Formatting a WD 2TB My Passport

[gogreen1]

I'm working on an iMac in MacOS Ventura 13.4.1.

A few years ago, I set up a Western Digital 2TB My Passport so that its file structure includes:

WD My Passport 25E1 Media
Container disk3
NewExtDrive
Time Machine
Untitled.

Format is APFS.

I don't remember what I did, but I want the drive to include only 2 partitions--Time Machine and NewExtDrive. I don't remember how I created an "Untitled" partition, but I'd like to delete it. The "Untitled" partition is 1 megabyte and includes grayed-out files .fseventsd and .Spotlight-V100.

If necessary, I can save everything on the drive, reformat it, and copy the items I want back to the drive. But is it possible to format it so that it includes only the two partitions I want?

Thanks.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I'm working on an iMac in MacOS Ventura 13.4.1.

A few years ago, I set up a Western Digital 2TB My Passport so that its file structure includes:

WD My Passport 25E1 Media
Container disk3
NewExtDrive
Time Machine
Untitled.

Format is APFS.

I don't remember what I did, but I want the drive to include only 2 partitions--Time Machine and NewExtDrive. I don't remember how I created an "Untitled" partition, but I'd like to delete it. The "Untitled" partition is 1 megabyte and includes grayed-out files .fseventsd and .Spotlight-V100.

If necessary, I can save everything on the drive, reformat it, and copy the items I want back to the drive. But is it possible to format it so that it includes only the two partitions I want?

Thanks.

That looks like the three volumes (NewExt Drive, Time Machine, and Untitled ) are space sharing APFS volumes in the same Container.

If this is correct it should be a simple matter of opening Disk Utility, select View >Show all Volumes, select Untitled, then click the little minus symbol in the Disk Utility toolbar (next to First Aid).

If this is not the situation some screenshots would help.

 

[gogreen1]

Well, that was easy! Thanks, Mike.

 

[gogreen1]

I successfully deleted the "Untitled" volume. But now I'm wondering if I can reformat the drive to get rid of the container. Seems like just another level to go through with no purpose. Is the container necessary?

 

[gilby101]

Is the container necessary?

Yes.

A physical disk is divided into multiple fixed size partitions.

Your physical disk has more than one partition. Disk Utility hides some mostly small partitions. You can see these with the Terminal command diskutil list.

A container is a type of partition and fills the partition. You can have multiple containers if you need to - in general you don't need.

Each container/partition is a bucket which is dynamically filled with one or more volumes.

So you can have this hierarchy:

Physical Disk
Container 1
Volume A
Volume B
....
Container 2
Volume X
Volume Y
....
Other partitions hidden by Disk Utility.

A and B dynamically share the fixed space allocated to Container 1.
X and Y dynamically share the fixed space allocated to Container 2.

Mostly needs are met with just one container and a few volumes inside it.

 

[gogreen1]

OK. Thanks, gilby101.

 

[haralds]

You cannot have an APFS volume without a Container holding it.
Actually, for spinning disks HFS+ is more applicable, but TimeMachine needs APFS these days,

 

[gilby101]

Actually, for spinning disks HFS+ is more applicable

Your opinion, not mine.

 

[HDFan]

Your opinion, not mine.

The most compelling argument for retaining HFS+ is on rotating hard disks, because APFS can result in severe fragmentation, most importantly in the file system metadata, so causing degraded performance; as SSDs don’t suffer those performance penalties, this could be a good reason for continuing to use HFS+ on hard disks, while switching SSDs to APFS.

Should you continue using HFS+?

Which is faster with a hard disk: using APFS or sticking with HFS+? Are there any differences in their performance on SSDs?

eclecticlight.co

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

As others have said above, you should NOT be using APFS for a platter-based hard drive.
It should be reformatted to HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

APFS will severely fragment platter-based hard drives and often make them "thrash" as well.

The ONLY instance one needs to use APFS is for a time machine backup, but I wouldn't recommend tm anyway...

One compelling reason TO USE HFS+ is that if you do so, the drive can still be "seen" by 3rd-party disk maintenance and data-recovery applications. Thus, you can defragment the drive, or just "compact" the data removing all the bits of "free space". And you can use data recovery apps such as Data Rescue or Disk Drill if you ever need to.

Apple hasn't released the complete internal structure of APFS to 3rd party developers.
That's why there are NO 3rd-party utilities that can do much with an AFPS drive, nor are there likely to be any.

 

[gogreen1]

Thanks, Fisherman.

Why don't you recommend Time Machine?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Why don't you recommend Time Machine?"

It copies the same files over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
It just eats and eats drive space.
The backups aren't readable "in finder format".
I've seen many MANY reports of those who used tm, and then -- in a moment of extreme need -- tried to access their tm backups and... couldn't.
Finally, a tm backup can't be booted.

What I DO recommend:
CarbonCopyCloner and/or SuperDuper.
Both created cloned backups that won't grow enormous in size and can be easily "mounted in the finder" like any other drive.
Just mount the backup, copy one file, several files, folders -- or "re-clone" the ENTIRE DRIVE back to the internal drive.

And it's STILL possible to create a bootable cloned backup (at least using SuperDuper, which makes it easy). You MUST use an SSD for this, however -- HDDs no longer seem to work (too slow).

 

[dsemf]

The backups aren't readable "in finder format".

Locally attached USB SSB drives can be accessed using Finder.

 

[donawalt]

"Why don't you recommend Time Machine?"

It copies the same files over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
It just eats and eats drive space.

Besides the finder format corrected by @dsemf , these are also wrong - you can find many web sites that explain how this is done, here's just one:

Time Machine uses a hard link that mimics and behaves like a separate clone of a file accessible via the Finder or Terminal. The hard link keeps the file extent uniquely once on a drive. Each instance of the file presents a link to that one special version. They’re removable without purging the original until you remain with one link.

The hard-link system benefits include intuitive navigation via Finder, and also a simple approach of reinstating a snapshot even without extra operations. It also allows you to delete snapshots without banishing data associated with other backups.

Also - regarding eating drive space, my current 10TB external drive was purchased and put into service for TM backups Dec 2022, 8 months ago. It backs up a 4 TB disk, and right now it's used 5.39TB of the disk. I think that's pretty darn good.

 

[gilby101]

The most compelling argument for retaining HFS+ is on rotating hard disks, because APFS can result in severe fragmentation, most importantly in the file system metadata, so causing degraded performance; as SSDs don’t suffer those performance penalties, this could be a good reason for continuing to use HFS+ on hard disks, while switching SSDs to APFS.

Should you continue using HFS+?

Which is faster with a hard disk: using APFS or sticking with HFS+? Are there any differences in their performance on SSDs?

eclecticlight.co

You didn't quote the next sentence from Howard Oakley:

"That argument may hold good for storage which is in active use, such as boot disks and those containing working files, but appears less compelling in more static use, to contain relatively stable archives or backups in which there is limited turnover of files or data."

In a backup scenario there is no evidence that HFS+ is significantly better than APFS regarding performance. And APFS has advantages - more robust, more flexible and encrypt-able.

Time Machine uses a hard link that mimics and behaves like a separate clone of a file accessible via the Finder or Terminal. The hard link keeps the file extent uniquely once on a drive. Each instance of the file presents a link to that one special version. They’re removable without purging the original until you remain with one link.

Whilst I agree with the thrust of your post, this is factually incorrect. TM now uses APFS clones. There are no hard links like there used to be with TM to HFS+. The effect is similar, but the method is different.

 

[gilby101]

It copies the same files over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
It just eats and eats drive space.

Nonsense.

The backups aren't readable "in finder format".

Again nonsense. TM backups are fully usable from Finder. As an additional point, Finder shows all the backup snapshots for TM. For CCC, it only shows the most recent. TM is more Finder friendly than CCC.

I've seen many MANY reports of those who used tm, and then -- in a moment of extreme need -- tried to access their tm backups and... couldn't.

And many many reports of successful recovery. TM is now just as robust as CCC.

Finally, a tm backup can't be booted.

Is that of much value? Neither can CCC when used for incremental backups.

And I do use CCC as well as TM. I value its flexibility, but not any underlying superiority over TM.

 

[HDFan]

and many many reports of successful recovery. TM is now just as robust as CCC.

Personally I have never had a CCC failure with almost 20 different tasks defined, as opposed to more than 20 TM failures (requiring complete TM disk wipes) on multiple targets. Lots of posts of TM failures on MacRumors. Don't remember reading posts of CCC failures though probably do exist.

I do use TM, but with all of the past failures I run 5 in case of problems. One time I had 2 TM backups fail simultaneously.

 

[Fishrrman]

gilby wrote:
"Is that of much value? Neither can CCC when used for incremental backups."

I have sitting next to me my 2021 MacBook Pro 14". It has Monterey installed.
Also is a home-built nvme SSD in a generic USB3.1 gen2 case.
On the drive is my bootable cloned backup, which I created using SuperDuper and maintain weekly using CCC.

I plugged in the backup.
Held down the power-on button continuously to invoke startup options.
Startup options appears, and...
THERE IS my bootable incremental cloned backup, available to choose.
So...
I choose it and click "continue".
MBP first shuts down, then reboots ... to the bootable (incremental) cloned backup. (I checked using "About this Mac").

Sir...
You were saying...?

 

[gilby101]

I have sitting next to me my 2021 MacBook Pro 14". It has Monterey installed.
Also is a home-built nvme SSD in a generic USB3.1 gen2 case.
On the drive is my bootable cloned backup, which I created using SuperDuper and maintain weekly using CCC.

I am glad this is working for you. Certainly not recommended by Mike Bombich https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore. Having to mix SD and CCC is a bit worrying.

Everything I have read says that you have to erase the destination and start a fresh backup with every update to macOS. Is that true?

With a week between incrementals isn't there is a lot of work lost if you need to use this for recovery?

What disaster scenarios are you targeting with your bootable clone?

 

[haralds]

I use both
TimeMachine to my NAS, because I never have to think about it.
CCC to spinners for fast recovery.
There is also redundancy since I routinely use 4 Macs - Studio M1 - Ultra, cMPro 5,1 updated and using OCLP, MacBook Pro M1 13", MacBook Pro Intel 15".
My NAS is a Synology with 5 disk bays plus an extension unit with 5 disk bays. It has about 100TB of disk space - all the TimeMachine space I could ever want; it also has media libraries and archival copies of VMs etc. The Synology also has some VMs running services such as Home Assistant, windows based stuff, and so on.

 

[Ben J.]

I left TM many years ago when it was quirky and unreliable, certainly not creating bootable backups. Went with CCC.

It has an option to use a apple utility called "Legacy boot creator" or something, to make a backup bootable. I've recently found that I can do it easily without that, by simply installing the current version of macOS onto a second drive, and upon booting from it, selecting "Import user account from a mac, backup…" and selecting the account on my main drive. Now I have a nearly perfect clone of my boot drive and account, and CCC will continue to keep it up to date.

It is true that the macOS should be the same version always on the two disks.

The main reason I want a bootable backup is that I can boot into it, run CCC, and tell it to restore a snapshot, and CCC wil copy back only the files that has changed. That means seconds. With restore function from recovery partition, it will recreate the whole data volume.

Also, in CCC, you can click on a volume, double-click on any of its snapshots, and restore files or folders in Finder.