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- Hacker News
- By comparison, have to handle it to DeDupe for its transparency:
Key Features Free to Scan, Unlock to Deduplicate
by steveharman - This could be useful for reclaiming space when your disk is almost full, but $9.99 a month for a tool the average person isn't going to need very often seems a bit much.by TomMasz
- It’s not really intended to be a recurring $9.99/mo. It’s $9.99, and that gives you a month of usage. But the expectation is you use it once or twice, then you’re done for a long time. But apparently they also offer an auto-renew subscription for that same price, which seems like a strange choice.by sgerenser
- Are you deleting the others and creating a symlink to the original? How does this work exactly? I didn't get it from the FAQ section.
Does this mean that if the original is gone, all the file links will not be found?
by system2 - Here’s a lengthier explanation [1] but it’s basically an APFS feature.by ianmurrays
- No, this uses a feature of the macOS file system. From the FAQ:
> Q: Are clone files the same thing as symbolic links or hard links?
> A: No. Symbolic links (“symlinks”) and hard links are ways to make two entries in the file system that share the same data. This might sound like the same thing as the space-saving clones used by Hyperspace, but there’s one important difference. With symlinks and hard links, a change to one of the files affects all the files.
> The space-saving clones made by Hyperspace are different. Changes to one clone file do not affect other files. Cloned files should look and behave exactly the same as they did before they were converted into clones.
by _diyar - How does it compare to https://diskdedupe.com/?by mrtesthah
- Nice I was just thinking about this the other day! Given the memory supply issue today, I wonder how much of data in our data centers worldwide is essentially just copied data? I have a feeling that there is a ton of redundancy, much of it absolutely necessary, but much of it essentially not at all, and howmuc memory we can reclaim by culling copiesby starkshift
- This uses reflinks, right? I've been experimenting with using reflinks under Linux to speed up layer extraction for Docker, it's great.by a_t48
- Yepby odo1242
- It uses APFS clonesby frizlab
- How does this compare to diskDedupe, which has been around longer and is much cheaper?by steve_taylor
- Discussed upon release at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173462
You can also use the free fclones CLI tool that uses the same native APFS functionality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43173713
by lode - It's amazing that this is a product. In an earlier job we used to ask how to do this (discovery phase of deduplication) in the first interview screening. Once you have that list, it's straightforward to make a few syscalls that make it happen.by teiferer
- As I recall, there are nuances around certain types of files that require expert attention, such as links, files inside frameworks/packages, and unmaterialized iCloud Drive files.by archagon
- What are they gonna think of next, productizing something as trivial as FTP?by underyx
- I think the record for most space saved by this utility in a single run is in the hundreds of TBs now. I’ll see if I can find the toot.
Edit: maybe a bit hyperbolic of me, looks like it was 3.94TB https://mastodon.social/@WTL/116710030179809319
by markn951 - For Windows users looking to save space, there's Compactor[1] that uses the NTFS built-in compression opportunistically for only those files that benefit from it. It is not a deduplicator but the basic idea is the same: take an underutilized OS feature and make it usable.
Pretty handy when your flight sim game takes 1.2 terabytes with most of that being sparse terrain mesh data and uncompressed textures. Compressing the whole directory would take over a day according to Microsoft and their infamous progress bar; Compactor gets it done in fifteen minutes.
by anilakar - It's quite the dark-pattern to allow you to download it and scan for free, without any clear indication that it's a paid product, and then ambush you with a purchase dangling the space savings in front of your face.by oersted
- Agreed. Are there any open source alternatives for this?by saretup
- This is how basically all Mac software worked in my youth. Maybe we should return to the heady days of sharewareby swiftcoder
- Hard to imagine anyone less likely to ponder on - and implement - any kind of "dark pattern" than John Siracusa. Maybe the landing page could be re-ordered slightly to state that part of the FAQ - which is very clear - further up, but I doubt that there's a malicious bone in that man's body.by yankcrime
- It's a couple Q's in on the page:
Q: How do I pay for Hyperspace? Hyperspace is a free download in the Mac App Store. Once downloaded, it’s free to scan an unlimited number of files. Scanning will let you know how much space is eligible to be reclaimed.
If you decide you want to reclaim that space, you will need to pay for Hyperspace using the purchase button that appears after a successful scan or by selecting “Purchase Hyperspace…” from the “Hyperspace” menu in the menu bar.
by greenpizza13 - I don’t understand. It mentions multiple times it’s not free right on the linked page. And if you open the App Store link? It also mentions it’s a paid app.
What am I missing?
by runjake - If anything, it's the opposite of a dark pattern: you get to see if it'll provide any value for you without paying a dime. It's a far better proposition than paying up only to find out that it won't free up any space for you. The linked site is very clear about how the pricing works.by guywithabike