APFS Bug in macOS High Sierra Can Cause Data Loss When Writing to Disk Images

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Glad I reverted to Sierra when I deemed High Sierra a S-show after a couple of weeks. There seems to be no end to Apple's incompetence with this OS.

It's really bad. They should end public beta process because it isn't useful. It makes internal engineers lazy. It's bad enough the tech sector in California have lost their sense of priorities. They just go full steam ahead like a bull in a China shop and think about fixing all the problems (social damage, data theft, security bugs, social network trolling, poor interfaces, etc) later. Stock value is made priority. Social utility is the afterthought.

 

[clystron]

Almost certainly not, your NAS won't be formatted as APFS.

The Video shows that the sparse-bundle has to be APFS, it does not say that the filesystem of the volume holding the sparse-bundle has to be APFS. Based on that information I can totally see that happen on a NAS as well.

 

[Jesse Waugh]

Happy to be a paying CCC user; thanks!

CCC is the best! - No need for RAID - just copy one external drive to another daily.

 

[tevion5]

Another day, another bug. How very Apple-esque. #ifstevejobswasalive #firetimcook

I don't recall Jobs firing everyone who worked on Cheetah or Puma...ever use those?

 

[Jesse Waugh]

I wonder if this is related to high sierra suddenly invalidating my time machine backups to my NAS, and demanding to do a new full. (Loosing two years worth of history). Then doing it again 2 weeks later.

I’m seriously wondering if Apple is deliberately dumbing down its software to assist some sort of covert nefarious agenda to limit the masses’ usage of enabling tech.

 

[Quu]

Death by a thousand cuts when it comes to Apples software lately, sad.

 

[uroshnor]

So does this affect time machine backups?

Likely not - Time Machine is not APFS, norvis it a disk image

 

[DanielDD]

High Sierra introduced a new file system. Did you expect it to not have this bugs out of the box? Apple should have tested it more extensively

 

[dannys1]

imo its hardware not software apple have been using cheap memories since tim cook

They've been using Hynix for as long as I can remember all through Jobs and Cook.

 

[jaredm1]

Apple's new tag line should be

It just (doesn't) work.

 

[dannys1]

The Video shows that the sparse-bundle has to be APFS, it does not say that the filesystem of the volume holding the sparse-bundle has to be APFS. Based on that information I can totally see that happen on a NAS as well.

Either way TimeMachine doesn't use APFS, so it's still no.

 

[Delgibbons]

Ah this isn't important. Who cares about data.

People want..........new emoji!

 

[bsbeamer]

There are write speed issues on SATA SSDs formatted APFS being used in MacPro5,1. Ran into this issue personally after one of the 10.13.2 security updates. Cloned to HFS+ drive with CCC, replaced, and all was fixed. Never will use APFS on non Apple issued drives.

 

[Sandstorm]

No worries about such minor problems as data loss. We get new emojis and watchbands.

 

[Delgibbons]

High Sierra has been a complete disaster for me. My computer locks up for 5-10 seconds every few hours. Probably some memory leaks or something. Either way this is really pathetic, even windows works better than this.

I haven't had a blue screen through windows 7, 8 and now 10. Using every day. Rock solid now.

 

[maflynn]

Filesystem bugs shouldn't happen - at least destructive ones like this. I wonder if they should have slowed the process down with APFS and let it age a little more so these bugs can be identified before they affect us.

 

[Heineken]

It's a normal bug, stop the drama.

 

[belvdr]

It's a normal bug, stop the drama.

What defines a normal and abnormal bug?

 

[Heineken]

Filesystem bugs shouldn't happen - at least destructive ones like this. I wonder if they should have slowed the process down with APFS and let it age a little more so these bugs can be identified before they affect us.

It's a bug.
[doublepost=1519042191][/doublepost]

What defines a normal and abnormal bug?

The root bug was just lazy, this is "normal" bug. It happens get over it.

 

[newellj]

It is bugs such as this, that this what for mission critical task sys admins don't update there system to the newest version for software the day or even week or month it ships.

We are not talking about a day or even a week or even a month on this.

 

[belvdr]

It's a bug.
[doublepost=1519042191][/doublepost]
The root bug was just lazy, this is "normal" bug. It happens get over it.

For a fully released filesystem, I don't think so. This is core to Apple's filesystem and should have been caught. I would say the same for any filesystem. If it's a public release, simple bugs like this should not exist.

But, hey, if you don't mind losing data, that's your prerogative.

 

[maflynn]

It's a bug.

Really, I guess I missed that in the title

 

[belvdr]

Really, I guess I missed that in the title

Get with it man.

If Apple gave us a choice to convert to APFS during the upgrade, this bug wouldn't be so bad. However, a forced conversion to APFS when it's not really ready for prime time simply stinks.

 

[Heineken]

For a fully released filesystem, I don't think so. This is core to Apple's filesystem and should have been caught. I would say the same for any filesystem. If it's a public release, simple bugs like this should not exist.

But, hey, if you don't mind losing data, that's your prerogative.

You need a reality check.

 

[chucker23n1]

quote: The bug has already been fixed in Apple's upcoming iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 software updates.

That's a completely different bug.

Glad I reverted to Sierra when I deemed High Sierra a S-show after a couple of weeks. There seems to be no end to Apple's incompetence with this OS.

You probably weren't affected by this bug. Do you create your own sparse disk images or use CCC?

Wow, this makes me wonder. Did Apple and APFS destroy my only 2 year old Seagate drive with mostly disk images on it?

Were they sparse? Did you convert their contents to APFS? And then put in more data than there was room for?

I wonder if this is related to high sierra suddenly invalidating my time machine backups to my NAS,

No. Time Machine doesn't use APFS.

Likely not - Time Machine is not APFS, norvis it a disk image

Time Machine on a network volume is indeed a sparse disk image. It doesn't use APFS, however.

Filesystem bugs shouldn't happen - at least destructive ones like this. I wonder if they should have slowed the process down with APFS and let it age a little more so these bugs can be identified before they affect us.

They arguably have — it's why, for instance, APFS still isn't recommended on Fusion Drive.

Doesn't excuse this bug, but it does appear that they realized there's a lot of special cases that APFS doesn't yet handle well. (Rather, more specifically, the toolchain such as diskimages-helper hasn't yet been adapted for APFS.)

It's a normal bug, stop the drama.

It's a severe data loss bug. It doesn't affect most users, but it's quite serious nonetheless.