Does Tahoe 26.4 deprecate HFS+ ?

[Fishrrman]

2024 Mini m4 here. I normally run it with Sequoia, but I have an experimental/external SSD for Tahoe.

The Tahoe 26.4 developer beta became available yesterday, so I installed it onto my external SSD.

BIG CHANGE. And not for the good.

It now sees all of my HFS+ partitions (on the m4's internal SSD) as "read only".

Up until 26.3, they functioned normally, HFS+ drives, readable and writeable.

When I log in, finder loads and displays this for each HFS+ volume:

I tried opening disk utility, selecting an HFS+ volume, and running "first aid" on it.
Result: drive is unmounted, then du reports failure. But afterwards, I can't even re-mount the drive.

I tried connecting and mounting one of my backup drives (old seagate HDD, formatted to HFS+) -- it, too, appears on the desktop with the same warning, "read only".

Perhaps there is some way around this, using terminal to over-ride the default setting of read-only and again make HFS+ volumes writeable.

But if not, it looks like 26.4 is "the end of the line" for HFS+.

Those who still like and use HFS+ should take care -- if you upgrade to 26.4 (and beyond), those HFS+ drives will no longer be fully "usable".

Could someone else check to see if they experience similar behavior...?

 

[tkermit]

Known Issues​

• HFS external media might fail to mount automatically. (168672160)

macOS Tahoe 26.4 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes.

developer.apple.com

 

[bogdanw]

mount -u -w & Disk Arbitrator
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/monterey-mounting-every-connected-drive-as-read-only.2346712/

 

[avkills]

I will laugh if that makes it to the release candidate build.

 

[Fishrrman]

Did not Apple make the original HFS file system "read only" for some years, before removing it completely?

Looks like they may be repeating that pattern again with HFS+.

Having said that...

Is it really that much work to retain the ability to read/write to the HFS+ format going forward?
Or are they just doing it "because they can", and because they want to force us to use APFS?

Seems like Macs can read old PC formatted drives, but at the same time, Apple will not let us read old Mac drives...

 

[PotentPeas]

This one is on the known issues list. It seems to be a bug with this beta that they plan to address. Let's see if it is fixed by the next one...

 

[BigBlur]

Did not Apple make the original HFS file system "read only" for some years, before removing it completely?

Looks like they may be repeating that pattern again with HFS+.

Having said that...

Is it really that much work to retain the ability to read/write to the HFS+ format going forward?
Or are they just doing it "because they can", and because they want to force us to use APFS?

Seems like Macs can read old PC formatted drives, but at the same time, Apple will not let us read old Mac drives...

As someone already pointed out, it is a "known issue" documented by Apple. It's a bug and will likely be fixed in a future build.

If Apple were removing support for HFS+ now, they wouldn't be classifying it as a "known issue" or keeping it a secret.

 

[wellander1]

Could be a phase out if it too.

 

[gilby101]

The Tahoe 26.4 developer beta became available yesterday, so I installed it onto my external SSD.

1st beta of a new version and without reading the release notes - ouch!!

Perhaps there is some way around this, using terminal to over-ride the default setting of read-only and again make HFS+ volumes writeable.

Have you tried mounting with diskutil?

 

[Churchman]

I dislike the word deprecate.

Reminds me of my years enduring the gauntlet that was AWS. Such good times.

Internally, AWS staffers used that word and certain others in as many statements as possible (2-3 times in one sentence sometimes) as if to validate that they knew the jargon and were worth their salaries. I found those people to be so pretentious … and only productive as it related to the volume of hot air they produced, or the drama and politics they created, rather than the ROI-creating work they completed or the customer solutions they innovated.

Why not just say obsolete… or phased out… or removed?

 

[Nermal]

I dislike the word deprecate.

Could be worse. A year or so ago a cloud storage provider removed an API with no announcement whatsoever, then retroactively claimed "deprecation" after people started logging bug reports.

 

[Abydos]

deprecate has been around in programming when a statement/instruction has been removed from the language , loved reading that line - meant that old algorithms might magically fail (the old form is no longer socially acceptable )

 

[smithrh]

There are just some people who shouldn't use betas...

 

[tywebb13]

Could be worse. A year or so ago a cloud storage provider removed an API with no announcement whatsoever, then retroactively claimed "deprecation" after people started logging bug reports.

one good thing about apple is that although deprecation is a thing for apple too they don’t tend to do it this way.

typically if apple intend to deprecate something they would usually give plenty of notice often years in advance.

hfs+ might become deprecated one day but i don’t think this is it. i think it is just a bug for fsck_hfs not working properly saying there is something wrong with your drive when in fact there is nothing wrong with it. there is something wrong with macos 26.4 beta 1 instead.

 

[zeus423]

Deprecate is an odd word that just sounds a little too much like something else 💩

 

[SDAVE]

Wouldn't be surprised if they removed HFS+ maybe in macOS 27/28. It's almost 30 years old. Maybe they'll leave it as Read-only like they do with NTFS. I have so many HFS+ drives in my closet I need to dust off and restore stuff.

 

[gilby101]

This misuse of deprecate and deprecation is so common.

Deprecate is to notify that something will become unavailable at some time in the future. Deprecate does not mean to make something unavailable or unsupported right now.

In Apple's usage: Something (usually software related) is deprecated when Apple notifies that the thing will, at some point in the future, become unavailable. In other words you are discouraged from using it now even though it is still available and supported.

Extract from the macOS dictionary (the 1st meaning applies):
deprecate| verb [with object]
1 express disapproval of: what I deprecate is persistent indulgence.
• (be deprecated) (chiefly of a software feature) be usable but regarded as obsolete and best avoided, typically because it has been superseded: this feature is deprecated and will be removed in later versions
2 disparage or belittle (something): he deprecates the value of children's television.

typically if apple intend to deprecate something they would usually give plenty of notice often years in advance.

Better to say: typically Apple deprecates something years before making it unavailable.

You are not the only one. The thread title is wrong, too.

 

[Hajj.david]

There are just some people who shouldn't use betas...

I wish I could like/love your post 1000 times. Worse they use BETAs, they dont bother to even read the release notes, then crap up the forums with their incessant whining about how apple is dead and how there are bugs in a beta.

Wouldn't be surprised if they removed HFS+ maybe in macOS 27/28. It's almost 30 years old. Maybe they'll leave it as Read-only like they do with NTFS. I have so many HFS+ drives in my closet I need to dust off and restore stuff.

The only reason NTFS is read only is because they don't want to pay for licensing (you need a license to write). FAT is older than Apple itself and its still supported there is no reason for them to deprecate HFS and given that this a KNOWN ISSUE it means Apple will absolutely fix it and restore functionality in the next beta

 

[bzgnyc2]

Wouldn't be surprised if they removed HFS+ maybe in macOS 27/28. It's almost 30 years old. Maybe they'll leave it as Read-only like they do with NTFS. I have so many HFS+ drives in my closet I need to dust off and restore stuff.

Agree it's time is coming to an end. Maybe announce in 27 and go read-only in 28. I would be surprised if not made read-only (presumably with some public announcement) by 2030.

I prefer HFS+ for HDD but HFS+ does not support dates beyond February 6, 2040. After that just having it around will be kind of a mess. My guess is that Apple will put it on a long runway to full retirement that will start in the next few years.

 

[PotentPeas]

The only reason NTFS is read only is because they don't want to pay for licensing (you need a license to write).

Eh, do you really? There are open source file system drivers that can write to NTFS (doable on Linux). The format is old enough that any patents would have expired by now. Can Microsoft enforce any license restriction?

 

[cjsuk]

I dislike the word deprecate.

Reminds me of my years enduring the gauntlet that was AWS. Such good times.

Internally, AWS staffers used that word and certain others in as many statements as possible (2-3 times in one sentence sometimes) as if to validate that they knew the jargon and were worth their salaries. I found those people to be so pretentious … and only productive as it related to the volume of hot air they produced, or the drama and politics they created, rather than the ROI-creating work they completed or the customer solutions they innovated.

Why not just say obsolete… or phased out… or removed?

Seen this as well with our account managers there.

I suspect the corporate mantra is to use certain vocabulary because it sounds less like a complete failure.

Some **** at AWS is a complete failure. And they hate it when you call them out on it (Incident Manager, CloudWatch RUM + Canaries come to mind)

 

[cateye]

Seems like Macs can read old PC formatted drives, but at the same time, Apple will not let us read old Mac drives...

Ask yourself which, in the grand scheme of things, is more important to the greatest number of users.

It's a multi-platform world. The end.

 

[DankeBrutus]

Agree it's time is coming to an end. Maybe announce in 27 and go read-only in 28. I would be surprised if not made read-only (presumably with some public announcement) by 2030.

I prefer HFS+ for HDD but HFS+ does not support dates beyond February 6, 2040. After that just having it around will be kind of a mess. My guess is that Apple will put it on a long runway to full retirement that will start in the next few years.

Since the release of APFS I also have preferred HFS+ for external HDDs with macOS. I haven't used APFS with a HDD for years now so I'm not sure if there is still a degradation in performance. If there is then I guess Apple would probably still keep ExFAT around. I'd love to see an official port of ZFS to macOS but that probably won't happen since Apple already abandoned that idea in the past.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I dislike the word deprecate.

Reminds me of my years enduring the gauntlet that was AWS. Such good times.

Internally, AWS staffers used that word and certain others in as many statements as possible (2-3 times in one sentence sometimes) as if to validate that they knew the jargon and were worth their salaries. I found those people to be so pretentious … and only productive as it related to the volume of hot air they produced, or the drama and politics they created, rather than the ROI-creating work they completed or the customer solutions they innovated.

Why not just say obsolete… or phased out… or removed?

Deprecate is a real, useful word. Y'all need to lose your fear of that particular word.

 

[Fishrrman]

smith (in 13 above)
"There are just some people who shouldn't use betas..."

If you're referring to me (the OP), what is your complaint?

My m4 Mini runs on OS 15.7.x Sequoia (and is running on it now).

I have an external drive, with which to install beta releases, just to see what they're like. I'm not a developer, and I freely admit to knowing NOTHING about coding or Mac programming.

But unlike many others, I DON'T run beta releases on my "main Macs".
Not on the internal drives.
I explicitly take care to avoid that.

So, no, I didn't read the developer notes, I just installed the 26.4 developer beta to see what it would do. I had previously installed various developer/pulic betas of OS 26, and although I wasn't overly impressed, they didn't make any major changes that might affect Mac users who had a bunch of older drives which might be using the HFS+ file system.

And from 39 years now of Mac user experience, I see what Apple is doing here. In effect, they are slipping in major changes "under the table", so to speak. Since Apple no longer uses platter-based drives in any of their products, they're going to discard the drive format system that worked best with them, and "move on".

I'll go out on a LONG limb and predict that with 26.4 onward, access to HFS+ formatted drives is now going to be read-only.

And... in time... may be OS 27, may be OS 28... access to HFS+ may be dropped entirely.
No writing.
No reading.
No mounting.
Just as HFS (non-plus) is today.

Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, and OS 26 (and 27) will still offer full support of HFS+.
But we'll have to wait and see.

For now, however... things are what they are.