APFS vs Mac OS Extended

[harvdog47]

While cleaning up my external drives I realized that 4 drives were formatted as APFS while 2 were Mac OS Extended. I have a new iMac and am on Monterey 12.3.1.
Should they all be APFS and can I do it without losing data?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

For the external drives, you can leave them what they are, both are supported.

If you only ever intend to use the drives with macOS, both of these work. You might want to chose APFS for brand new drives. If you have to use it across multiple OS', then you should use ExFAT for that.

 

[IWT]

And BTW, the latest version of Monterey is 12.4

And if any of your External Hard Drives (EHD) are being used for a Time Machine backup, then APFS is the best option - it may be obligatory, I'm not sure.

Quote: "APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk. If you select a new backup disk that’s not already formatted as an APFS disk, you get the option to erase and reformat it. If the disk is a Mac OS Extended format disk that contains an existing Time Machine backup, you aren’t asked to erase and reformat the disk."

Taken from:

Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

Use Time Machine on your Mac with a Time Capsule and with USB and Thunderbolt disks.

support.apple.com

Ian

 

[harvdog47]

For the external drives, you can leave them what they are, both are supported.

If you only ever intend to use the drives with macOS, both of these work. You might want to chose APFS for brand new drives. If you have to use it across multiple OS', then you should use ExFAT for that.

Thanks for the input.

 

[ferrarr]

If you can copy the data onto other drives (temporarily) you can format the Mac OS Extended drives as APFS. Then copy the data back.

 

[MacInWin]

Just to emphasize what ferrarr said, changing the format will erase everything, so copy it first, then change, then copy back.