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artfossil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2015
1,785
2,059
Florida
I have a 2 TB “Archives” external drive with four 500 GB partitions (Archives-Aperture-iTunes-Temp). The Archives partition has run out of room.

I have a 2 TB “Archives Backup” external drive with the same partitions. I backup the “Archives” drive partitions to the “Archives backup” drive using SuperDuper for each partition.

My Archives partition on the "Archives Backup" drive has run out of room (this is the only partition I use regularly as I off load my teaching/art projects onto it).

I bought a new 4 TB drive figuring this will be my new “Archives” drive with 4 partitions and the other two old 2 TB drives could become backup drives (one for Archives, and one for Aperture-iTunes-Temp). Eventually I‘ll buy another 4 TB drive but I am feeling cheap this month.

I'm confused about whether I can/should format an external drive with APFS? This drive is a mechanical drive, not solid state. Should I just use partitions as I have in the past on the new 4 TB drive? I’ve never used APFS before. :)

I don’t use Time Machine. I backup my iMac to an external drive with CCC. I'm on Catalina.

Thanks for any help!
 
Last edited:

pmiles

macrumors 6502a
Dec 12, 2013
812
678
Absolutely positively never ever format a mechanical hard drive in APFS. It was written for SSD drives. It will run like moleasses on a HDD drive. MacOS Extended (also known as HFS+)... unless you need to be able to read/write to it from a Windows system... in which case exFAT is your best choice.

Why are you partitioning the drive? Only older file systems required that you partition a drive into smaller chunks. Unless you are formatting each partition with a unique file system, you are better off not partitioning the drive... for the very reason you have already run into... you run out of space on said partition but not necessarily the drive.

Just use a folder hierarchy system... Folder labeled 'Archive' and the like and dump whatever you want into said folders. Then you have the maximum space of the entire drive in which to use, not a preset amount of space.

I have 4 internal drives in my MacPro... none of which are partitioned, all of which are 2TBs or greater in size.
 
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Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,159
13,202
My recommendation:

For external BOOTABLE volumes/partitions, use APFS -if- the source boot volume is using APFS.

For external NON-BOOTABLE volumes/partitions that are used for DATA STORAGE ONLY, continue to use HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Particularly with external platter-based hard drives, APFS can fragment data on these drives and slow them down.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.
 

artfossil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2015
1,785
2,059
Florida
My recommendation:

For external BOOTABLE volumes/partitions, use APFS -if- the source boot volume is using APFS.

For external NON-BOOTABLE volumes/partitions that are used for DATA STORAGE ONLY, continue to use HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Particularly with external platter-based hard drives, APFS can fragment data on these drives and slow them down.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.
Thank you! I will use HFS+
 

artfossil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2015
1,785
2,059
Florida
Absolutely positively never ever format a mechanical hard drive in APFS. It was written for SSD drives. It will run like moleasses on a HDD drive. MacOS Extended (also known as HFS+)... unless you need to be able to read/write to it from a Windows system... in which case exFAT is your best choice.

Why are you partitioning the drive? Only older file systems required that you partition a drive into smaller chunks. Unless you are formatting each partition with a unique file system, you are better off not partitioning the drive... for the very reason you have already run into... you run out of space on said partition but not necessarily the drive.

Just use a folder hierarchy system... Folder labeled 'Archive' and the like and dump whatever you want into said folders. Then you have the maximum space of the entire drive in which to use, not a preset amount of space.

I have 4 internal drives in my MacPro... none of which are partitioned, all of which are 2TBs or greater in size.
Thank you! I understand APFS better now.

About running out of room on one partition: at least it took six years!

I’m not sure about using a folder system vs partitions. This is not how my source drive is set up so it would require a lot of reorganizing on those four source portions. And I’m not sure aboutusing SuperDuper to then back up those source folders although I’m guessing SuperDuper can back up folder to folder.

My priority first of all is to back up my source drive as currently I only have one copy.
 

pmiles

macrumors 6502a
Dec 12, 2013
812
678
Thank you! I understand APFS better now.

About running out of room on one partition: at least it took six years!

I’m not sure about using a folder system vs partitions. This is not how my source drive is set up so it would require a lot of reorganizing on those four source portions. And I’m not sure aboutusing SuperDuper to then back up those source folders although I’m guessing SuperDuper can back up folder to folder.

My priority first of all is to back up my source drive as currently I only have one copy.

It sounds like your source drive is also setup like it's in the past... really don't need to partition up a large drive, you had to in the past... but not with today's file systems. Which is probably why you are in this quandary... source drive is partitioned, so I have to make my destination drive a clone of it. Not really true... sounds like your software WANTS to make a clone of it.

Reality is, it doesn't care whether it's cloning a partition or a folder, it's just cloning data. So if your source drive was just Catalina and some other folders that you have created, that's exactly what it would clone. Personally, I think you would benefit from restructuring your primary drive. Let it have the full space to work with. If you are getting a new external storage drive, you could copy your important data to the new external drive and rebuild your system drive using the systems recovery mode. Then just copy the data back to the appropriate locations on the main drive (i.e. folders in lieu of partitions). Just a thought.

Your system is set up like it's living in the past using a modern day architecture.

BTW, if it isn't obvious, I don't use third-party apps to backup my important data, I just copy it myself to an external drive. Bookmarks, contacts, and other unique preferences I keep a copy of as well. I don't have to worry about some cloned copy having cloned the very thing that I am trying to fix. It all a simple file copy process. Has worked for many many years over a whole host of platform changes and hardware changes over time. I haven't had to partition a hard drive in eons.
 

artfossil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2015
1,785
2,059
Florida
It sounds like your source drive is also setup like it's in the past... really don't need to partition up a large drive, you had to in the past... but not with today's file systems. Which is probably why you are in this quandary... source drive is partitioned, so I have to make my destination drive a clone of it. Not really true... sounds like your software WANTS to make a clone of it.

Reality is, it doesn't care whether it's cloning a partition or a folder, it's just cloning data. So if your source drive was just Catalina and some other folders that you have created, that's exactly what it would clone. Personally, I think you would benefit from restructuring your primary drive. Let it have the full space to work with. If you are getting a new external storage drive, you could copy your important data to the new external drive and rebuild your system drive using the systems recovery mode. Then just copy the data back to the appropriate locations on the main drive (i.e. folders in lieu of partitions). Just a thought.

Your system is set up like it's living in the past using a modern day architecture.

BTW, if it isn't obvious, I don't use third-party apps to backup my important data, I just copy it myself to an external drive. Bookmarks, contacts, and other unique preferences I keep a copy of as well. I don't have to worry about some cloned copy having cloned the very thing that I am trying to fix. It all a simple file copy process. Has worked for many many years over a whole host of platform changes and hardware changes over time. I haven't had to partition a hard drive in eons.
Thank you. When I said "source" drive I didn't mean my iMac hard drive, but rather my external Archives drive. That drive also has a backup external drive. My internal hard drive is just fine and has plenty of room (only half full) and doesn't need any restructuring. I won't be copying anything back to my internal drive. Instead, I'll just be setting up a new Archives external drive and using my old external drives to backup that new external drive.

I'm a big fan of SuperDuper's Smart Copy function for making backups so I'll continue to use that to back up my Archives external drive to my Archives Backup external drive. Similarly, I'm a big fan of CCC for making a bootable clone of my internal hard drive.
 
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