Bartek Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 Hi, is there any way to restrict the program from using the hard drive? I have 128 GB of RAM and even though it's not even half full when running Affinity is using disk space. I would prefer to avoid this because of the SSD usage. In the system settings (Windows) I have pagefile locked so this is not a system issue. Operating on large files the disk fills up very quickly.
walt.farrell Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 In your application Settings, under Performance, how much RAM have you allowed the application to use? In any case, no, you can't keep it from using disk, but using Junctions (or Symlinks) you can change where the temporary files will be placed. Exactly how you do that will depend on whether you're using V1 or V2 and for V2 whether you installed using the MSI/EXE installer or the MSIX installer. Bartek 1 -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop 1: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 26.0, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.6.1
Bartek Posted October 18, 2024 Author Posted October 18, 2024 I allow the use of all available memory and still when it is (say) half full the disk usage rises to 100%. I'll admit that I forced this situation a bit because I created a 40000 x 40000 px document, filled it with noise and scaled it 2x up. I wanted to see how the memory would behave - well, and I got it. walt.farrell 1
R C-R Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 4 hours ago, Bartek said: ... and still when it is (say) half full the disk usage rises to 100%. What exactly do you mean by "disk usage rises to 100%?" Are you saying your Affinity app (which one?) is using all the available free space on your SSD or something else? All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.6 Mac apps (currently 2.6.4); 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7
nickbatz Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 Is it actually using up disk space or just telling you when it's using 100% of the Disk Usage Warning setting (Preferences -> General)? As to SSD usage, I doubt that modern SSDs are going to wear out - if that's what you're concerned about. Current Macs' internal storage is attached permanently and can't be replaced, so I wondered about that. And a couple of weeks ago a hardware engineer guy gave me a Terminal command that shows the percentage of the internal storage's life you've used (Mean Time Before Failure), and after 2-1/2 years it was 2%. That means it's likely to last another 122-1/2 years, if my brain is adding this up right. R C-R 1
walt.farrell Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 19 minutes ago, nickbatz said: And a couple of weeks ago a hardware engineer guy gave me a Terminal command that shows the percentage of the internal storage's life you've used Care to share that? R C-R 1 -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop 1: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 26.0, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.6.1
nickbatz Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 50 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: Care to share that? diskutil info -plist /dev/disk0 | plutil -extract SMARTDeviceSpecificKeysMayVaryNotGuaranteed.PERCENTAGE_USED raw - If it says 3, 3% of your disk's expected life has been used. walt.farrell 1
R C-R Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 8 minutes ago, nickbatz said: diskutil info -plist /dev/disk0 | plutil -extract SMARTDeviceSpecificKeysMayVaryNotGuaranteed.PERCENTAGE_USED raw Not working for me on my Mac. I get several notices, one of which is "Unknown format specifier: raw" All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.6 Mac apps (currently 2.6.4); 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7
nickbatz Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 Are you including the entire thing, ending in "raw -" ? It does work on a Mac Studio M1 Max running Sonoma, but it is possible that it doesn't work on your i7. You may be able to find a utility that checks the SMART status of your drive, but even so I don't know whether it includes the life expectancy.
R C-R Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 7 minutes ago, nickbatz said: Are you including the entire thing, ending in "raw -" ? Yes. I copied from your post & pasted it into Terminal. I also typed it manually with the same result. So it is either an Intel vs. M-series difference or (maybe less likely) something that Catalina does not support. All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.6 Mac apps (currently 2.6.4); 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7
Oufti Posted October 18, 2024 Posted October 18, 2024 59 minutes ago, nickbatz said: You may be able to find a utility that checks the SMART status of your drive, but even so I don't know whether it includes the life expectancy. You'll find some explanations and multiple ways of estimating lifetime expectancy in this article: https://eclecticlight.co/2022/12/05/how-to-estimate-an-ssds-working-life/ walt.farrell 1 Affinity Suite 2.6 – Monterey 12.7.6 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue. 🦉No AI content.
Bartek Posted October 22, 2024 Author Posted October 22, 2024 Sorry, I left the topic for a while. In general, all I meant was that even though Affinity has plenty of RAM to use and there is a stipulation in the system not to use the swap file the program still takes up a lot of disk space (and indeed I had such a situation that I ran out of space on the SSD and the program process crashed). I've been working on large files lately and just noticed it.
nickbatz Posted October 22, 2024 Posted October 22, 2024 11 hours ago, Bartek said: Sorry, I left the topic for a while. In general, all I meant was that even though Affinity has plenty of RAM to use and there is a stipulation in the system not to use the swap file the program still takes up a lot of disk space (and indeed I had such a situation that I ran out of space on the SSD and the program process crashed). I've been working on large files lately and just noticed it. The simple answer is just to clear some space off your startup drive, but that's not always easy - especially since some Macs have very small amounts of internal storage unless you spend a lot for more (as I did and don't regret, knowing full well that it was a ridiculous price). A slightly more complicated answer is to ask the brain trust here whether there's a way to tell Affinity Photo which drive to use for its temporary files. I don't know the answer.
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