Previously I've read that was best to format an external hard disk in MacOS Extended instead of APFS, with Monterey release are things still the same?
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APFS or MacOS Extended for HDD?
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Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter than me could give you more infos, but I’ve also read in the past that MacOS Extended worked better with HDD as AFPS is designed for SSD. That said, I’ve used AFPS on a hard drive for quite a few times and I never had an issue
I'm looking for an answer also. I have a new 1TB HDD for my Mid-2010 13" that right now I am running 2 HFS+ and the macOS Mojave off of an APFS Partition on the same drive. And before I read that you can "covert" an HFS+ to APFS, but not back. I didn't know that I was completely successful in converting back with no data loss. So . . .
There's a ton of opinions out there. Some saying that you "HAVE" to run Mojave off of a APFS drive. No you don't! And I have both my main machines salted with HFS+and APFS partitions mostly the OSs running off the APFS OF WHICH even
says they won't talk to the HFS+ drives. Oh. I have no problem.
I think I'm gonna clone my very full drive to the large one in APFS and see what blows up.
I can't find anything definitive. That's why I am here . . .
There's a ton of opinions out there. Some saying that you "HAVE" to run Mojave off of a APFS drive. No you don't! And I have both my main machines salted with HFS+and APFS partitions mostly the OSs running off the APFS OF WHICH even
says they won't talk to the HFS+ drives. Oh. I have no problem.I think I'm gonna clone my very full drive to the large one in APFS and see what blows up.
I can't find anything definitive. That's why I am here . . .
I expect there are some scenarios where HFS+ is significantly better than APFS for speed, but I have not noticed any speed problems with APFS. APFS seems faster, but I not done any rigorous testing.
In term of reliability (e.g. resistance to corruption), APFS is more robust.
Time Machine with APFS destination is faster as well as being much more robust. This is for macOS 11 and 12.
APFS is more flexible. No need to worry about partition sizes - just create a single APFS partition/container and create multiple volumes inside it.
For myself, I don't think twice about it - APFS every time.
If you have a workload where you know HFS+ is better for you (performance, reliability, etc.), then use HFS+. But otherwise APFS.
In term of reliability (e.g. resistance to corruption), APFS is more robust.
Time Machine with APFS destination is faster as well as being much more robust. This is for macOS 11 and 12.
APFS is more flexible. No need to worry about partition sizes - just create a single APFS partition/container and create multiple volumes inside it.
For myself, I don't think twice about it - APFS every time.
If you have a workload where you know HFS+ is better for you (performance, reliability, etc.), then use HFS+. But otherwise APFS.
I wouldn't use APFS on an SD card.
And unless a platter-based hard drive (HDD) is used as a boot drive, it should be formatted for HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).
APFS can result in excessive fragmentation and "thrashing" on HDD's...
And unless a platter-based hard drive (HDD) is used as a boot drive, it should be formatted for HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).
APFS can result in excessive fragmentation and "thrashing" on HDD's...
The SD card is being used only with the 2021 MacBook Pro 16" with 1TB SSD as a backup device (no Time Machine, just manual backup of some files), it is always plugged in the MacBook Pro, even in this scenario you recommend to use HFS+ vs APFS? Thank you
As a note of caution, I had an external 5TB drive formatted with APFS for my Time Machine backups. I added a separate volume to it to give me a 4TB volume for backups and a 1TB volume for various data files I don't need access to regularly.
Within a week that second volume stopped mounting, and I had to buy Disk Drill to recover my data. Disk Utility couldn't see it.
I won't use APFS for any external drives unless it's for Time Machine backups; I simply can't trust it.
Within a week that second volume stopped mounting, and I had to buy Disk Drill to recover my data. Disk Utility couldn't see it.
I won't use APFS for any external drives unless it's for Time Machine backups; I simply can't trust it.
Have you experienced that? My experience is the opposite.
I don't have a use case where I need to use HFS+. What is yours, where you need HFS+?
Apple recommends HFS+ for spinning disks and APFS for SSDs. Using APFS in a spinning disk can cause excessive fragmentation and thus get slower and slower as time progresses.
HFS+ has self defragmenting features built in and there are tools better than disk utility for repair and recovery.
APFS is designed for SSD and has more underlying disk activity. It is still not fully documented. I use APFS on spinning drives only for cloning (Carbon Copy Cloner.) My TimeMachine is to a Synology NAS and TImeCapsule upgraded to 10TB.
APFS is designed for SSD and has more underlying disk activity. It is still not fully documented. I use APFS on spinning drives only for cloning (Carbon Copy Cloner.) My TimeMachine is to a Synology NAS and TImeCapsule upgraded to 10TB.
I keep seeing this mentioned in answers in this forum, but all I've found Apple saying is
I'm trying to decide what to format my external 5TB HDD disk as. Its currently APFS, but I haven't really put much on it yet. So would be easy to throw away the three APFS partitions (two are OS backups, third for other data for the moment)
You can use either, but as others have already alluded to, HFS is generally far superior on spinning HDDs. The reasons go beyond just the self-defragmentation on HFS (which can actually be enabled for APFS via the command line as well, albeit in a rather experimental form). It also has to do with how metadata is written to the disk.
APFS puts file metadata and structure data with the file and scatters it all throughout the disk. HFS places it all near the beginning of the disk, making it easy to read all of it in one place. This change causes no harm for SSDs, which do not face any seek penalty (and therefore it doesn't matter where the file structure data is located). On hard drives, it's a very different story, as the drive may have to seek all over the place just to find one file if the metadata (along with the extents table) is scattered.
APFS hard drives tend to start out performing okay, but they degrade with time as a result of this. APFS is excellent for SSDs, but it wasn't really designed with hard drives in mind, and doesn't perform nearly as well as HFS+ in real-world use cases for spinning-disk hard drives.
APFS puts file metadata and structure data with the file and scatters it all throughout the disk. HFS places it all near the beginning of the disk, making it easy to read all of it in one place. This change causes no harm for SSDs, which do not face any seek penalty (and therefore it doesn't matter where the file structure data is located). On hard drives, it's a very different story, as the drive may have to seek all over the place just to find one file if the metadata (along with the extents table) is scattered.
APFS hard drives tend to start out performing okay, but they degrade with time as a result of this. APFS is excellent for SSDs, but it wasn't really designed with hard drives in mind, and doesn't perform nearly as well as HFS+ in real-world use cases for spinning-disk hard drives.
In summary: Don't use an APFS hard disk as boot drive. Otherwise there are great features of APFS on HDD.
I have not noticed degradation, though my use case may not be the same as yours.
Unless your use case is heavy write (as well as read) of many files, I would stay with APFS. You are going to need APFS for TM backup. But you might want to get rid of multiple partitions - put multiple volumes into a single APFS partition/container.
I formatted a spinning HDD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) for Time Machine, but Time Machine automatically changed it to APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted) when preparing. So you don't always have a choice I guess.
I must say my Time Machine backups became a lot faster after coming from an older macOS and formatting: it's almost as fast as on my SATA SSD.
I must say my Time Machine backups became a lot faster after coming from an older macOS and formatting: it's almost as fast as on my SATA SSD.
I have used APFS on a 10 TB and a 16 TB drive in daily use for years and years. It's been fine. I wouldn't use anything but APFS for any drive used exclusively with Macs, and for anything else I wouldn't use HFS+ either.
For use as a TM destination you absolutely want APFS.
"APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk."
Source:
For use as a TM destination you absolutely want APFS.
"APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk."
Source:
Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac
Use Time Machine on your Mac with a Time Capsule and with USB and Thunderbolt disks.
support.apple.com
APFS may become VERY slow when used for anything but backup type storage on a spinning HDD. HFS+ will be a little better.
On Time Machine, using HFS+ with Big Sur or Monterey can introduce problems resulting in data loss.
It is time to start using SSDs with APFS for anything except infrequently accessed backup or storage for Big Sur and later.
On Time Machine, using HFS+ with Big Sur or Monterey can introduce problems resulting in data loss.
It is time to start using SSDs with APFS for anything except infrequently accessed backup or storage for Big Sur and later.
Performance on hard disk drives
Enumerating files, and any inode metadata in general, is much slower on APFS when it is located on a hard disk drive. This is because instead of storing metadata at a fixed location like HFS+ does, APFS stores them alongside the actual file data. This fragmentation of metadata means more seeks are performed when listing files, acceptable for SSDs but not HDDs.[22]Apple File System - Wikipedia
Not disputing this, but the linked article ends with:
"No, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. APFS has loads of really nice features, like snapshots and volume space sharing. Managing volumes within an APFS container is a dream compared to the older method of preallocating space to specific partitions. It's important to understand why we might expect to see performance differences between the two filesystems and when that might impact your use of the filesystem, but this one performance aspect on its own isn't enough reason to avoid it."
For myself, I am prefer to use APFS for external HDDs. I may lose some speed performance (which I don't notice), but gain lots in flexibility and robustness. Everyone needs to evaluate their needs and tradeoffs.
I have no need for improved volume management. When adding disks they are always created as a single volume since I fill them up quickly.
You are also giving up disk life (due to all of the extra seeks) and the ability to repair the disk if you have problems. I have yet to hear of any utility that can rebuild APFS volumes. Yes, it depends on how you use your disks. I have a number of applications which max out my disk r/w bandwidth. For TM you don't have any choice since TM automatically formats as APFS.
But as you say it is a personal preference.
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