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APFS question

D

drewaz

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 4, 2012
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Phoenix
I'm a slow adapter but am getting ready to move from El Capitan to High Sierra.
I have about 2TB of Lightroom images on an external drive
I don't have a clue what APFS is so .....
Will High Sierra effect my ability to use the external drive?
 
Last edited:
drewaz said:
Will High Sierra effect my ability to use the external drive?
Click to expand...

No. External drive access is the same. APFS is normally only on internal SSDs. But as always make sure you have multiple backups before doing the upgrade.
 
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If I were you, I'd wait until 10.14 (Mojave) is released, either late this month or September. It's (so far) seeming like a much more solid OS than High Sierra is (gosh, 10.13 is a hot mess). It's also possible Mojave will have APFS improvements under the hood.
 
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KoolAid-Drink said:
If I were you, I'd wait until 10.14 (Mojave) is released, either late this month or September. It's (so far) seeming like a much more solid OS than High Sierra is (gosh, 10.13 is a hot mess). It's also possible Mojave will have APFS improvements under the hood.
Click to expand...
I am with you KoolAid-Drink. The more I read about High Sierra, the more I am afraid to upgrade. Why? Someone may ask. Well, when Mavericks came out I believe it destroyed my my MotherBoard. My early 2008 MBP was having kernel panics, restarts, and shutdowns. Although Apple replaced my MotherBoard for a reasonable fee, I never went back to Mavericks. I stayed on SnowLeopard until ElCaptain.
 
High Sierra is just fine. Running 10.13.6 on a late 2013 rMBP with no problems whatsoever. I waited for the .3 version of HS, tested it on an external clone, then did a clean install of the .4 version from the clone, and transferred that to my main drive. I do not switch an OS on the first version, and always test on a clone (SuperDuper or CCC) before putting it on my main drive. Never had any problems using this strategy over the years. I will do the same with Mojave.
 
thanks guys.
I stuck with El Capitan because I had about 60k images in iPhoto but the 2TB HD was almost full and the machine was pretty slow and I had a spinning beach ball with almost every mouse click. I got a 4TB external drive, moved my images to Lightroom and deleted photos and iPhoto and the slowness persisted. DiskWarrior found something that needed to be repaired but .... still slow.

Today, I got rid of Dashboard and this machine is humming like it's new.

So, right now I don't feel like I have a pressing reason to move up the OS ladder. Everything is working and many of the new 'features' aren't really of any interest to me.
 
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drewaz said:
reason to move up the OS ladder.
Click to expand...
One of my main reasons for moving up to a newer release is that I don't want to get too far behind. 10.13 was supposed to be awesome. But the early releases were awful. Things were fixed and 10.13.6 is very stable. While I have great expectations for 10.14, I have low expectations for 10.14.0/1/2. If 14 follows 13, then it will be some time before you should update to that. And then you'll be updating from El Cap to Mojave - 3 full releases.

Just something to consider.
 
kohlson said:
One of my main reasons for moving up to a newer release is that I don't want to get too far behind. 10.13 was supposed to be awesome. But the early releases were awful. Things were fixed and 10.13.6 is very stable. While I have great expectations for 10.14, I have low expectations for 10.14.0/1/2. If 14 follows 13, then it will be some time before you should update to that. And then you'll be updating from El Cap to Mojave - 3 full releases.

Just something to consider.
Click to expand...
I think about that too ....
I've never done a clean install ... have been updating and updating for years.
since things basically are OK, any reason to not just go ahead and do it the easy way?
 
My approach is to watch these forums, as there are plenty of early adopters willing to try things out and report on issues.

If I think I am ready to try the newly-released OS, with a good CarbonCopy and Time Machine backups on separate external drives, I peruse the "Works/Does Not Work" and "general release" threads and give it a try on a 'non-production' laptop machine for a trial period when I have sufficient time. So, I usually end up switching to the next OS about 1-4 months after roll-out, and have been lucky to have no surprises or serious issues over the years.

I have used OS X since the Cheetah (10.0) beta, and recall only once (temporarily) reverting to the previous OS, and that was because of issues with one of the applications I like to use.
 
drewaz said:
I think about that too ....
I've never done a clean install ... have been updating and updating for years.
since things basically are OK, any reason to not just go ahead and do it the easy way?
Click to expand...
There are a lot different reasons why some people preach a clean install. I believe the primary reason is that if you update, there maybe existing applications that are incompatible with the new OSX which could cause problems. It may be difficult to figure out which application(s) may be the culprit. With a clean install, all data and other applications are erased before the new OSX is installed and operating, Later, the data and applications can be migrated over by choice, or you can selectively test each application for compatiability.
 
Best to have a complete backup and easy way to restore if the update doesn't go smoothly. In my experience helping others with their Macs, the collect a lot of cruft over the years (ex, my brother had blackberry crap in their from 10 years ago) which causes all sorts of unexpected behaviors. For example, I had Perian, which somehow affected FCPX performance. A clean install, while a big effort, overcomes many of the unexplainable problems.
 
jdw13 said:
My approach is to watch these forums, as there are plenty of early adopters willing to try things out and report on issues.

If I think I am ready to try the newly-released OS, with a good CarbonCopy and Time Machine backups on separate external drives, I peruse the "Works/Does Not Work" and "general release" threads and give it a try on a 'non-production' laptop machine for a trial period when I have sufficient time. So, I usually end up switching to the next OS about 1-4 months after roll-out, and have been lucky to have no surprises or serious issues over the years.

I have used OS X since the Cheetah (10.0) beta, and recall only once (temporarily) reverting to the previous OS, and that was because of issues with one of the applications I like to use.
Click to expand...
Not to veer too off topic, but which 10.x.0 (emphasis on .0 because we're focusing on the first release of the OS) version was the worst for you since Cheetah? Mine was 10.9.0. Basically an extremely buggy POS, and Mavericks was pretty much crap through 10.9.5, was so glad when Yosemite was finally released.
 
10.14.5, then make a decision.
We ought to see a new line of Macs by then too.
They could influence your decision.
 
one of the nice things about the MAC world is beeing able to boot different or same clone OS off a disk in a USB port.
USB3 works fine and even USB2 can work. Even a USB3 to SSD adapter is low cost.

This lets you try out with a clean install or a overlay install
and YES get CCC or superduper to clone.

When I boot my DEV mac mini with alt key I see 10 different OS's to select from OS X Mavericks to latesat beta
using several Thunderbolt 1 hubs as a test.
 
simonsi said:
That is the case whichever upgrade method you use, an incompatible app is still an incompatible app.
Click to expand...
I agree. There used to be a website that listed apps and their OSX compatibility as judged by users, but I do not remember it.
 
Fishrrman said:
Your HFS+ drive will mount and work as it has always done.

My suggestion:
DO NOT attempt to "convert" the external drive to APFS.
Leave it in HFS+ for the time being.
Click to expand...

I would say with SSD's, there is very little need for APFS... sure boot times have got better, better caching, and more free space, would be the only point. Performance wise.. it's still fast because of SSD... the rest is just marginal.

I guess APFS was just built for performance, that's why its advised Not to do this on spinning disks..

I never got that bit... why would you wanna increase performance of an already great performing SSD drive anyway in the OS ? What are we talking about 20 to 30 seconds difference?
 
I found on my iMac AFPS to be incredibly slow, and when using Mojave on my iMac it corrupted my drive to an extent that I had to reformat and reinstall everything. I'm not a fan of AFPS but since I now have a new MBP, I have no choice as you cannot have HFS+ as a bootable drive on the new MBPs.
 
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