Upgrading to High Sierria

[Tech198]

I wish to upgrade m Macs to High Sierra. (I thin it's time)..

However, although i have my NAS which houses all my data, i have few external drives and flash drives that are HFS+ hat i'd like to convert via Disk Utility afterward via the menu..

However, how safe if this method vs formatting as AFPS ?

While you could always say "there is always a possibly of data loss while data stays on device and its probably recommended to reformat", how effective is this conversion from HFS +to AFPS+ on 2TB volumes and above?

Has anyone does this and 100% success?

 

[chscag]

Why do you want to convert your external drives to APFS? There is no advantage to converting external drives to APFS. High Sierra will convert an internal flash storage drive on your Mac to APFS, but not if it's a Fusion drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

Agree with chscag above.

DO NOT convert any of your external drives to APFS (at least for the time being).
LEAVE THEM running HFS+. They will work fine.

You didn't tell us which Mac you have.
Is it by any chance an iMac with a fusion drive?
If so, a fusion drive will not be converted to APFS -- it will "stay back" at HFS+.
Apple doesn't support APFS on fusion drives at this time (I don't think they ever will).

 

[LarryJoe33]

Leaving them as HFS+ will also ensure they can be read on older MacOS's.

I did convert my CCC external drive to APFS because I wanted to take advantage of snapshots.

 

[chscag]

I did convert my CCC external drive to APFS because I wanted to take advantage of snapshots.

Few folks realize that CCC takes snapshots if your internal drive is Flash Storage and using APFS. Those snapshots take up valuable space on your internal drive which is why I have my CCC snapshots turned off. What advantage is there to having your external storage formatted to APFS when using CCC? CCC will make snapshots on your internal SSD even if your external hard drive is formatted to HFS+.

 

[chabig]

APFS should not be used on rotating hard disks. Here’s why: https://blog.macsales.com/43043-using-apfs-on-hdds-and-why-you-might-not-want-to

This might change in the future as Apple advances the technology.

 

[Clix Pix]

I have not had any problems (so far!) with my external drives, both platter/spinner ones and SSDs, that I have converted to APFS. That said, at this point in time I tend to drag-and-drop files and folders from the internal drive to the external drive rather than trying to clone the entire drive, and that may make a difference.

 

[Guy Clark]

With the release of the 10.13.4 update High Sierra is now mature enough to consider upgrading that being said whether it offers that much more than 10.12.6 Sierra is questionable which is rock solid stable.