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

[ChrisA]

Of course, but be on the lookout.

My Time Machine drive on APFS got its object map corrupted and Disk First Aid can't fix it.

I've been using Time Machine since 2007 and it never happened when the drive was on HFS+.

What is the statistical confidence of a sample size of 1?

So that you all don't have to, I placed the above question into Google's AI and got the answer below (yes, it is correct)

A sample size of 1 (\(n=1\)) provides zero statistical confidence and a 100% margin of error for making inferences about a larger population.

 

[conmee]

@ChrisA Greater than 0 given @platinumaqua is a 65816 with a Reaction Score Ratio of 1.88 per post. Not to mention you haven’t taken into account we can assume the slope in a Bayesian regression model using his Reaction Score Ratio as the slope, his prior experience (x=year,y=frequency) to give us a coordinate, then we plug it all into y = mx + b

 

[1ppl3]

they want see everything you have

 

[con2apple]

On the contrary. I’m saying: If you don’t like macOS, you have a plethora of alternatives.

And why is it just black and white for you?

Especially with a multibillion company which doesn’t know where to spend all the money. Especially with a ecosystem that is advertised as user friendly and compatible over long term?

Why no lt the question why is it impossible for Apple (doesn’t want) to keep a functioning file system up and running?
Like a company Apple presents itself.

No.
Criticism and questions are unwelcome. What Apple does is exactly right, and anyone who doesn't like it should leave. True to the old maxim: “Accept it or die”

That's a religion. And the stance you're taking.

 

[tehabe]

Apple removed HFS Standard a while ago, which might be a niche but because of this remove I nolonger can access many enhanced CDs I own.

Instead of completely removing it, Apple should release an FSKit based package which can be downloaded and installed if needed.

 

[seek3r]

they want see everything you have

Wut? APFS encryption isnt going anywhere…

 

[forrie]

Apart from this matter, there are things Apple has been slowing "adjusting" that control what your system should do -- some of it probably doesn't matter yet, for example after x times you must enter your password - fine, but I'd like to tailor that. If you want to traverse a difficult rabbit hole, you can consider Apple Silicon -- the design could have logic/gates configured for intelligence monitoring. I bet you there is at least one FISA Warrant sitting somewhere in this corporation, especially with their relationships with China 🙂 GRIN

And note how Apple's new padlock logo has a small space between the shackle and the lock. Coincidence or a hint (MITM)? 🙂

(sorry, not sorry LOL)

 

[Felix Lyran]

APFS isn't great for spinning disks.

I guess if you have an assortment of encrypted hard drives sitting in cold storage, Apple now wants you to decrypt them so anyone can connect to them, or upgrade them to expensive SSDs that will then sit in storage.

I have several dozen encrypted HFS+ drives stored offsite in my safe deposit box, full of work product created over the last 20+ years while I was working as an expert witness in patent prosecution. I'm contractually obligated to maintain access to that data for a few more years yet (truth be told, I'm probably obligated to maintain access to it until I finally shuffle off this mortal coil).

I've watched with dismay as Apple has abandoned several chunks of their existing customer base once again, here recently. And I've watched with no interest whatsoever as they have taken the corporate decision to turn all their products into telephones (presumably for the convenience of their AI product teams). And now, I have to go pull those archival disks out, decrypt them, and move that data to some other format due simply and only to yet another arbitrary decision on the part of Apple management?

So be it. As the rather glib poster above says, maybe I should move to Linux. Maybe, indeed. I have no interest in moving said data back onto anything Apple-specific at this point.

Regarding this "sit in storage" business, which a few people have mentioned in passing, I think it's important to keep in mind that, regardless of the file system in use, HDDs and SSDs shouldn't just sit in storage, unpowered, for years and years.

As @neuropsychguy reminds us:

long-term digital preservation generally requires migration, redundancy, and periodic verification of the data. An old hard drive (even in cold storage) with an aging filesystem is not the digital equivalent of a book on a shelf.

While Apple should continue to support HFS+, it remains puzzling why encryption for HFS+ volumes will no longer be supported (even though the file system itself will apparently continue to be supported). Regardless, long-term storage requires maintenance: checking in on the state of the data, the drive it's on, etc. It's not really a "set and forget" type of situation, at least not with HDDs and SSDs.

 

[Felix Lyran]

Linux can read HFS+ disks, it can not read APFS. To swap data from APFS to Ext4 requires a ExFat intermediate drive.

Apple over-indulges in security through obscurity. That's why M3 and later still can't boot Linux.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that process isn't "lossless" (that is, the exFAT intermediate stripes away certain metadata)? Happy to be corrected if I've gotten that wrong.

 

[turbineseaplane]

macOS is never going to replace Windows as the enterprise OS if this is their altitude towards old tech and compatibility.

Yep.
It's the same attitude that means they'll never be anything in gaming either.

 

[Felix Lyran]

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

Funnily enough, I just backed up some data in the opposite direction! Well, more in a parallel direction: I have all my data on HDDs and SSDs, and my backups on HDDs, but I also recently did backups on optical media as well. Only the most important stuff though, as optical has such low storage capacity.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Regarding this "sit in storage" business, which a few people have mentioned in passing, I think it's important to keep in mind that, regardless of the file system in use, HDDs and SSDs shouldn't just sit in storage, unpowered, for years and years.

As @neuropsychguy reminds us:


While Apple should continue to support HFS+, it remains puzzling why encryption for HFS+ volumes will no longer be supported (even though the file system itself will apparently continue to be supported). Regardless, long-term storage requires maintenance: checking in on the state of the data, the drive it's on, etc. It's not really a "set and forget" type of situation, at least not with HDDs and SSDs.

I'll reply to you but this really is for those who don't understand the issues with archiving. I've had a HDD go bad sitting in storage. I had all the important data backed up, but the drive was unreadable after some years. Some of the things that can affect HDD:

• Lubricant "stiction" and bearing seizure from sitting unused. The heads can become fused with the platters in some instances.
• Component outgassing and platter contamination. Gaskets/adhesives/etc. can degrade over time, resulting in leaking internal gasses or even having the gas build up in a specific internal part, damaging platters or other components.
• Humidity and internal corrosion. HDDs aren't typically hermetically sealed. If you are somewhere with higher humidity or swings in humidity, it can cause internal corrosion. That's likely what happened to my failed drive.
• Magnetic degradation (bit rot). These are spontaneous flipping of bits that can destroy whole sectors.

It's best practice to spin up cold storage drives at least every year for about 30 minutes to an hour. Then put them back in storage. If that's not feasible, you might be good every 3 years, but if you really need long-term archiving, it's likely worth migrating to new hardware every 5 years or so (with how drive price are now, it's rough to do this so maybe spin up and do the other verification more regularly until storage prices fall again). You can always take a chance and maybe your data will last decades, but HDDs can die in cold storage.

 

[conmee]

And note how Apple's new padlock logo has a small space between the shackle and the lock. Coincidence or a hint (MITM)? 🙂

Ah yes, a gentleman (or lady) of distinction that procures their tin foil hats from the same store as I do. Good day, sir (or madam)! 😉

 

[hieranonymous]

And why is it just black and white for you?

Especially with a multibillion company which doesn’t know where to spend all the money. Especially with a ecosystem that is advertised as user friendly and compatible over long term?

Why no lt the question why is it impossible for Apple (doesn’t want) to keep a functioning file system up and running?
Like a company Apple presents itself.

No.
Criticism and questions are unwelcome. What Apple does is exactly right, and anyone who doesn't like it should leave. True to the old maxim: “Accept it or die”

That's a religion. And the stance you're taking.

Different strokes for different folks, guy. Just patronize the company whose approach you prefer. If you don’t like Apple’s approach, you have alternatives. That’s how the free market works. I happen not to like Windows, so I don’t spend my time in Windows forums bizarrely spewing vitriol about it. If you don’t like macOS, don’t use it and never give it another thought.

 

[Touchstone64]

An easy way to see the performance issue is to compare file enumeration in a search query with a lot of results. It takes much longer on APFS.

An analysis of APFS enumeration performance on rotational hard drives

My APFS-formatted rotational disks have always felt slower than when they were HFS+ formatted. The speed of copying files to them felt about the same, bu...

bombich.com

Thank you! That's the-article-I-knew-I'd-read-but-couldn't-for-the-life-of-me-find-again ❤️

 

[visualseed]

I'll reply to you but this really is for those who don't understand the issues with archiving. I've had a HDD go bad sitting in storage. I had all the important data backed up, but the drive was unreadable after some years. Some of the things that can affect HDD:

• Lubricant "stiction" and bearing seizure from sitting unused. The heads can become fused with the platters in some instances.
• Component outgassing and platter contamination. Gaskets/adhesives/etc. can degrade over time, resulting in leaking internal gasses or even having the gas build up in a specific internal part, damaging platters or other components.
• Humidity and internal corrosion. HDDs aren't typically hermetically sealed. If you are somewhere with higher humidity or swings in humidity, it can cause internal corrosion. That's likely what happened to my failed drive.
• Magnetic degradation (bit rot). These are spontaneous flipping of bits that can destroy whole sectors.

It's best practice to spin up cold storage drives at least every year for about 30 minutes to an hour. Then put them back in storage. If that's not feasible, you might be good every 3 years, but if you really need long-term archiving, it's likely worth migrating to new hardware every 5 years or so (with how drive price are now, it's rough to do this so maybe spin up and do the other verification more regularly until storage prices fall again). You can always take a chance and maybe your data will last decades, but HDDs can die in cold storage.

Stiction is no longer a problem. Modern drives use parking ramps to lift the heads completely off the platters, meaning they physically cannot fuse together.

Corrosion is also a non-issue as modern high-capacity drives (anything over 10TB and NAS Drives over 5TB) are helium-filled and hermetically sealed, all drives including air-filled breatehers use DLC (Diamond-Like Carbon coating) to seal the plattrers from actual contact with the elements making environmental humidity and internal outgassing irrelevant.

Annual spin-ups just adds stress becuse booting a drive is the most physically stressful event in its lifecycle. Letting it idle for 30 minutes does absolutely nothing to refresh magnetic states or prevent mechanical failure.

Bit-rot takes decades. The highly coercive materials in modern platters take many decades to degrade, and built-in Error Correction Code automatically handles minor degradation.

There are a lot of valid reasons for wanting to migrate to newer disks every 5-10 years but keeping it in a climate-controlled room, inside an anti-static bag, and protected from physical shocks will mitigate almost all of the immediate risks associated with long-term storage which is mostly dried out cpacitors and corroded contacts on the contoller board.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Stiction is no longer a problem. Modern drives use parking ramps to lift the heads completely off the platters, meaning they physically cannot fuse together.

Corrosion is also a non-issue as modern high-capacity drives (anything over 10TB and NAS Drives over 5TB) are helium-filled and hermetically sealed, all drives including air-filled breatehers use DLC (Diamond-Like Carbon coating) to seal the plattrers from actual contact with the elements making environmental humidity and internal outgassing irrelevant.

Annual spin-ups just adds stress becuse booting a drive is the most physically stressful event in its lifecycle. Letting it idle for 30 minutes does absolutely nothing to refresh magnetic states or prevent mechanical failure.

Bit-rot takes decades. The highly coercive materials in modern platters take many decades to degrade, and built-in Error Correction Code automatically handles minor degradation.

There are a lot of valid reasons for wanting to migrate to newer disks every 5-10 years but keeping it in a climate-controlled room, inside an anti-static bag, and protected from physical shocks will mitigate almost all of the immediate risks associated with long-term storage which is mostly dried out cpacitors and corroded contacts on the contoller board.

I was replying in the context of people who are saying they have old data that I assume are on older drives. You do raise some great points, and you're correct about high-end modern HDD architecture.

The main reason I still lean toward occasional spin-ups and caution about not just trusting a drive in "cold storage" (which for many people is just a drive sitting in a drawer or somewhere) is for the 'everyday user'. This isn't people who have the larger, higher end enterprise class drives (although plenty of us have retired data center drives we use). My comments were more for the people throwing cheap, air-filled 2TB–4TB desktop or 2.5-inch portable drives into storage. People need to be aware that their drives can fail even sitting in a closet.

You're right that booting causes transient stress, but a brief spin-up serves a dual purpose: it redistributes bearing fluid and lets the drive's internal SMART check scan for degrading sectors. That's a trade-off worth having, in my opinion.

Also, a little more clarification about bit-rot. Yes, it ideally takes decades to have anything noticeable happen, but many people don't store drives in ideal situations (like what you suggested). Magnetic stability of the bits is highly dependent on temperature and if a drive is sitting in a warm room -- or worse, a garage -- then bit rot can happen in years, not decades. I speak from personal experience on that one (older consumer grade HDD sitting in a closet had bit rot after only several years).

I really appreciate your mentioning some of the designs that are helping drive reliability!

 

[Felix Lyran]

On the topic of drive longevity, I wonder how long those (no longer manufactured, sadly) Optane drives can last unpowered in cold storage. Many of the considerations above, which are applicable to HDDs, aren't applicable to Optane. And I would assume that many of the considerations applicable to NAND flash SSDs aren't applicable to Optane drives either, given that it doesn't use NAND flash for media. I know it has reportedly excellent write endurance, especially compared to NAND, but if we're talking about unpowered cold storage (and not continuous ongoing reading/writing), it's hard to tell what we should expect from it.

 

[Powerbooky]

Yep. HFS non-plus to HFS+ to EXT4. The file formats were the real challenge. Pict to PNG needed an obsolete intermediary, and Word or 1989 to Word 98 to Word 2011 to Libreoffice was a bit involved. Formatting was completely messed up, but the text was still there and that was the important part.

I got burned once by encryption that could only be undone on the computer that had encrypted it, so I never did that again.

How about those TIFF files. I have a ton of multi-page TIFF file that were created by an automated paper scanner I used to digitise duty hours and other stuff that came on paper. At that time a lot was printed with inktjets and those did degrade very quickly in a few years. And now the current version of Preview in MacOS does not support multi-page TIFF's, so I have to startup my old PowerMac to convert everything into the most current PDF version... hopefully that will last another decade or so.

For a private project I'm in the slow process of reviving old files of design files for a "reboot". All files from the 80ies IBM DOS and Commodore ages. Some are on old-school floppies and some on tape. The biggest challenge is to convert these to a format that current design software can handle. Sure a multi-stage conversion.

 

[JimenyC]

(1) APFS performs poorly and unreliably on HDDs.

(2) SSDs are way more expensive per TB.

(3) If you have a large encrypted archive on HDDs, you're going to have to spend a FORTUNE to keep it.

Apple has left users with no good solution.

 

[Powerbooky]

(1) APFS performs poorly and unreliably on HDDs.

(2) SSDs are way more expensive per TB.

(3) If you have a large encrypted archive on HDDs, you're going to have to spend a FORTUNE to keep it.

Apple has left users with no good solution.

The better alternative is to buy a NAS with 4 or more bays for HDD's: Independent encryption, redundancy options, automated data integrity checks, scheduled encrypted copy options, volume size is upgradeable. Most well known NAS devices are supported on Mac and usually can last 10 years or more (if the environment is stable and the brand isn't some cheap Chinese knockoff).

A NAS doesn't necessarily need an internet connection. It can be used fully offline. It doesn't need to be powered on 24/7 either.

 

[JimenyC]

The better alternative is to buy a NAS with 4 or more bays for HDD's: Independent encryption, redundancy options, automated data integrity checks, scheduled encrypted copy options, volume size is upgradeable. Most well known NAS devices are supported on Mac and usually can last 10 years or more (if the environment is stable and the brand isn't some cheap Chinese knockoff).

A NAS doesn't necessarily need an internet connection. It can be used fully offline. It doesn't need to be powered on 24/7 either.

True. But an expenditure of hundreds - in fact, thousands for a good one - of dollars. If APFS could reliably be used on HDDs one could think of this as a reasonable departure from an old technology. But to cut off support for reliable encryption on HDDs when this is still a widely used form of storage is an infuriating decision from Apple. The most infuriating one that I can think of in recent years.

 

[Powerbooky]

True. But an expenditure of hundreds - in fact, thousands for a good one - of dollars. If APFS could reliably be used on HDDs one could think of this as a reasonable departure from an old technology. But to cut off support for reliable encryption on HDDs when this is still a widely used form of storage is an infuriating decision from Apple. The most infuriating one that I can think of in recent years.

For single drive encrypted storage on HDD, you still can continue using them but with APFS. For incidental writes and reads, it will be fine but not great for frequent writes. You could also use a AFPS DMG or Sparse Image with encryption, although it won't be very fast as well.

Performance tests here.

Thousands of dollars? 16 or 24 bay units are that expensive. Four or five bay NAS without disks costs around 400-700 dollar, depending on brand, model and options of course. Mine is an eight bay rackmounted model (RS1221+). Bought it 3 years ago without disks for around 1100 euro with tax. Migrated 5 existing HDD's one by one from previous enclosures to this NAS, leaving 3 bays for future expansion. One doesn't always have to buy a NAS with new disks installed. I still use a couple that are nearly 10 years old and still perform superb.

 

[extrachrispy]

Or: An older, well used, well documented, trusted file system that works well with HDs which are far cheaper and more economical for mass storage, is being removed in favor of an undocumented, backwards-incompatible, hard-to-clone filesystem designed for SSDs which dangles nice features, like snapshotting, behind proprietary and inaccessible APIs.

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.

Hang on a second: there is an implicit claim you have made that I am not sure bears scrutiny:

Why do you think that APFS is "designed for SSDs"? If at bottom, it uses an LBA interface, then it does not care if the underlying device is an SSD or rotating rust--it's the SSD controller that synthesizes the LBA interface to the operating system, not the file system. Having said that, if Apple is using custom controllers that allow APFS to control layout, garbage collection, alignment, etc., then that is interesting news. COW alone is not "optimizing for SSD performance": ZFS and btrfs also do COW, and ZFS works just fine on spinning disks (especially if the ZIL is on flash). The old log-structured file system was specifically created to reduce the pain of seek time and rotational latency on good-old-fashioned platters. It also happens to work stunningly well on SSDs, and is what SSD controllers tend to internally implement.

Totally with you on the frustrations regarding how APFS falls short of even being "ZFS-lite". I had high hopes that Apple would adopt ZFS like its upstream parent FreeBSD did, but then they rolled their own.

 

[extrachrispy]

APFS isn't great for spinning disks.

Why not? LBA is LBA is LBA.