warning saying my disk cache is full when it is not in 16.1.1

[lehestro]

I keep getting a message informing me I don't have enough space on my designated disk for cache purposes. I keep my disk cache limit to 46GB, but I have 140GB+ free on my designated cache disk. Why is this? Am I losing the performance boost of disk caching because of an error? It's hard to say. I just want to make sure my system is able to run optimally.

My disk cache settings haven't changed in years. It's only with the release of 16.1.1 that I'm getting this message.

OSX 10.14.4, 32GB RAM, Mac Pro 2013 6-core.

[Roei Tzoref]

the warning is if the space that you're preserving for the disk cache is more than 80% of your free space. it was designed this way to avoid filling up your disk to its maximum. if that's not a system disk you are reserving the space in, you can just ignore that warning and check the never warn be about this again.

[Jose Panadero]

Different versions of After Effects use different cache folders. If you did not purged your cache in previous versions, maybe you have stored a lot of preview files for older projects. Try to purge your disk cache from Edit > Purge > All Memory and Disk Cache or in the Media Cache inside After Effects preferences. The latest versions of AE will prompt you to delete cache for older versions of AE.

[lehestro]

I've done those things, and am aware of why the warning shows up (in theory. My issue is that what I have set for my disk cache 46GB is a fraction of my free space ~200GB.

It seems, as best I can tell, that it's an issue either with APFS' versioning, or possibly with Time Machine Local Snapshots, which exist on the disk even though the system doesn't recognize it as stored media, as it takes a backseat to actual storage. I worked this out because Finder says 200GB free, but Disk Utility was saying only 50GB free (hence the message). The problem is, my system is referencing one free space metric, whilst AE is referencing another. Unfortunately it seems to be the wrong one.

I turned off local snapshots (Time Machine prefs, deselect "backup automatically"), as it seems that might be the reason for the discrepancy. Will report back.

[lehestro]

Here's my predicament in a nutshell, I think – what is triggering the AE warning…

So it's not an AE issue, but a macOS issue involving how it handles/reports storage. Somehow I have 280GB available, while also using up 450GB on a 500GB disk. I've read up on 'purgeable' but no one seems to know really exactly what it is. It's not, as some suggest, a bunch of old itunes movies.

Anyone had to deal with this and found a solution?

[Jose Panadero]

I think this is not an issue on macOS but they way it works. If you use Time Machine but the target disk is not connected, the system creates local snapshots that can "fill" the disk until you connect the Time Machine device. And unfortunately, macOS has not an option to "purge" these snapshots and the availability and used capacity on the disk is not displayed correctly.

[lehestro · Accepted solution]

This is true, but I found a workaround. Actually, it's less time machine related than I thought and more icloud related. This article gave me a workaround. Basically, I had to turn off 'optimize storage' in System Settings>iCloud, and then create a dummy file that continuously grows in size until my disk was full (pushing out any room for "purgeable" files). Once that's done, I deleted the dummy file, and finally at last my disk is operating like a normal disk.

Another case of Apple trying to make its OS smarter than its users (I get why, but for power users like many on this forum it's counter-productive).

Here's a link to the excellent article:

https://www.jackenhack.com/mac-os-purgeable-remove-clear-space/