On my Mac, I have three categories of space on my drive: used, free, and
purgeable. I think Windows may be similar. The response to seeing an
apparently empty continent is to occupy it. Same here.
A definition of purgeable space, pulled from a help file, is:
##What Is Purgeable Space##
When you check how much available disk space you have on your Mac,
you’ll find that there’s a chunk of space that is **not literally
**free****, but is nevertheless **available** to applications. In macOS,
it’s called “purgeable space”.
The purgeable space mostly consists of local snapshots of Time Machine,
and also caches, sleep images, swap files and other temporary system
files.
When an application requests more disk space than is currently free, the
system **automatically and instantly reclaims** the corresponding amount
from the purgeable space.
Or else, when there is no deficit of free space, macOS allows the
purgeable space to pile up to as much as 80% of disk’s capacity, by
design.
--Barry
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
