HT201711: Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits

Learn about Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits
Greg Apple

Q: Write speed was about 2.5 MB/s with about 5,000,000 files. After deleting these files, write speed increased by factor over 100. System: OS X El Capitan 10.11.1, MacPro6,1.

A limitation on the file count appears to exist practically, as I stated in the title of my post. Can someone explain the optimistic article by Apple : Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits - Apple Support

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11), AMD FirePro D700 GPU

Posted on Dec 3, 2015 2:57 AM

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Q: Write speed was about 2.5 MB/s with about 5,000,000 files. After deleting these files, write speed increased by factor over 100. S ... more

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  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 3, 2015 7:58 AM in response to Greg Apple
    Level 9 (61,390 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 3, 2015 7:58 AM in response to Greg Apple

    From what drive did you delete these files? Rotating or SSD, internal or External, and what interface?

     

    How full was the drive when its performance was so remarkably poor for ANY drive?

  • by Greg Apple,

    Greg Apple Greg Apple Dec 3, 2015 9:25 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2015 9:25 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    The MacPro has a factory-installed internal SSD drive of size 1TB. The drive was around 70% full. There was no other drive attached at that time. I used the terminal and a command cp to copy a 3GB file, from one directory on the drive to other directory, which took around 20 minutes. I also used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to independently verify disk speed. The test did confirm slow writes. Reads were about factor 10 faster according to the test.