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Apple to Drop Support for Encrypted Mac OS Extended Drives Next Year

I don't like this at all. Drop the ability to format as HFS+ encrypted? Sure. Drop the ability to read HFS+ encrypted is a disaster. How many of us are going to find a drive in a bottom drawer or safe deposit box or deceased relatives' effects that we suddenly don't have a system to read any longer? The fact that it's encrypted means it'll be much harder to resolve using other disk access tools.

I've always been of the view that companies should be careful when they introduce new data formats because they should then expect to support them forever.

Somewhat related, I had a Keynote presentation refuse to open recently because the format was too old. This should never, ever happen. Digital data is forever, developers should support that.
 
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Abydos said:
blah, blah - similar chatter when floppy disks and cd/dvd 's became special cases - grow up things change whether you like it or not - evolve or become extinct
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Yes, you are right to a certain degree, but I can still read floppy disks and optical disks on my Mac and on modern PCs.

The point you miss is not is much of not being able to write to HFS+, but not being able to read them, which is a bit naff.
i love in the article where it says. Mac might notify users if it detects an encrypted Mac OS Extended disk. MIGHT? Wow.
By the way, I still use Optical disks
 
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platinumaqua said:
I don't use Encrypted HFS+ volumes, but I found that APFS is more fragile than Apple suggested. It can get to a point where their own Disk First Aid can't fix them and there are no third party disk repair tools for APFS.
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Haven't had an issue yet.
 
Woefully insufficient details regarding encrypted Time Machine backups!

The implications seem to be: a backup from an older Mac, likely formatted with HFS+ becomes essential unusable/worthless? Years of backups lost?

Unless (maybe) one maintains an older Mac or partitions a newer Mac with an older version of MacOS that can access the HFS+ formatted encrypted Time Machine backup?
 
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!!! said:
I'd be more interested in APFS if I could just manage my own snapshots, yet Apple tells me I'm not allowed to manage my own hardware like that, I have to pay $100/year just to be rejected for an "entitlement" to use my own hardware.
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platinumaqua said:
The "snapshots" part was referring to APFS, not HFS+.
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still not sure what !!! is on about... according to wiki -

"APFS volumes support snapshots for creating a point-in-time, read-only instance of the file system."
 
if I offended your sensibilities, so be it. I take apple's warning as a hint to migrate your data (yeah it's extra work, a p.i.t.a. etc) not to brag, but I've finally moved all my data from cd's to ssd (the floppies went from 8" to 5.25" to 3.5" to CD to HDD/SSD I'm down to 20 or so DVD's to migrate, then hfs+ to apfs is next. I've even thrown out the drafts of my dissertation - finally ! (along with notes and references). kvetch to your heart's content no sympathy from me
 
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con2apple said:
and you say: “Don't give me facts. This is a matter of faith."
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On the contrary. I’m saying: If you don’t like macOS, you have a plethora of alternatives. It sounds to me like you view operating systems through some belabored ideological lens. You must be exhausted from all that straining. It’s just a computer, dude. If it doesn’t work the way you like, just use a different one instead of spending so much of your time airing grievances over something you don’t even like. That’s the beauty of competition. Use the OS that suits your needs. No need to force Apple into some weird sandbox framed by bizarrely religious language.
 
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GMShadow said:
DMGs have nothing to do with HFS+.
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Yes they do. DMG’s do have a disk format, usually HFS+ and can be encrypted as well.


SpotOnT said:
How well does APFS work with HDDs?

Last I checked, APFS was heavily optimized for SSD and rather problematic worh HDDs, but that was a while ago.

Has APFS matured enough now to work with HDDs?
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It works, but it’s much slower than HFS+. AFPS uses CoW (copy on write) which results in data being spread over the entire storage space, thus heavy fragmentation. But you can continue use HFS+ on a HDD. Or change to FATex; albeit that FATex isn’t journaled, which makes it less reliable.

The alternative: run an older MacOS in a VM and tunnel the external drive through the VM.
 
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Localcelebrity said:
Ugh. I hate the idea of finding one of my old external drives and plugging it into my Mac at some point in the future and finding out that it can’t be read unless I go to an older Mac and decrypt it.

I feel like it makes sense to stop allowing MacOS to boot off of/run on one, but they should keep allowing the Finder to read/decrypt them for a long time, even if support for it is something that needs to be downloaded ad-hoc when the system detects an encrypted HFS+ drive.

Or JUST allow Disk Utility to decrypt it with the password but nothing else.
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Bro, if you have drives that old that haven't been connected to your machine in that many years, then it's time to get rid of them. And why would you choose an Apple-only format for such if you're keeping them for long-term storage like that. Silly any way you slice it.
 
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bzgnyc2 said:
Interesting enough FAT32 is actually more forward-looking when it comes to dates -- it allows for dates through 2099 (and possibly 2107). It is also a common interchange file format including for DCF.
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2107 is correct as the year is a 7 bit number with years after 1980.

I wouldn't be horribly upset if Apple dropped write support for HFS+ in some future release of MacOS as long as read access was maintained. After all, MacOS still supports reading 3.5" DOS formatted diskettes.
 
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Apple MessagePad said:
Bro, if you have drives that old that haven't been connected to your machine in that many years, then it's time to get rid of them. And why would you choose an Apple-only format for such if you're keeping them for long-term storage like that. Silly any way you slice it.
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Incorrect. Long term storage should be stored disconnected from systems and devices.
 
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IvyKing said:
2107 is correct as the year is a 7 bit number with years after 1980.

I wouldn't be horribly upset if Apple dropped write support for HFS+ in some future release of MacOS as long as read access was maintained. After all, MacOS still supports reading 3.5" DOS formatted diskettes.
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By 2028, there will be a new file system announced. Thereafter, the clock will be ticking for APFS as it is now for HFS+.
 
Anaxarxes said:
That does not mean that at all.

They're dropping encryption support. IT's been 10 years for you to update your HFS+. If you're relaying to obsolete tech to manage your critical data, either you're lazy and your data is not critical or you're irresponsible.

The person accessing archival data dealing with their parent or their estate can easily upgrade to a safer and more modern tech by adding their files to a new drive. (and what is the population percentage that uses encrypted HFS file system to manage their aged parent's data).

These scenarios are being ridiculous. Not to mention no-one is forcing them to upgrade to macOS 27.
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Archival data isn't pulled off and modified often. That's the point of it being archival data...

It has nothing to do with laziness either... The dropping of File Systems in this manner seem to be a uniquely Apple phenomenon. I get it, Apple hates backwards compatibility, but that's a sad reality in areas like this.

Also, it isn't true that "no one is forcing them to upgrade to macOS 27". Apple absolutely does force upgrades as they don't support running older versions of macOS than what they shipped with. Meaning, anyone buying macs released after macOS 27 are at risk unless they were able to take action before upgrading to a new mac and were aware.

The reality is, if you're planning to store your data for a long time you can't rely on Apple file system formats to do so.

This wouldn't be as big of a problem if Apple would natively support running older versions of macOS in a VM on Macs... Microsoft does this on Windows with built in Hyper-V support... So users can still access that MS DOS program running on Windows 3.1 if they absolutely had to...
 
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Apple MessagePad said:
Okay bro. Only have 20+ years of experience in the data recovery industry. Have fun when those drives don't start up.
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Working in the data recovery industry means you mainly have experience with clients that lost data.

For everyone else, this means a perfectly functioning drive that's been untouched for 10 years is bricked by a system that refuses to read it (not a hardware failure).
 

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I don't get why they are dropping support for the old file system so quickly. There must be millions of external drives formatted with Encrypted HFS+ in peoples drawers. I have around 10 old and encrypted drives in my Archive, mostly Time Machine backups.

The question is, are they only dropping the encryption part or the whole Core Storage subsystem? If it's only the encryption, then maybe it could be possible to just deactivate it? That would be time-consuming but doable.
 
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