Anyone going from HFS+ to APFS on external drives?

[nicholasg]

I asked this question awhile back when 10.14 had just come out. I wondered with APFS being a few years old now if there is any reason not to convert external HDDs to APFS or are there known issues?

Thanks,
Nicholas

 

[Rastafabi]

I asked this question awhile back when 10.14 had just come out. I wondered with APFS being a few years old now if there is any reason not to convert external HDDs to APFS or are there known issues?

Thanks,
Nicholas

Not exactly, but I haven‘t been using HFS+ on external drives either. With the notable exception of TimeMachine, where HFS+ is still mandatory and I doubt that will ever change as Apples interest will rather be moving macOS backups to cloud, too.

With that out of the way, what I do use externally is exFat, as it’s the only file system that’s compatible across multiple OS including Windows and Linux as well as pretty much any NAS. However I also have the 3G-ntfs package installed via homebrew, just to not run into any issues if some friends windows formatted drives show up.

That’s my two cents on this matter.

Best,
Rastafabi

 

[chscag]

I asked this question awhile back when 10.14 had just come out. I wondered with APFS being a few years old now if there is any reason not to convert external HDDs to APFS or are there known issues?

Thanks,
Nicholas

I would leave hard drives (spinners) as HFS+ and only convert SSDs. SSDs formatted to APFS are more efficient according to Apple. Converting spinners to APFS may wind up slowing them down.

 

[dave39]

I have had recent nightmare using APFS as backup drives for more than one MacOSX. In the past I used HFS+ formatted drives with three partitions to clone my Macmini to one, my spouse's Macmini to another and my Macbookpro to another using Superduper. One 4Tb drive with three partitions and three different MacOSX's. I bought a new 4Tb drive formatted it as APFS, created three volumes as per three partitions above and cloned each computer to their relevant volume. I then needed to reverse clone an internal drive with it's backup because a download of some software had corrupted the data. The backup wouldn't start, either by selecting it at an option/start or via System Prefs/Startup disk. I then checked the other clones, none would startup. If I deleted two and only had a disk with one MacOSX on it - it started up. Is this an issue with APFS file system, or Superduper clone (I haven't tried CCC)? Do I have to go back to three HFS+ partitions and clone each Mac to an HFS+ partition even if the Mac structure is APFS?

Dave

 

[ashleykaryl]

@dave39 I believe the developer of SuperDuper is actually a fan of APFS for cloned backups, since it provides the ability to offer snapshots and perhaps other benefits. I've been using SuperDuper with APFS for quite a while now with both internal and external drives without problems. I wonder if your start up problem is related to security settings in Catalina that don't allow startups from an external drive, which I believe can be disabled from recovery mode.

Regarding other usage, if you want cross platform compatibility ex-fat is the way to go or HFS+ I guess if you need to maintain compatibility with old Mac hardware. APFS is definitely best suited to SSD, however I can't say it has caused me any problems on other drives. The only one not using APFS is the Time Machine drive.

In your shoes I would head over to the SuperDuper forums or email the developer direct. He is extremely helpful and knowledgeable. When APFS first launched there were definitely some issues to work through but I think it is pretty settled by now.