WD My Passport USB External Issues with Container Disk?

[honeycombz]

Hi, I have a 2 partition WD My Passport USB drive and noticed that one partition shows up real slow and it seems like in disk utility that disk has an APFS Physical Store outside of the container?

So I have

WD My Passport 25E4 Media
- Container disk3
- Backup Drive
- Backup Drive - Data

Then greyed out

- APFS Physical Store disk2s3 (which relates to the next container)

Not greyed out

- Container disk4
- Backup Photo Drive

All the data seems intact but I am wondering if this is a problem?

 

[Fishrrman]

Is this a platter-based hard drive?

And... you're using it for backup?

If so, WHAT APP are you using for backup?
Time Machine?

If so, it has to remain APFS.

BUT...
If you're just using the drive for data storage (i.e., files/folders copied from the finder), you'd probably do better by reformatting the drive for HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

APFS can impair the performance of platter-based hard drives, including excessive fragmentation and "disk thrashing"...

 

[honeycombz]

It is a redundant backup made using SuperDuper. Probably is platter based just thinking about the price paid for it. I don't remember but the form factor is not that of SSD.

 

[Fishrrman]

You didn't say which OS you're using, but I believe the newer OS's will require APFS in a cloned backup (as well as with time machine).

I guess if the drive works (even if it's slow), then... keep using it.

 

[honeycombz]

Big Sur