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ComputerGuru · 2010-02-02 20:44:58+00:00

Completely off-topic, but this makes me even sadder that I still can't have ZFS on my Mac and probably never will...

sneak | karma 23753 | avg karma 1.62 · | 2020-08-31 10:17:09+00:00

ZFS support on macOS has been barely beta-quality for at least five years. I wish it were actually cross-platform, but it really only works well on Linux and FreeBSD.

matthewmcg | karma 2961 | avg karma 4.93 · | 2016-06-20 01:33:41+00:00

Agreed. A few years ago Apple was on the verge of using ZFS but cancelled the project due to licensing issues.

See http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-m...

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justincormack | karma 11120 | avg karma 2.4 · | 2017-03-12 20:06:14+00:00

ZFS on OSX has been revived I believe.

ryandvm | karma 8694 | avg karma 5.21 · | 2010-02-02 21:12:46+00:00

Doh - I missed that we were talking about the near miss between ZFS and the Mac. I was just lamenting that it's not on Linux.

X-Istence | karma 7122 | avg karma 2.59 · | 2010-06-04 17:41:19+00:00

Apple had one point had read/write support for ZFS, but it was pulled because Sun at the time was not able to provide certain guarantees. There was an email by one of the main guys in ZFS that said something to that effect.

As such ZFS on Mac OS X is a dead project.

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sneak | karma 23753 | avg karma 1.62 · | 2021-02-01 08:35:50

ZFS does not reliably work on macOS. If you think otherwise I encourage you to try: I have.

h1d | karma 781 | avg karma 0.68 · | 2018-12-20 08:23:07

I mean, there's unlikely to be any official support of zfs on Mac and the fact Apple developed apfs recently could mean there's less appetite for community to port and support zfs on Mac.

frik | karma 5234 | avg karma 1.61 · | 2016-06-26 18:24:41+00:00

Fun fact: An early developer preview build of an older OSX version (now called macOS) had inbuilt ZFS support.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-m...

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xoa | karma 10168 | avg karma 6.36 · | 2022-08-03 17:24:51

>such as ZFS

FWIW, ZFS has actually been available on macOS for a long time in various iterations (MacZFS, Z-410/ZEVO, and now OpenZFS [0]). I ran it for around 11 years on a number of systems with almost all of my data on it (home folder, applications, /opt for MacPorts etc) and it was a tank. Fun project and well worth checking out. I'll always regret the various factors that meant Apple didn't adopt it as their native FS.

----

0: https://openzfsonosx.org/

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thehigherlife | karma 801 | avg karma 4.53 · | 2009-10-23 20:25:40+00:00

That's too bad if so. ZFS is pretty cool technology (i've been pretty impressed with it so far for my personal use). I was really hoping it was going to be added at some point to OSX. Hopefully apple's in house implementation will fix a lot of the same issues ZFS was aiming at.

panick21_ | karma 6073 | avg karma 1.48 · | 2023-08-20 07:11:45

ZFS was open source, Nothing was preventing Mac using ZFS. Just as they use DTrace. Its just Apple NIH.

ShadowBanThis01 | karma 1049 | avg karma 0.97 · | 2023-03-28 01:00:12

Remember when Apple announced that ZFS would be the new filesystem for Mac OS?

Oh well.

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atmosx | karma 6099 | avg karma 1.75 · | 2014-06-11 09:48:03+00:00

Great, thanks for the heads up. Do you think that there is any hope to use ZFS as a full-featured replacement in the future for OSX?

PostThisTooFast | karma 133 | avg karma 0.2 · | 2020-08-26 09:48:06+00:00

Remember when Apple was going to adopt ZFS as Mac OS's file system?

Then... nothing further was heard about it.

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zapzupnz | karma 2461 | avg karma 2.14 · | 2018-12-20 08:43:47+00:00

I don't see how. Those who want ZFS probably want to use specific features of it or for specific purposes but don't want to have to stop using macOS to continue working with ZFS volumes.

sneak | karma 23753 | avg karma 1.62 · | 2022-11-20 19:42:39

I love ZFS and go to great lengths to run it everywhere on Linux, but the last time I tried to use it on macOS it was nowhere near usable.

I hope the situation has changed, or is changing.

The installer repo in the linked org shows no updates since 2020 and does not list any recent macOSes in the supported versions list.

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johnwalkr | karma 2199 | avg karma 2.16 · | 2021-12-16 02:47:32

ZFS just works so well. Especially on FreeBSD where the documentation is great. About 12 or more years ago, MacOS was rumored to change to ZFS as default filesystem. I was using FreeBSD too at the time, so I pre-emptively started using ZFS on my Mac. It worked well for a few years but for licensing reasons ZFS by default on MacOS was canned and I haven’t used it since I replaced that laptop.

samf | karma 215 | avg karma 6.32 · | 2015-04-09 00:36:12+00:00

ZFS is, and Apple almost had it. Damn.

johnwalkr | karma 2199 | avg karma 2.16 · | 2021-12-16 01:38:37

ZFS just works so well. Especially on FreeBSD where the documentation is great. About 12 or more years ago, MacOS was rumored to change to ZFS as default filesystem. I was using FreeBSD too at the time, so I pre-emptively started using ZFS on my Mac. It worked well for a few years but for licensing reasons ZFS by default was canned and I haven’t used it since I replaced that laptop.