How to read fully deduplicated files over SMB on macOS?

Solution 1:

It sounds to me like you have found an ambiguity in the SMB specification. It seems that the Finder is seeing a file with 0Bytes and deciding that there is no use in accessing it, since it's empty. I could see myself easily making that choice in coding something in an attempt to 'optimize' the code. Is there something wrong with the Finder's implementation of SMB? Possibly, but you would have to read the spec VERY carefully to determine that! I would report the issue to Apple, since I can't imagine that it's not a bug. Hopefully it will end up on a bug list and get fixed soon.

On a side note, why would you use compression given the relatively cheap prices on storage today?