Moving folders on APFS external drive copies them rather than just moves them.

HWTech wrote:

Do you by any chance have more than one APFS volume on that drive? Another APFS volume even inside the same APFS Container will by default make a copy since it would be transferring items to a different mount point.

Yes. But the other one is Time Machine.

All of these folder into a folder moves are on the same APFS volume.

I ran into this issue on three different attached USB drives.

And every time, it was as shown in the photos: Move one folder into the other folder on the same Volume. The folder being dragged is copied without touching the keyboard. cmd fixes the problem.

And what happens if you hold the Command key during the drag & drop operation as has already been suggested. Does it result in a copy or a move?

Works like a charm, thank you.

I have never had to do that before.

While this point is for curiosity only, as the files are all transferred, I was wondering why the same old 'drag and drop' resulted in a copy this time?

And why the opt key is needed here, when I have never had to do that before.

Are you running any third party software that would be changing the default behavior of macOS? Anti-virus software, cleaning/optimizer apps, and third party security software all could cause an odd problem like this.

No.

FYI, I am very leery of performing "moves" on macOS because I have seen too many times that the move is aborted for some reason which leaves everything in disarray....sometimes losing the data entirely since it is no longer at the source location, nor is it at the destination.

All I was doing was consolidating a group of folders into a new 'parent' folder.

Since the beginning of the Mac, moving folders of data around (not System folders) has been a hallmark of how easy the GUI is to work with.

Organize files in folders on Mac - Apple Support

dialabrain wrote:

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

I think that would duplicate the files which is what I want to prevent.

Apparently you didn't try it. When you hold the option key on paste it deletes the source.

You are right. That does work. Sorry, I misread your post. Someone suggested this on Facebook too.

Now the $100K questions (no you don't get the money):

1) Why does drag and drop cause these files to be copied rather than just moved?

2) Why does holding down the command key stop the files from being copied? In 35+ years of using a Mac, it is the first time I have ever used or needed this key / mouse combination.

dialabrain wrote:

Not sure what the issue is but you can move files/folders by selecting them, press command+c. Then navigate to where you want them and press command+option+v.

I think that would duplicate the files which is what I want to prevent.

I just want to do the easy drag and drop, to change their location from one folder to another. Doing that causes the files to be duplicated. They are huge and that can take an hour or more. Plus, in some cases, I run out of room on this drive.

Barney-15E wrote:

Since the beginning of the Mac, moving folders of data around (not System folders) has been a hallmark of how easy the GUI is to work with.

You seem to imply you think what you are experiencing is now normal, it isn't.

Since holding down the option key reverses the action, there is something about the setup that makes it think you are transferring across volume boundaries. An ACL (permission) issue would not result in any difference.

I doubt that anyone will know offhand why you are experiencing this issue.

I've got three APFS drives that all have Ignore Ownership enabled and I have no problem moving folders or files on the same volume.

"You seem to imply you think what you are experiencing is now normal, it isn't. "

Not at all. Quite the opposite. I am saying that I have been doing this sort of thing with a Mac since 1989 and have never run into an issue.

HWTech said, "I am very leery of performing "moves" on macOS"

I am not at all 'leery of performing "moves" ' such as nesting folders.

"I have no problem moving folders or files on the same volume."

I said the same thing, until a few days ago.

BTW, I am not thrilled with the way Apple runs these discussions. It is difficult to follow the 'threads' and know who said what about what.

Barney-15E wrote:

access control list. I think it’s the same thing.

I can check permissions. I am OK to move them as I am Admin and Admin has access. As an experiment, I changed permissions for everything in the folder to be 'everyone' and there was not a change. It still copies the contents of the folder when I drag and drop.