New hard drive, full format?

[cSalmon]

Curious about the proper procedure when starting to use a new hard drive? I believe it use to be recommended to do a full format (not a quick format) on any new drive, is that still the case? A 10TB drive could take some time. My additional question is wether to format a drive that will only be used for storage, APFS or HFS+? I understand this has been discussed before just wanted to double check on the current advice

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

A quick "erase" (using Disk Utility) should be "all you need"...

 

[leekil]

If you're using a traditional hard drive, I believe that they don't actually do a "full format" these days when you format them.

 

[cSalmon]

... I believe that they don't actually do a "full format" these days when you format them.

Did I write that wrong, should it have said a more involved erase? Obviously I’m not an educated tech person.

Ok so a quick erase will do, are there any downsides to formatting a HDD to APFS?

Thanks again for all your insights

 

[Fishrrman]

APFS has been reported to slow down platter-based hard drives, due to the way it handles files and copying files and changes to files.

For a platter-based drive, HFS+ remains "the way to go".

 

[NoBoMac]

Ok so a quick erase will do, are there any downsides to formatting a HDD to APFS?

Just a quick comment.

If keeping the drive and re-using, which seems the case, just reformat the drive to HFS+.

Now, if concerned about what's on the drive down the road, turn on encryption on the drive before putting anything on it. You can do it when you do the re-format/quick erase (MacOS Journaled Encrypted is an option at erase time). Now any new data written will be encrypted, the initial encryption at disk formatting will be quick, and any future re-formats can be the quick ones (ie. no multi-pass erase needed) as encryption keys will be wiped at format time.