I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
suspended.

How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
HD for routine use.
PeteFJ

--
The address shown on this posting is false. If you need to contact me then wirte to:
peterATpfjamesDOTcoDOTuk

On Nov 24, 2023, Peter James wrote
(in article <kscb1eF3rmnU1@mid.individual.net>):

> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
> suspended.
>
> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
> HD for routine use.
> PeteFJ

Ah...

1. How much capacity does the internal storage have?

2. Was the external drive formatted APFS, HFS+, exFAT, FAT32 (God help us),
or NTFS (worse)? If APFS or HFS+, it can be used as is. If exFAT, it can be
used but there will be issues, notably with permissions and security and
built-in compression, as in there won’t be any of that. If (ick) FAT32,
same issues as exFAT plus it’ll be wildly inefficient and waste storage
space. If NTFS, good luck writing to it unless you have Paragon’s NTFS
drivers or something similar. (There are two free NTFS drivers out there.
They’re worth every penny you spend on them. They’re worth _exactly_
every penny you spend on them.) I suspect that out of the box an external 1TB
drive will be formatted exFAT or NTFS unless you specically got a
Mac-formatted unit. If it doesn’t say ‘Mac-formatted’ or something
similar, it ain’t Mac formatted.

3. You don’t mention moving anything from the internal drive to the
external drive. If you don’t copy stuff over, VERIFY THAT THE COPIES ARE
GOOD AND WORKING, and then delete the originals, you will not have any extra
space on the internal drive. Stuff doesn’t move by osmosis.

4. Is Time Machine running? if it is, then Time Machine will, over time, copy
everything over from your internal to your external. This will take hours to
days, depending on how much stuff there is to copy. Time Machine will NOT
delete files on your internal, nor will the Time Machine copies be directly
usable in the Finder. And Time Machine won’t work with NTFS or FAT32. It
might seem to work with exFAT, but you may get unexpected, and undesired,
results. The last time I checked APFS gave problems, too, but it’s been
years, maybe Apple has fixed it.

If the external has a larger capacity than the internal, I would get Carbon
Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! (Yes, spelled that way, with the exclaimation
point) or similar (I use CCC and have used it for a Very Long Time) and have
it clone your internal drive. Both CCC and SD! will make bootable clones of
the internal, if there’s enough space. Set the external as boot drive in
System Preferences and reboot. If the internal has 256 GB or 512 GB, you’ll
have a lot of space on the 1TB drive. It may be slower. If the internal drive
is 1TB, get a 2TB external, then clone. Note that cloning will take hours.

On 24 Nov 2023 at 19:14:54 GMT, Peter James wrote:

> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
> suspended.
>
> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
> HD for routine use.
> PeteFJ

Don't know the answer, but in my similar situation I've offloaded the Photos
library to a fast thumb drive. Perhaps you could do that and similar for
documents etc?
--
Cheers, Rob, Sheffield UK

On 25 Nov 2023 at 05:42:12 GMT, "RJH" <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:

> On 24 Nov 2023 at 19:14:54 GMT, Peter James wrote:
>
>> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
>> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
>> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
>> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
>> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
>> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
>> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
>> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
>> suspended.
>>
>> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
>> HD for routine use.
>> PeteFJ
>
> Don't know the answer, but in my similar situation I've offloaded the Photos
> library to a fast thumb drive. Perhaps you could do that and similar for
> documents etc?

Whenever I pouchase an external drive the first thing I do is to reformat it
with Disk Utilirty to APFS format (or occasionally HFS+ ) using the GUID
Partition Map Scheme. This is the best format/scheme to use for most external
drive needs with a Mac.

--
Cheers, Alan

On 25 Nov 2023 at 09:43:11 GMT, Alan B wrote:

> On 25 Nov 2023 at 05:42:12 GMT, "RJH" <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>> On 24 Nov 2023 at 19:14:54 GMT, Peter James wrote:
>>
>>> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
>>> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
>>> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
>>> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
>>> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
>>> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
>>> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
>>> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
>>> suspended.
>>>
>>> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
>>> HD for routine use.
>>> PeteFJ
>>
>> Don't know the answer, but in my similar situation I've offloaded the Photos
>> library to a fast thumb drive. Perhaps you could do that and similar for
>> documents etc?
>
> Whenever I pouchase an external drive the first thing I do is to reformat it
> with Disk Utilirty to APFS format (or occasionally HFS+ ) using the GUID
> Partition Map Scheme. This is the best format/scheme to use for most external
> drive needs with a Mac.

Mmmm. I've got my 256MB USB drive MBR/OS Extended-Journaled. It's been fine
(occasional eject without reason excepted) over the 3 or so years I've used it
to store the Photos library - worth changing it?
--
Cheers, Rob, Sheffield UK

On 24/11/2023 19:14, Peter James wrote:
> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD. I have installed a
> game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available HD
> leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.

You haven't (explicitly) said whether you've moved the game off the
internal SDD and onto the new external HD.

This is a necessary step - the Mac won't treat the new external as an
/extension/ of the internal - only extra and you have to manage what
goes where.

From the symptoms you describe it sounds like the game hasn't been moved.

If it has been moved then remember that /moving/ (i.e. dragging and
dropping) from internal SSD to external doesn't actually /move/ but
instead /copies/! So you may still have the original copy of the game on
the internal and that is what is taking up the space still.

I'm not a games person but it might be simplest - if a little tedious -
to uninstall the game, confirm that you have all the expected space
back, and then reinstall it choosing the external as the destination.

> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's
> presence in DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the
> system doesn't seem to recognise that there is 1TB of available space
> and keeps tellng me I only have 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and
> therefore certain operations will be suspended.
>
> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the
> external HD for routine use. PeteFJ
>

--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey, England

On 25 Nov 2023 at 10:46:59 GMT, "Bruce Horrocks" <07.013@scorecrow.com> wrote:

> On 24/11/2023 19:14, Peter James wrote:
>> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD. I have installed a
>> game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available HD
>> leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
>> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
>
> You haven't (explicitly) said whether you've moved the game off the
> internal SDD and onto the new external HD.
>
> This is a necessary step - the Mac won't treat the new external as an
> /extension/ of the internal - only extra and you have to manage what
> goes where.
>
> From the symptoms you describe it sounds like the game hasn't been moved.
>
> If it has been moved then remember that /moving/ (i.e. dragging and
> dropping) from internal SSD to external doesn't actually /move/ but
> instead /copies/! So you may still have the original copy of the game on
> the internal and that is what is taking up the space still.
>
> I'm not a games person but it might be simplest - if a little tedious -
> to uninstall the game, confirm that you have all the expected space
> back, and then reinstall it choosing the external as the destination.
>
>> Snipped
No the game hasn't been moved. I will do that this afternoon. Thank you, you
have made the whole process appear simple. I will let you know.
PeteFJ

--
The address shown on this posting is false. If you need to contact me then wirte to:
peterATpfjamesDOTcoDOTuk

RJH <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:
> On 25 Nov 2023 at 09:43:11 GMT, Alan B wrote:
>
>> On 25 Nov 2023 at 05:42:12 GMT, "RJH" <patchmoney@gmx.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 24 Nov 2023 at 19:14:54 GMT, Peter James wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
>>>> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
>>>> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
>>>> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
>>>> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
>>>> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
>>>> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
>>>> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
>>>> suspended.
>>>>
>>>> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
>>>> HD for routine use.
>>>> PeteFJ
>>>
>>> Don't know the answer, but in my similar situation I've offloaded the Photos
>>> library to a fast thumb drive. Perhaps you could do that and similar for
>>> documents etc?
>>
>> Whenever I pouchase an external drive the first thing I do is to reformat it
>> with Disk Utilirty to APFS format (or occasionally HFS+ ) using the GUID
>> Partition Map Scheme. This is the best format/scheme to use for most external
>> drive needs with a Mac.
>
> Mmmm. I've got my 256MB USB drive MBR/OS Extended-Journaled. It's been fine
> (occasional eject without reason excepted) over the 3 or so years I've used it
> to store the Photos library - worth changing it?

If it ain’t broke …. probably no advantage in changing things. Most if not
all external drives I’ve purchased in recent times seem to be MBR / NTFS or
some other Windows preferred format. This is no surprise given the majority
of the intended users are Windows people!!!

--
Cheers, Alan

Peter James <peterf@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm using a MacBook Air, M2 2023 with a 1TB SSD.
> I have installed a game on the HD which in affect uses up all of the available
> HD leaving me about 5 GB spare. The game reports this and as a result I
> purchased an additional external HD of 1TB, variety SanDisk.
> Although the MacBook recognises the external HD and shows it's presence in
> DiskUtility and by putting an icon on the Desktop the system doesn't seem to
> recognise that there is 1TB of available space and keeps tellng me I only have
> 5BG left, and I should have 10GB, and therefore certain operations will be
> suspended.
>
> How can I get the system, the game, the OS to recognise and use the external
> HD for routine use.
> PeteFJ

Your system does recognise the external HD, because it shows it.
It is of course a separate volume.
You cannot split your storage for an app over two volumes,
so the only solution is to move things to your external volume,
(either the game or a lot of other things)

Jan

Am 25.11.23 um 17:09 schrieb David Brooks:
> On 25/11/2023 10:27, RJH wrote:
>> Mmmm. I've got my 256MB USB drive MBR/OS Extended-Journaled. It's been fine
>> (occasional eject without reason excepted) over the 3 or so years I've used it
>> to store the Photos library - worth changing it?
>
> You could read about this software to see if it might help:-
>
> https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6171

DAVID! Your snakeoil again? Not really!

Using EtreCheck
Rating: 5 out of 5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
11 3 likes 16,321 views Last modified Jan 9, 2019 6:44 PM

About EtreCheck

Download EtreCheck

EtreCheck is a tool I wrote to help people on Apple Support Communities
remotely debug problems with people’s computers. That can be a difficult
task even when the machine is in front of you. Attempting it over an
internet discussion forum is extremely difficult.

I strongly suggest that you post new questions here on Apple Support
Communities with your EtreCheck results rather than e-mailing me
directly. While I don't mind answering e-mails, there is no way that I
can provide assistance that is as accurate or as timely as all of the
people here on Apple Support Communities. The more exposure your problem
can get, the greater the chance that someone will recognize your problem
and contribute a solution.

--
"Mille viae ducunt hominem per saecula Romam." (Alanus ab Insulis 1120-1202)