Clusters

This was a great little app, as it stands now I can't seem to get it to work since the 10.13 upgrade.

This app was a great way to gain a few extra GB of disk space on a packed HD. I also found on older systems (ones without SSDs) that it actually reduced the load times of larger applications, in some cases quite substantially...

Since the Mac OS X 10.13 update this doesn't appear to break anything, but it sits permanently idle. When I try adding a folder to the app I'm warned that it appears I'm adding a folder that is not part of the boot volume (even though I am)...

It may simply be that apple's new format no longer benefits from what this app does. If you are using an older system pre-dating 10.13, and especially if you have a non SSD, I'd still recommend this app.

I guess development on this is dead? Does anyone know if it works with 10.11? If not are there any alternatives? Terminal commands?

The last blog entry on their website is from March 2012...:-/ Anyway, Clusters has been working ok for years, here on OS 10.9.5. In fact, when installed, and once it has compressed the files, you don't even know it's there — I was wondering if it was still working, indeed! ;-) To check the gain, the easier solution I found is to Get Info on a big folder and compare it to the result for a Terminal command (du -sh path_to_the_folder) — multiplied by 1024×1024×1024, if you want a fair reading, Finder considering that 1 KB = 1000 bytes). The result for my /Applications folder gives 36GB against 28GB, a nice 8GB gain! If you're interested in HFS+ file compression, this article highlights a few utilities: http://www.cnet.com/news/unix-commands-for-managing-hfs-compression-in-os-x/ Some links are broken, but you'll easily find them — afsctool seems what you need to use for compressing files and folders without copying them.

Prefpane not opening under 10.9.3

I have been waiting since Dec. 20th for this company to respond to my tech support request. I can't get my serial number to register in a second account on the same machine. Supposedly, I'm supposed to be able to, but it won't work, and they won't get back to me...

I am a fan of Clusters for a long time. I tend to use up all the available space on my drives and this extends my general usability. But I have noticed false reads of the space on my main drive. Once I restart it goes back to normal but I am curious is this is an issue with Clusters or some other drive issue.

An excellent Application which saves space on my hard drive.

I think that clusters may actually be slowing down my OS (otherwise it's the space that was used up). After I re-installed my OS and apps, I noticed that *everything* was MUCH faster. I do love the idea of saving space, but not at the cost of the speed and reliability of my overall experience. This app should run completely seamlessly in the background, with adjustable priority/speed. It also should take fewer resources while doing its job. The places in which you'd gain the most space would be documents, pictures, and apps. Videos, archives, audio, and other extremely large files will barely get any change. (the /system and /library is also excluded). On Average I'd say that you'd gain 10-15% more space on your hard drive. However, I would not recommend this for SSD users because this is specifically meant for a HD. I would recommend extra storage over compressing, because if you lose that much data it's bad, and there's most likely some files on your HD that you haven't used in months. I would recommend investing in a small SSD and replacing the disc drive with it, or a 64G SanDisk class 10 SDXC card. Running the OS/apps from either is well worth an investment, especially for the new MBP or Air. All in all, this app is really is good if one were too lazy to sort through their data or cannot afford another storage device. It's okay for students/businesses if they have no other options. If it's just out of curiosity or wanting to make the best use of your HD, it's really not worth it in the long-run.

I finally got a response after a few weeks... According to what they told me my email had gotten lost in a sea of spam... They worked with me and ended up releasing an update which fixed my issues. It's now working fine for me...

Company seems to be closed. I couldn't get any reply to my mails since about a month.

I have used Clusters since the days when it was known as Squeeze. No problems, no complaints - works welll in the background compressing everything I have thrown at it. Two minor glitches/issues - the Total Savings as reported by the app is a cumulative total over time, so the longer it has been on your machine, the greater the Total is, so use this figure with caution. The other GUI hiccup is I have a folder listed that is greyed out - it is listed as "Other" with "Savings obtained from previously selected folders" - presumably from my previous MacBook before I migrated to current MacBook. I can't delete this entry when I believe I should be able to .. Otherwise can recommend this app - it does what is says it will do, and for me, no issues with CPU spikes etc as reported by others.

I might have considered this product, however the demo appears to be crippled because it limits you to saving a maximum of 50Mb and expires after just one hour! How on earth am I supposed to really put this product thru its paces, see how it performs, whether I encounter any issues, whether it really benefits my setup (Mac Pro with 6Tb of internal storage) and the way I work if all I get is one hour and an absurdly low compression limit? I've heard of 30 day trials, 14 day trials even 1 day trials but this is daft.

No complaints here, great little gem. In my case, it's 60 Gb of free disk (in both my internal 320 GB HD and 120 Gb SSD). One issue I have is about virtual machine image disks, like the one from VMware or Parallels. Should I allow Clusters to compress them?

I installed Clusters on a new MacBook Air, and am seeing Clusters CONSTANTLY consuming between 110% and 150% of my CPU cycles, even though clusters is NOT actively compressing anything... Both the menu bar icon and the system preference show clusters is not actively compressing anything, but after an extended period of being 'idle', clusters is somehow consuming the bulk of my idle CPU... I emailed support with no response...

This is a no-brainer 5 stars from me. I set Clusters to compress everything except for system files. To date, I've saved 50.4 GB on a 500GB hd. 50 GB!!! I've transferred all files and applications from a previous mac to a new MBP without hiccup. All compressed files still work as usual. I only allow clusters to run while plugged in, and I pause it when I need the extra RAM. Granted, the original Macbook these files started on, was running OSX Tiger, which I believe doesn't use the HFS+ file compression. In moving all of these files to a new MBP system and allowing clusters to do it's thing, the space savings is jaw-dropping. Your results may vary if you start on a HFS+ compressed system. Absolutely no complaints here.

Still trying to wrap my head around this. Why doesn't Apple use this if it's built in? Trying to think of potential drawbacks -- for example, you should probably exclude Dropbox or other shared folders if you're sharing with anyone pre-Snow Leopard or, I'm assuming, Windows users...

No fear ;) I use Clusters (Squeeze) since the beginning and only removed last version before updating to ML. All compressed files stay compressed and stay usabele without clusters. Only if you would boot with old 10.5 DVD/extternal HD you will get problems because compressed HFS* isnst supported by < 10.6. I saved over 15 GB space selecting some Apps and some Folders. Great! Only at first install the first check/compress background process takes some time / slows down system minimal, but less than spotlight first run. Later the system will not get any slowdowns - it only works

No review today, only a comment: I had 1.6.1, registered, and went through the update process by uninstalling and reinstalling as recommended by the author. ALL my settings are gone (I have a time machine backup, so I think I could bring them back, if only I knew where they are; they are not in the .plist in preferences, that I already found out...). Also, it is no longer possible to hide the icon in the menu bar. The preference for it is still there in the tab "General", but it doesn't do anything. I refrain from giving a rating today, because it would REALLY be a bad one, and I want to give the author the chance to fix those bugs. I used to like Clusters, and I want to continue liking it...

This app has one benefit I found which was unexpected for me... When I compress my Applications folder with this, I find my larger apps load much quicker than before they were compressed... Effectively the reduction in size means it can be read faster (and apparently in memory expansion has little delay), so in the end my apps are up and running noticeable faster...

Hand to roll back to 1.5.6 via Time Machine. Version 1.6 would not run on my 10.6.8 machine. The helper app would continually crash.