APFS or MacOS Extended for HDD?

[filocullen]

Previously I've read that was best to format an external hard disk in MacOS Extended instead of APFS, with Monterey release, is this still true?

 

[pine man]

I've read that was best to format an external hard disk in MacOS Extended instead of APFS

It depends what you are going to use it for really.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

For hard drives, use HFS+ (MacOS Extended). If SSD, use APFS.

 

[filocullen]

I've got a WD Elements portable HDD and I'm using it just to store media once my iMac is full. Yes I've been reading that in the past, HFS+ for hard drives and AFPS for SSD, but I though that with Monterey release AFPS could be the best option even for hard drives (since in the future HSF+ might be abandoned and I don't care for reverse compatibility), but I guess things haven't changed though. Thanks

 

[IWT]

Also, with Monterey, Time Machine backups should go on to an EHD formatted APFS. In fact, you have no choice because, I believe the Mac will use APFS automatically.

And I hope you do use Time Machine. Comes as part of the OS and only needs an EHD with 1.5 times the storage capacity of your Mac's Internal Drive.

Ian

 

[Rod]

I worry when users say things like, "I'm using it just to store media once my iMac is full." Once your Mac is full you will likely be unable to use an EHD.
This depends of course on what you mean by "full" for me that would be about 20% free space.
If you are approaching a full storage situation eg less that 15% free, I would strongly recommend that you move say, your Photos Library or Music library onto an external HD and as suggested by IWT above, utilise the native Time Machine app to backup both your internal and external drives.

The reason I say this is based on the experience of others on these forums. They find that their Mac becomes almost unusable with spinning beach balls at every action and attempts to transfer files to an external drive are hampered by the system's inability to perform the process due to lack of storage for virtual memory. So, don't leave it too late.

As for backing up the external HD's this can be an issue in itself and at the end of the day the best solution is inevitably upgrading the internal HD of the device where possible or upgrading the device itself.
Portable storage is not something I would trust for single backup of either my personal music collection or my lifetime of accumulated photos.

 

[Slydude]

One thing that does need mentioning: If you plan to use the external hard drive with another Mac, you may need to use HFS+ formatting. Apple File System (APFS): Is It The Best Format for A Drive

You may have a question like this "Can older Macs read APFS?" Mac OS before macOS 10.13 High Sierra cannot read or write APFS formatted drives. More specifically, old Mac machines with macOS 10.12 Sierra, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, or earlier releases cannot support APFS.

 

[filocullen]

No, I've said full is an hyperbole, I never wait for the iMac to be unusable to free it I didn't think to use Time Machine, cause I don't really need a backup, just to store videos, nothing important.
But if it's stated that HFS+ is best for hard drives and if Time Machine formats my hard drive in APFS, shouldn't this discourage from using it with TM?

 

[IWT]

But if it's stated that HFS+ is best for hard drives and if Time Machine formats my hard drive in APFS, shouldn't this discourage from using it with TM?

No. At the risk of causing offence which is certainly not intended, let me explain.

Time Machine has, almost from day one, been the recognised as the mainstay of backing up:

1. It is native to all Macs
2. Apart from an EHD of 1.5 times the storage of your Mac's Internal Drive, there is no cost - and these days Spinning EHDs are incredibly cheap - and BTW Spinning EHDs are better than SSDs for TM backups. And formatted APFS for Monterey.
3. TM not only backs up ALL your data, it backs up all your settings, Passwords, Bookmarks - everything except the Operating System (OS). Great when you get a new Mac - TM imports the lot just as it was on the old one.
4. However TM backups are NOT meant for long-term or permanent storage/archive. It's strength lies in being able to retrieve an accidentally erased document, photo, video - anything really. You just open TM, scroll back to a date or time when you know for certain the lost data was there and restore it.
5. BTW, all recent Macs allow for up to 2 TM backups on the SEPARATE EHDs.
6. TM backups are made automatically - unless you specify otherwise - initially on an hourly basis, then after 24 hours, on a Daily basis; then monthly and so on.

This nicely takes to long-term/permanent backups. For that you need a separate EHD for things such as precious photos, critical data, Music Library, Photos Library. Of course, you have to keep these up to date yourself.

AND/OR

You can use a Cloned Backup such as Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper! (SD!) - these apps are pay for. For Cloned BUs, I think most of us would agree that a SSD is far faster and all-round better than a Spinning EHD.

Other forms of backup include iCloud storage. There are other possibilities as well, but I reckon you've got the general picture.

My BU strategy is:

Two TM backups.
One CCC cloned backup
Two EHDs for critical data and Music & Photos Libraries.
I also pay Apple the astonishingly low sum of £2.49/month for 200GB of iCloud storage, almost all of which is set by me to happen automatically.

I hope that explained, if not convinced you of the need for TM and at least one other firm of BU

Ian

 

[jpdemers]

A less-portable solution is a RAID array. Two drives, mirrored, can provide a secure backup; I have a larger RAID-5 array but it's the same idea: if one drive dies, you can replace it, with no loss of data. (Truly irreplaceable stuff should also be backed up in iCloud or Dropbox, which are pretty much disaster-proof.)

 

[Jim40]

On my 2019 MacBook Air, When I open Disk Utility, it only gives the option of APFS and I need MS DOS (Fat) to reformat my Dash Cam. Unless someone knows Different

 

[Lifeisabeach]

(Truly irreplaceable stuff should also be backed up in iCloud or Dropbox, which are pretty much disaster-proof.)

I beg to differ. Oooooh BOY do I beg to differ. A year or so ago I discovered some files I had in iCloud were corrupt. They weren’t when first put there. I couldn’t explain it. Apple couldn’t explain it, and they spent some time trying to figure it out. I actually COULD have recovered the corrupt files from my Time Machine backups of the local copies of the iCloud contents if they back far enough, but no such luck. But hey, nothing critical and I had copies of almost everything elsewhere, and I got a free pair of PowerBeats from Apple for it.

 

[Jim40]

I beg to differ. Oooooh BOY do I beg to differ. A year or so ago I discovered some files I had in iCloud were corrupt. They weren’t when first put there. I couldn’t explain it. Apple couldn’t explain it, and they spent some time trying to figure it out. I actually COULD have recovered the corrupt files from my Time Machine backups of the local copies of the iCloud contents if they back far enough, but no such luck. But hey, nothing critical and I had copies of almost everything elsewhere, and I got a free pair of PowerBeats from Apple for it.

This doesn't answer my question or offer a way out !!

 

[MacInWin]

On my 2019 MacBook Air, When I open Disk Utility, it only gives the option of APFS and I need MS DOS (Fat) to reformat my Dash Cam. Unless someone knows Different

This doesn't answer my question or offer a way out !!

LIAB's comment wasn't directed to you. This thread has several sub-threads going.

That said, exFAT should be an option for formatting. To get there, on the top bar of the DU window is "View" where you should select "Show all Devices..." as the option. In the left sidebar, the hardware will now be the most outdented, with the partitions at the first indent and then if you use APFS and Containers, the Volumes will be at the next indent.

So, what is it you want to format? You jumped into the middle of the thread and didn't say. You mentioned Dash Cam, so if that is what needs formatting, it's probably an SD card. Here is a screenshot of an SD card mounted in my MBP:



You can see the "View" option on the top bar and the indentation levels. I selected the CANON_DC, then clicked on "Erase" and got this:


That's where you select what format you want the card to have.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jim40]

LIAB's comment wasn't directed to you. This thread has several sub-threads going.

That said, exFAT should be an option for formatting. To get there, on the top bar of the DU window is "View" where you should select "Show all Devices..." as the option. In the left sidebar, the hardware will now be the most outdented, with the partitions at the first indent and then if you use APFS and Containers, the Volumes will be at the next indent.

So, what is it you want to format? You jumped into the middle of the thread and didn't say. You mentioned Dash Cam, so if that is what needs formatting, it's probably an SD card. Here is a screenshot of an SD card mounted in my MBP:

View attachment 35767

You can see the "View" option on the top bar and the indentation levels. I selected the CANON_DC, then clicked on "Erase" and got this:
View attachment 35768

That's where you select what format you want the card to have.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jim40]

Thanks for that, will give it a try tomorrow. I get very tired since my Cancer diagnosis several months ago. Know this off topic, but please support Ukraine if you can

 

[MacInWin]

No problem, Jim. I understand about being tired. My brother had cancer for years and the treatment plans always wiped out his endurance. Hang in there!

 

[Jonzjob]

I spent 18 years as an IBM hardware mainframe service engineer and half of my time was spent in trying to convince my customers that without you can be in very deep poooo!

I spent probably most of that time on System 34s, System 36s, System 38s and AS400s. The 38s and AS400s used what was called 'data scatter' and the speed was achieved by putting 2k blocks of data from the files it was writing out to the different racks of disks and letting the rack disk controllers write it to the disks in those racks. It meant that every file or folder on the system was spread across ALL of the disks. So is a single disk went down then all was lost without a backup.

Backups are just like insurance really. You don't need them until you need them and disks can fail at any time!

 

[unblocktheplanet]

Also, with Monterey, Time Machine backups should go on to an EHD formatted APFS. In fact, you have no choice because, I believe the Mac will use APFS automatically.

Hard to believe that if one plugs in an Mac Extended Journaled disk to a Mac running Monterey that Time Machine will convert that disk to AFPS befor backing up. That's a little intrusive for me. I prefer users to have some choice...even dumbos.

 

[unblocktheplanet]

As for backing up the external HD's this can be an issue in itself and at the end of the day the best solution is inevitably upgrading the internal HD of the device where possible or upgrading the device itself.

Apple makes devices with tiny ctorage capacity to attract entry users and gives us no option to upgrade disk size. Even if one buys a Mac with 4TB or 8TB, that disk will die (hopefully within AppleCare). Nothing is foolproof.