that keeping the purgeable items on your hard drive saves Apple some money in bandwidth for the people who constantly upload and download and upload and download the same pix or movies or whatever. So if you download the same pix from iCloud that you "deleted" a few days earlier, Apples saves a few bandwidth pennies because they're already secretly on your computer. So they don't want to delete that space until they're forced to.

So here's my theory on what might clear it. Find something that is 40GB or larger (*not* iCloud related) and copy that onto your desktop. That should force the Mac to delete some of the purgeable space. Then delete that 40GB object (or objects) and since it's not iCloud related, I'll bet you now have 40 GB of "free" space.

You wouldn't necessarily have to copy something from an external source, by the way. You could duplicate an existing file (or files) on your current drive, as long as it isn't iCloud related. Or record a massive Pro Tools session with 80 tracks at 192k. Whatever it takes to force the Mac to make some room.

Actually according to this link Time Machine may be a big factor. Also unknown to many is that CCC can use the same feature depending on how you have, or leave it set.

I experienced this same issue more or less a few years back when I discovered my drive shrinking at ridiculous rate. At one point I thought I had 300+ GB of 'ghost data' that I could see in a handy little free app called GrandPerspective that couldn't be accounted for and couldn't be recovered. (Not so) hilariously, several calls to Apple left me with no answers, (duh!). Meanwhile my drive was shrinking and not a single person in support had a clue this feature even existed.

One email to Bombich resolved the issue immediately.

No Short Version: Time Machine (by default IIRC) will enable something called Time Machine Snapshots. These are theoretically really useful. I.e. If you discover a critical bug that shows up after updating macos a local snapshot can be used to immediately roll the OS back to its previous state without having to restore the entire drive.

The downside to snapshots is that a new one is created for every single backup you do, they eat insane amounts of space over time, and you can only turn them on or off globally. I believe these are also turned on by default. In the case of time machine this means a snapshot is created for every single event every hour on the hour which adds up to a lot of space over time.

And, as I mentioned... CCC can use the same 'purgeable' space to create rollback points. Anyone using CCC for clones may have local snapshots enabled and be unaware of it. Like I said these can save your ass... The problem is that they tend to eat your drive really fast so it's questionable why there isn't a preference that would allow you to enable/disable them per backup, or allow you to reserve them for OS-only updates.... (No shade at Bombich. Apple controls all the keys to this feature).

For those that do use CCC - One way you can leverage these is to enable them only when doing an OS update. Given that macos has had a recent history of audio bugs (at least on MBs..) I personally leave automatic updates off, and turn CCC snapshots on before I install any macos update. Once I can verify the update didn't cripple core audio I untick snapshots and the space used by the update comes right back...

DaisyDisk, the most popular disk space analyzer

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.

daisydiskapp.com

Even if you don't use CCC this is a better read... It goes into more detail and gives you some ideas how/when they can save your ass...

Leveraging Snapshots on APFS Volumes | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

 

[jcrosby]

Since my previous post is kind of long winded I didn't want the most important bits getting buried in a post that was TLDR for most people...

HOW TO CHECK FOR/DISABLE/ENABLE SNAPSHOTS:

Time Machine: How to disable Snapshots. (And check if they're enabled by default)

EDIT: Apparently as of 10.14 you can't just toggle this on or off, but have to brute force remove them using terminal. One more vote for CCC over TM....

How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac

These snapshots can fill up a drive, even though macOS should manage them.

www.macworld.com

CCC: Same link as above... Scroll down to the section called Toggling Snapshot Support/Snapshot Retention Policy:

Leveraging Snapshots on APFS Volumes | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

 

[dflood]

"apple - it just works"

just not how you expected

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

Since my previous post is kind of long winded I didn't want the most important bits getting buried in a post that was TLDR for most people...

HOW TO CHECK FOR/DISABLE/ENABLE SNAPSHOTS:

Time Machine: How to disable Snapshots. (And check if they're enabled by default)

EDIT: Apparently as of 10.14 you can't just toggle this on or off, but have to brute force remove them using terminal. One more vote for CCC over TM....

How to delete Time Machine snapshots on your Mac

These snapshots can fill up a drive, even though macOS should manage them.

www.macworld.com

CCC: Same link as above... Scroll down to the section called Toggling Snapshot Support/Snapshot Retention Policy:

Leveraging Snapshots on APFS Volumes | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

Thanks, and yeah, I read that. 10.14.6 doesn't let you do that.

I'm not using CCC, so that's not it.

 

[Mike Greene]

Thanks, and yeah, I read that. 10.14.6 doesn't let you do that.

I'm not using CCC, so that's not it.

Nick, did you try this, that I posted above?

Find something that is 40GB or larger (*not* iCloud related) and copy that onto your desktop. That should force the Mac to delete some of the purgeable space. Then delete that 40GB object (or objects) and since it's not iCloud related, I'll bet you now have 40 GB of "free" space.

You wouldn't necessarily have to copy something from an external source, by the way. You could duplicate an existing file (or files) on your current drive, as long as it isn't iCloud related. Or record a massive Pro Tools session with 80 tracks at 192k. Whatever it takes to force the Mac to make some room.

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

Guess what? Apparently Time Machine gets rid of its snapshot next backup.

It worked (that is, I've now successfully downloaded the mystery library). NI still needs to solve the problem for larger libraries, but at least this worked. Note that I didn't change anything since yesterday.

 

[kgdrum]

Guess what? Apparently Time Machine gets rid of its snapshot next backup.

It worked (that is, I've now successfully downloaded the mystery library). NI still needs to solve the problem for larger libraries, but at least this worked. Note that I didn't change anything since yesterday.

@Nick Batzdorf

Congratulations!

As I said to our mystery developer who happens to be incredibly talented,handsome & debonair:

Besides all of the fun this was easy enough!

 

[Ben H]

Thread title should be changed to "Another reason why Macs SUCK!!!!!!!!"

 

[Nick Batzdorf]

I love Macs.

 

[HeliaVox]

I love Macs.

ME TOOOOOOOO

 

[PhilA]

Hi, I’ve just come across this very issue.
So Native Access is apparently checking the free space in a way different to other apps, as it’s seeing the free space as disk utility reports it and isn’t taking into account purgable space which is free if it wants to use it.
Quick solution is to find a large sample library in one of your SDD’s initiate a copy of this to your system drive. Watch disk utility and as soon as the space has been purged to accept the file copy (in seconds) cancel the copy. Voila you have your free space back in a way Native Access can see. They really need to fix this bug and claim the purgable space automatically like other apps can do.
Still this is a very quick work around.
(Ps for the Mac naysayers this is an NI bug not a MacOS bug)

 

[X-Bassist]

Hi, I’ve just come across this very issue.
So Native Access is apparently checking the free space in a way different to other apps, as it’s seeing the free space as disk utility reports it and isn’t taking into account purgable space which is free if it wants to use it.
Quick solution is to find a large sample library in one of your SDD’s initiate a copy of this to your system drive. Watch disk utility and as soon as the space has been purged to accept the file copy (in seconds) cancel the copy. Voila you have your free space back in a way Native Access can see. They really need to fix this bug and claim the purgable space automatically like other apps can do.
Still this is a very quick work around.
(Ps for the Mac naysayers this is an NI bug not a MacOS bug)

Ahhh, but you would still need to have the space on your internal for this to work. For someone like me who has 10GB left and nothing else to remove, your kind of stuck without cloning the internal and booting on the clone to download your library. sucks!

 

[PhilA]

Ahhh, but you would still need to have the space on your internal for this to work. For someone like me who has 10GB left and nothing else to remove, your kind of stuck without cloning the internal and booting on the clone to download your library. sucks!

Very true I had 120gb free and couldn’t install a 20gb library. It’s rubbish, if I say use my alternate download and install location it should honour it full stop!

 

[paulmatthew]

3 months later and this is still an issue. 1 TB free on a ssd and 300GB free on desktop and Native Access was gicing me a hard time installing Solo because of this problem. I won't be buying anything else that has to be downloaded through Native Access until this gets fixed. As long as it can be downloaded through the developer it's a go.

 

[Soundbed]

Yeah this seems like an NI issue (on Mac?), not a Mac issue per se.

And it doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily related to iCloud or Time Machine.

I just got an M1 MBP and clicked a handful of libraries to download and install.

The libraries dutifully queued up in Native Access. Until I clicked one ~10GB library and was told Native Access wanted 900GB to install it.

I should have taken a screenshot.

iCloud is not connected (afaik). Time Machine was not yet set up. No external drives were attached. The 1 TB internal drive had barely been used.

Native Access definitely seemed to be calculating based on space it might use in the future for the other queued downloads rather than actual space needed for the library I’d clicked.

In fact all the libraries I wanted downloaded fine … when I installed them one at a time (not all queued).

Most (all?) other Mac download utilities I know don’t calculate needed space this way.

It’s not until you have a completely fresh Mac that a “test” like this removes some variables.