Convert external drives to APFS?

[danqi]

I've put the internal drives from my old 2010 Mac Pro into a Sabrent Docking Station enclosure to connect them to my new Mac Studio. 2 of them are HDDs and 2 are SSDs.

Would you convert the SSDs to APFS?

And is there any risk involved in that conversion? Of course, I'd make a backup first. But I'm still afraid that some kind of corruption could happen and go undetected until after the backup is overwritten.

 

[ifrit05]

If it's not broke, don't fix it.

 

[Fishrrman]

ifrit is absolutely right above.

Particularly if the drives are platter-based hard drives. APFS can fragment HDD's and make them "thrash". Best to leave them in HFS+, because doing so hurts nothing, AND, you can still use 3rd-party drive utilities on them.

SSDs ... well... I keep them, too, in HFS+, EXCEPT drives that have to be bootable as APFS.

Backup utilities will also require that backups of [APFS] boot drives be in APFS.

With those exceptions noted, it's "HFS+ for me" ...

 

[danqi]

Thanks!