I checked them all except TM, because TM just eventually fills up to brim and then deletes old stuff for new, so you dont care about TM right? (if have dedicated drive just for TM
I have two drives dedicated for Time Machine and I have the warning turned on. Yes, Time Machine will drop data off the backend if the drive fills up, but I would like know that is happening or about to happen. I might choose to add a third or even switch to a tape drive, if that happens. As it is, I have little to worry about, as I still have lots of unused TeraBytes on those drives.
Don't understand pre low, extreme low what that meaning? and does some alert come on ? Is this just manual check do every once in while? (of course then have to ask, is this any different than me just using the disk daisly or even Mac About storage to see manually how much space is left?
It means you will get a warning email when a drive gets down to each level telling you what level you are down to.
Ie. drive X is low on space or drive Y is extremely low on disk space.
ON using default... clicked restore defaults, and that unchecked everything (all externals) except the Mac HD, so why would want restore defaults? Thanks!
Countless apps offer an option to return various settings to default. If you find you have chosen settings that do not work well in practice and it provides a quick and easy way to get back to the defaults and try again.
(and again, final, the "issue", those will come in email if / when happen.. lot issue.. but not a percentage you do/ choose in alerts)
10% of a 16 TB drive is a lot more free space than 10% of a 256 GB drive. So numbers or even percentages may have different implications in different situations. On the other hand, pre low, low, extremely low have a relatively consistent connotation. A
Comfortable amount of free space on a given drive depends on the user and what the drive is used for. The boot drive, for example, is used by the system for the storage of numerous invisible temporary files that improve overall system performance, so I might set a 256 GB boot drive pre-low at 20% to be sure to allow enough space for the temporary files and a 1 TB boot drive at 10%. If that 1 TB drive were used for Time Machine backups, a pre low setting of 5% might be more appropriate. There are many factors to consider and frankly few users have the expertise to judge that accurately. I just use the default settings as a reasonable compromise. (
Note: by default, DriveDX turns free space tracking of Time Machine drives
OFF.)
When the low disk space warning is raised, then there are many alternatives, but using Daisy Disk or similar to delete the temporary files on the boot drive, is a
very temporary solution, at best because the system will almost immediately recreate those files and simultaneously system performance will suffer. (The real solution, in that cse, is to move as much of your data as possible to another drive such as iCloud Drive or get a new Mac with a bigger internal drive.)
