News M2 MacBook Pro SSD became so full that data couldn't be deleted — user had to wipe SSD to make system functional again

[CmdrShepard]

not apple ? do you really think that an SSD on windows would beave the same way ? this is 100% driver problem.

Please, you probably don't even know what a driver is.

Yes it probably would behave the same way even on Linux. It's not a driver problem, it's a PEBKAC problem.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

This article could/should have been a simple link to https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/03/a-disk-so-full-it-couldnt-be-restored.

At least Copilot would have clearly cited it, whereas Mark Tyson disguised it under a hyperlink named "written". With all the hoopla around "AI" "plagiarizing" people's work, it's only a matter of time before human writers, and their employers, are sued as well for plagiarism and loss of revenue.

 

[JTWrenn]

The responses here are a little odd. If he booted to terminal and couldn't delete anything I doubt target disk mode would have had any better luck. Terminal should have worked to clear out space, since it didn't something completely different happened here.

If you can't delete something from terminal in recovery mode something odd is going on. Never seen that happen before so that to me is a flat out hardware/software issue. This should always work.

I think the only thing he didn't try was target disk mode, but he did do a shared drive and try to delete, but that is OS dependant so not sure that would work. I think target disk mode would likely run into the same issue, and even odder...the damn system was booting and working but nothing ran so it's a weird one.

To me this all goes back to macs using soldered on drives and their own weirdo controllers on systems you can pull drives from so nothing works in an external bay. All of that is bad news for recovery operations. It also really looks horrible compared to something like a Surface that I can get the drive out with one screw and swap it easily. (don't get me wrong the mac laptops are nice but this sucks).

I love seeing everyone just completely flinging poo at this guy and assuming he didn't know what he was doing though. Keep it classy internet.

 

[newtechldtech]

Please, you probably don't even know what a driver is.

Yes it probably would behave the same way even on Linux. It's not a driver problem, it's a PEBKAC problem.

Even if it behaves the same under Linux , still would be a DRVIER PROOBLEM !

 

[morgan_g]

The default method (on AIX and Solaris at least), would be to boot from a recovery iso or image, disable swap and then delete the swap partition. I would then use find to locate old zip. gz or tar files that are very old and delete them. Clean up /var/tmp (or the Mac equivalent). You can reboot without swap and then do a proper clean up.

 

[Stooovie]

An Apple Expert, I think not. Several easy fixes for this. The problems is with the Steam client not Apple. As for Apple Games, I have played them for years with no issues.

No, sorry. It's the OS's job to not let disk space get so low the user can't even empty the trashcan. Really.

ESPECIALLY in a system like APFS where traditional concepts of free and occupied space are blurry due to things like snapshots, purgeable space, the thing where multiple copies of data X only take 1X amount of data... MacOS manages this opaquely in the background, so it's effectively hidden from the user. This is not an user error.

 

[CmdrShepard]

Even if it behaves the same under Linux , still would be a DRVIER PROOBLEM !

People are too eager to always blame things on software.

The truth is, no matter how good your software is and how many error situations you predict and handle, if the hardware misbehaves in some unpredictable way there's only so much you can do from software.

You can't really know whether the problem was in the driver and not some other part of the software stack (upper layer, firmware, etc), or even with faulty hardware itself.

No, sorry. It's the OS's job to not let disk space get so low the user can't even empty the trashcan. Really.

If the OS reserved some space, say 10% of storage capacity to prevent that from happening, there would be lynch mobs on the streets screaming "how dare Cook/Nadella/Torvalds prevent me from using MY disk space -- I paid for 100% of space, not 90%".

I agree that there should be some guardrails, but at some point the user should take responsibility for doing stupid things like trying to write more data than there is free space.

The question I have is -- how come that Steam client didn't refuse installing to the drive if there wasn't enough space? Surely Valve devs aren't that incompetent not to check for free space before writing.

This story stinks and someone is lying through their teeth about what really happened.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Two words.

User Error.

 

[Stooovie]

People are too eager to always blame things on software.

The truth is, no matter how good your software is and how many error situations you predict and handle, if the hardware misbehaves in some unpredictable way there's only so much you can do from software.

You can't really know whether the problem was in the driver and not some other part of the software stack (upper layer, firmware, etc), or even with faulty hardware itself.

If the OS reserved some space, say 10% of storage capacity to prevent that from happening, there would be lynch mobs on the streets screaming "how dare Cook/Nadella/Torvalds prevent me from using MY disk space -- I paid for 100% of space, not 90%".

I agree that there should be some guardrails, but at some point the user should take responsibility for doing stupid things like trying to write more data than there is free space.

The question I have is -- how come that Steam client didn't refuse installing to the drive if there wasn't enough space? Surely Valve devs aren't that incompetent not to check for free space before writing.

This story stinks and someone is lying through their teeth about what really happened.

APFS is so complex that it's actually super hard to determine free space, as there's snapshots, cloning of data with deduping, AND it's all managed in the background by macos. Disk Utility, Finder and various shell tools can absolutely give you vastly different numbers of free space. It's a hard problem to solve.

 

[The_Future_Is_Here]

So....

In short, macOS suffers from the same terrible file system design & management choices that iOS does, essentially what can happen in the case of iOS is you can fill up the storage so much that you can't even switch the phone on because their isn't sufficient space to cache parts of the file system on boot up.

Well done Apple for cementing your woeful example of a file system, a problem that goes back decades at this point.
And people question why I dislike both macOS & iOS, it's very simple operational issues like this that make me disagree with each respective Operating System.

 

[tknmncr]

The problem was not that he did not have backups, rather that he did and did not understand it. The culprit would have been local snapshots. They occupy space that you do NOT get back when you remove files until the snapshots expire. I do a lot of video processing, and run in to this issue frequently. There is, however, a simple solution. Unfortunately, it's not obvious or in the GUI, but if you simply run "sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots /" from the terminal, you will suddenly see your free space magically re-appear.

 

[USAFRet]

1. Don't fill up your drive too much. Windows, Linux, Apple.
2. Have reliable backups. 3-2-1.
3. Know how to recover those backups.

 

[Pei-chen]

Don’t know the solution to his problem because I am not an internet expert. Just my 2.5 years experience with a M1 MacBook Air convinced me how much better Windows 11 is

 

[bradhouser]

I am not a Mac user, haven't been for over 10 years. However, thinking as an engineer, this should be a condition that can be detected and prevented. It could be reproducible, and not a one-off condition. Testing would determine that. Then you can debug the error. Steam is responsible for adding millions of gigabytes to computers everywhere, so they can test that. Apple is responsible for MacOS, and should be able to test for runaway conditions like this. If neither party tries to get to the truth, then they think it is not worth their time.

 

[OneMoreUser]

An Apple Expert, I think not. Several easy fixes for this. The problems is with the Steam client not Apple. As for Apple Games, I have played them for years with no issues.

Nonsense. Any OS worth being seen as reliable should not allow itself to become inoperable due to its storage being exhausted.
Either the OS should be able to stop the situation happening or it should be able to handle it.

 

[CmdrShepard]

APFS is so complex that it's actually super hard to determine free space, as there's snapshots, cloning of data with deduping, AND it's all managed in the background by macos. Disk Utility, Finder and various shell tools can absolutely give you vastly different numbers of free space. It's a hard problem to solve.

Perhaps Valve did screw it up after all.

According to Apple documentation, there are different ways to query a volume for free space depending on the purpose of data you want to save on it. If they used wrong API they could have gotten wrong amount of free space and made wrong decision whether a game can fit or not.

Nonsense. Any OS worth being seen as reliable should not allow itself to become inoperable due to its storage being exhausted. Either the OS should be able to stop the situation happening or it should be able to handle it.

Can Linux which is considered very reliable handle an admin user doing this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

 

[Joseph_138]

This is why I hate M.2 drives. They are so expensive, that you can only afford a small capacity one, that fills up quickly, but Apple takes it a step further, eliminating the M.2 slot entirely, and soldering the memory chips directly to the motherboard, so you don't even have the option of upgrading it to a higher capacity one, later. Apple basically forces you to buy a fully maxed out Mac right out of the gate, and Apple has always been known for overcharging for upgrades. If you don't buy it fully maxed out at the start, your only option is to buy a new Mac, in a year or two, when yours becomes obsolete because you didn't order it with enough options.

 

[CmdrShepard]

This is why I hate M.2 drives. They are so expensive, that you can only afford a small capacity one, that fills up quickly, but Apple takes it a step further, eliminating the M.2 slot entirely, and soldering the memory chips directly to the motherboard, so you don't even have the option of upgrading it to a higher capacity one, later. Apple basically forces you to buy a fully maxed out Mac right out of the gate, and Apple has always been known for overcharging for upgrades. If you don't buy it fully maxed out at the start, your only option is to buy a new Mac, in a year or two, when yours becomes obsolete because you didn't order it with enough options.

Or you can, you know, use one of the many available external M.2 enclosures via USB 3.x or Thunderbolt 4 along with any M.2 drive you prefer and have large stuff like games stored on that?

 

[NatalieEGH]

Knowing almost nothing about Apple products (at least since the Apple 3 back in the early 1980s) I have a few questions.
1. Does Apple make computers with multiple drives including at least 1 m.2 NVMe drives? Is so, why could they not have simply moved the device to another computer and cleared old files?
2. Can an Apple formatted m.2 NVMe drive be read by Linux? If so, add to a Linux computer and clear files.
3. Could they have rebuilt a new m.2 NVMe drive and using a USB (or other type port), booted off the new drive and plugged the old drive in and cleared the device that way?
4. Can Apple computers boot off a device connected to a USB (or other type port), and then clear space on what is normally the system drive?
5. Does the Apple OS not have the ability to simply mark space unused, basically deleting without use of the trash can/recycle file?
6, Can the size of the system swap file/page file be changed? Can the file be deleted to give the needed space and recreated after the files are deleted?

I routinely run into security problems with Windows ever since Windows started allowing multiple user accounts on the same system about 20 or so years ago. The problems are usually from rebuilding my computer's system drive. I just boot into Linux and all those problems disappear. I can access any file created under Windows.

 

[NatalieEGH]

This is why I hate M.2 drives. They are so expensive, that you can only afford a small capacity one, that fills up quickly, but Apple takes it a step further, eliminating the M.2 slot entirely, and soldering the memory chips directly to the motherboard, so you don't even have the option of upgrading it to a higher capacity one, later. Apple basically forces you to buy a fully maxed out Mac right out of the gate, and Apple has always been known for overcharging for upgrades. If you don't buy it fully maxed out at the start, your only option is to buy a new Mac, in a year or two, when yours becomes obsolete because you didn't order it with enough options.

The cost depends a lot of which brand of m.2 drive you purchase. Dec 2023, I purchased a new near bottom laptop. I had looked at the system specs and what was supported. I promptly purchased a 4TB m.2 by Crucial at Microcenter. I think it cost about $100, which was what a Samsung 970 500GB was running.

I also purchased an 8GB card for system memory.

On arriving home, the system was booted once to verify it could be booted up into Windows 11 (Home I think). I then booted it down. I promptly replaced the 250GB m.2 by Samsung with the Crucial drive. Yes I had to open the case probably voiding any warranties. I then installed Ubuntu Linux 22.04.10. I could have simply cloned the original m.2 to the Crucial m.2 using my main computer but I really am not a fan of Windows 11, and especially its bit-locker drive information protection.

 

[TJ Hooker]

1. Does Apple make computers with multiple drives including at least 1 m.2 NVMe drives? Is so, why could they not have simply moved the device to another computer and cleared old files?
2. Can an Apple formatted m.2 NVMe drive be read by Linux? If so, add to a Linux computer and clear files.

The drive is soldered to the laptop motherboard, so removing it and connecting it to a 2nd machine is not an option.

 

[35below0]

Apple basically forces you to buy a fully maxed out Mac right out of the gate, and Apple has always been known for overcharging for upgrades. If you don't buy it fully maxed out at the start, your only option is to buy a new Mac, in a year or two, when yours becomes obsolete because you didn't order it with enough options.

This has been true for at least 10 years, maybe 15. Mac users are aware. And it's overpriced for the hardware you get, no secret. But most Mac buyers don't want customization, they want simplicity and aesthetics and enough performance for the job. And i can't speak for so many, but i'd be willing to bet they're ok with buying a new one every so-and-so number of years.

Mac hits the right notes for many, many users. There's no point ripping on the company because it knows who it caters to, and so do their customers.

 

[deb_chrysoprase]

An Apple Expert, I think not. Several easy fixes for this. The problems is with the Steam client not Apple. As for Apple Games, I have played them for years with no issues.

No way you would blame the Steam client for this. This is the quintessential purpose of the kernel to manage this. If steam didn't get a "Disk Full" error *before* it was too full for the operating system to handle, the OS is not designed well. Otherwise we're about to have bigger problems with less benevolent programs than Steam.

 

[newtechldtech]

Knowing almost nothing about Apple products (at least since the Apple 3 back in the early 1980s) I have a few questions.
1. Does Apple make computers with multiple drives including at least 1 m.2 NVMe drives? Is so, why could they not have simply moved the device to another computer and cleared old files?
2. Can an Apple formatted m.2 NVMe drive be read by Linux? If so, add to a Linux computer and clear files.
3. Could they have rebuilt a new m.2 NVMe drive and using a USB (or other type port), booted off the new drive and plugged the old drive in and cleared the device that way?
4. Can Apple computers boot off a device connected to a USB (or other type port), and then clear space on what is normally the system drive?
5. Does the Apple OS not have the ability to simply mark space unused, basically deleting without use of the trash can/recycle file?
6, Can the size of the system swap file/page file be changed? Can the file be deleted to give the needed space and recreated after the files are deleted?

I routinely run into security problems with Windows ever since Windows started allowing multiple user accounts on the same system about 20 or so years ago. The problems are usually from rebuilding my computer's system drive. I just boot into Linux and all those problems disappear. I can access any file created under Windows.

Apple adds many Thunderbolt ports on their machines , which is equivalent to 4 PCIe lanes each. MAC users use NVME Thunderbolt boxes to add more NVME storage ... so the answer is yes but externally using Thunderbolt4

 

[SSGBryan]

This is on Apple - they have constantly bounced between having the OS responsible for this or applications being responsible for this.