External HDD problem - Bad sectors and HFS+ catalog

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi Sat,



Thats is cool, UNIX tech coming back into fashion! 😀 I checked - its been 15 years since I’ve done any unix stuff with work. Damned if I remember any of it. Rusty doesn’t begin to describe it 🤣


So what is the best approach for Mac newbies, setting up their filesystems for the 1st time on new blank external HDD and SSDs?


Really not liking reading the above experiences like:
.....Folks, HERE'S WHY I always, always recommend HFS+ instead of APFS for external data drives. If something goes wrong, it might still be possible to use 3rd-party drive repair and recovery tools to "get at" the munged-up data......


Hoping there is a good middle ground approach for new M1 mac setups 😀

Hope you all can advise! 😀



Martin

 

[ght56]

Hi Sat,



Thats is cool, UNIX tech coming back into fashion! 😀 I checked - its been 15 years since I’ve done any unix stuff with work. Damned if I remember any of it. Rusty doesn’t begin to describe it 🤣


So what is the best approach for Mac newbies, setting up their filesystems for the 1st time on new blank external HDD and SSDs?


Really not liking reading the above experiences like:
.....Folks, HERE'S WHY I always, always recommend HFS+ instead of APFS for external data drives. If something goes wrong, it might still be possible to use 3rd-party drive repair and recovery tools to "get at" the munged-up data......


Hoping there is a good middle ground approach for new M1 mac setups 😀

Hope you all can advise! 😀



Martin

In short, you probably would be fine using either provided you adopt good data integrity practices.

HFS+ is an ancient file system. However, as far as things go for us users, it's established, solid, and reasonably reliable. If something goes wrong with it, there are a few applications out there that are capable of repairing an insane amount of corruption (they are expensive.) I use HFS+ & encrypted for my external HDDs and most of my SSDs. I have for years and it has always worked well, and it gives me access to older Macs. I have experienced file corruption on HFS+ drives. One app in particular has always successfully repaired these issues even when macOS could not.

APFS is, compared to HFS+, young. And while it's not a complete infant, it appears to be a file system that is still actively evolving. The way things are displayed to users have changed, and the back end itself has changed as well and probably will continue to evolve. If something goes wrong that Disk Utility's fsck cannot repair, I do not believe there are any highly-respected third party options out there at this moment. In practice, it works really well and especially well on SSDs. Some of my newer SSDs are using APFS. I have tried APFS on HDDs and went back to HFS+ as the drives performed poorly after they started filling up; the defrag feature did not help me.

Now, what HFS+ and APFS have in common is that you are probably far more likely to experience a physical disk failing than you are irrecoverable software corruption. This underscores the importance of keeping multiple copies (in multiple locations). If you are keeping your most critical files on the MBP's internal SSD, an external HDD/SSD, and also on a cloud (or through some other off-site backup method such as MDISCs in a bank deposit box), whether you are using HFS+ or APFS for your external is arguably not something you should worry about too-too much. If I was in your situation, I would personally use HFS+ if you buy a HDD and would use either HFS+ or APFS if buying a SSD.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

In short, you probably would be fine using either provided you adopt good data integrity practices.

HFS+ is an ancient file system. However, as far as things go for us users, it's established, solid, and reasonably reliable. If something goes wrong with it, there are a few applications out there that are capable of repairing an insane amount of corruption (they are expensive.) I use HFS+ & encrypted for my external HDDs and most of my SSDs. I have for years and it has always worked well, and it gives me access to older Macs. I have experienced file corruption on HFS+ drives. One app in particular has always successfully repaired these issues even when macOS could not.

APFS is, compared to HFS+, young. And while it's not a complete infant, it appears to be a file system that is still actively evolving. The way things are displayed to users have changed, and the back end itself has changed as well and probably will continue to evolve. If something goes wrong that Disk Utility's fsck cannot repair, I do not believe there are any highly-respected third party options out there at this moment. In practice, it works really well and especially well on SSDs. Some of my newer SSDs are using APFS. I have tried APFS on HDDs and went back to HFS+ as the drives performed poorly after they started filling up; the defrag feature did not help me.

Now, what HFS+ and APFS have in common is that you are probably far more likely to experience a physical disk failing than you are irrecoverable software corruption. This underscores the importance of keeping multiple copies (in multiple locations). If you are keeping your most critical files on the MBP's internal SSD, an external HDD/SSD, and also on a cloud (or through some other off-site backup method such as MDISCs in a bank deposit box), whether you are using HFS+ or APFS for your external is arguably not something you should worry about too-too much. If I was in your situation, I would personally use HFS+ if you buy a HDD and would use either HFS+ or APFS if buying a SSD.

Hi ght56,

Thanks for your time explaining this! 🙂

Damn, you should be a tech lecturer. Great bit of tech advice 🙂

Best wishes
Martin