I’m looking for possibly formatting my HDD to APFS. What performs better in day-to-day use?

APFS is very optimised for flash storage and I think it would performe worse than MacOS Extended on HDDs.

Hello i have a samsung T7, and i am working on mac mini m1. I used to work with the T7 with mac os extended , with stable speeds .. Recently i read a lot of reviews that in siera and later , especially for the ssds its better the new APFS. I saw that the speed in APFS in write modes are unstable a lot . Generally the speeds are slow .. Why that happened ?

Planning to reformat my external hard drive to store 5 years worth of photos. I just don’t know if apfs is better than the mac os extended (journal format)

I need your opinions 😅 Thanks!!

Today I’m getting an external ssd to use as a startup disk for my MacBook Pro since its ssd stopped working and I can’t replace it cuz it’s soldered to the logic board. I wanted to ask about the format i should use for the external ssd. All youtube tutorials say it should be macOS extended journaled but i think it should be APFS since it’s optimized for ssds.

Hello, sorry for the obvious/redundant question.

I need to erase/format a bunch of 4TB Western Digital external hard drives (not SSDs). I’ll only be using them on Macs, so I’ve been using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the default format.

However, I read that if you're using only modern Macs (macOS High Sierra or later), APFS (Apple File System) is generally preferred for better performance and features—especially on SSDs—but that it also works on HDDs.

So now I’m wondering:

• Should I stick with Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or go with APFS?

• Is APFS really only intended for SSDs?

• For erasing, is it fine to leave the Security Options set to None for a faster format, since I’m not concerned with securely deleting data?

Thanks in advance!

I've recently reinstalled macOS Catalina using the recovery mode on my 2017 MacBook Pro.

I have a question about my internal boot drive (the root), do I format this as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? I've formatted my Macintosh HD as APFS but for the "APPLE SSD" I chose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

This screen here might help show what I mean:

https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare/images/en_US/macos/Catalina/macos-catalina-disk-utility-erase-internal-drive.jpg

Also looked here but doesn't specifically say about the root drive:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208496#which

Should I have chosen APFS?

I just bought myself a new hard drive (regular old disk drive) and am wondering whether anyone has advice regarding APFS formatting. According to Apple, APFS should only ever be used on an SSD, and that the Disk Utility will not even allow one to format a spinning drive as APFS. I've tried this, and it doesn't seem to be the case.

I ran a small test and formatted my disk drive first with MacOS Extended, and then transferred a 6GB file to see how long it would take. MacOS extended took about 2 minutes to transfer the file. I then repeated the test, but this time with APFS, and found it took only 1 minute. Moreover, the big advantage of APFS is that file duplication is incredibly quick, whereas the standard MacOS Extended would take about 7-8 minutes to duplicate the same file. APFS seems to create a kind of instance of the file, and it doesn't take up more space, as it acts more like a shortcut to a directory, as opposed to a duplicated copy. Interesting stuff.

I'm wondering whether anyone has perspectives on this. The big disadvantage of APFS of course, is that older Macs will not be able to read the format whatsoever – yikes. So, any sort of cross-platform accessibility goes out the window. Worst comes to worst, sticking with MacOS Extended for a little while longer, might not be a bad idea. Thank you.

Hey guys, noob here. Recently bought a WD My Passport (HDD) for the sole purpose of transferring old videos that take up alot of space on my MacBook (2019 Pro). Currently running Monterey but I plan on updating to the latest OS once I have enough space. Just wanted to ask what the best way to format this hard drive is so that I don’t run into any issues in the future.

I see lots of people recommending OS Extended for HDD and APFS for SSD but some of these posts have very different circumstances such as using an external drive to fully run their Mac. Kinda getting confused now since I’m just treating my hard drive as a big ass flash drive lmao. I just really want to be able to use this hard drive in the long term though countless software updates while also being compatible with previous and newer MacBook models.

Any help would be appreciated. I would also welcome alternative recommendations other than the two being compared. Thank you!

I'm curious to see how everyone is formatting their external drives for clients and back-ups these days. I've always known if you need it cross platform, exFAT is the way to go...but never had a situation where that was requested. Is "Extended (Journaled)" getting antiquated? FYI I've been formatting "Extended (Journaled)" out of pure habit. Is APFS the way to go in 2023?

Hi

As the title says, which one should I be using for a portable SSD with all my libraries on? I have a load of spitfire and various other libraries, Komplete etc.

Also can I move the libraries that are currently installed to a different drive and things will work, or do you have to reinstall?

Any advice appreciated

My late '16 MacBook Pro currently has APFS as its file system even though I installed Mac OS Mojave after a format and chose Extended because I was having issues earlier. I found it to be a bit unstable so I am going to format it again and install High Serra, but I am wondering which file system to choose in doing so? I seem to be having a lot of problems with Boot Camp on both High Sierra and Mojave, for some reason.

Need a little help.

Decided to install Mojave on my old mid-2010 MacBook, 15inches, using dosdude’s patch. But I can’t decide whether to format the installation drive as APFS or macOS Extended (journaled).

I have 250 GB SSD installed and 8GB of ram.

What would you advise?

Thanks!

Hello,

I’ve just bought an external SSD (Sandisk Extreme 1TB) for my M1 base Macbook Air and after some research I’m still confused about what format I should use.

I want to keep my projects (Game Development, Unity) I’m working on on the SSD, since the 256GB base MacBook storage is a limitation for my case.

And even though it’s rare, I want to use it to store some photos etc. from my Windows computer.

I know the differences of ExFAT and APFS, but will I see a significant decrease in speed if I use ExFAT? Since I need to use it on Windows as well.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

My laptop is MacBook Pro 16-inch,2019. The system is Catalina 10.15.4. And I am using Samsung T7 use store my music stuff.

However it was incredibly slow for me to load anything, I looked up and people are saying its because I have to format my T7 to MacOS Extended (Samsung T7 was originally ExFAT).

After I formatted my T7 to MacOS Extended, I found out the default system on my mac is APFS, so I wonder should I convert it to APFS? I am worried my external drive will still be slow since my external SSD and laptop internal disk are different...

Thank you!

Hi!

I'm in the middle of making a clean install of High Sierra on my rather old MacBook Pro with a regular old HHD. I'm not sure what format I should use on the HDD? What would you choose?

Thanks!

As the title says, is there a preferred format for a drive solely used for editing? I am only using macs

Thanks

Today I’m getting an external ssd to use as a startup disk for my MacBook Pro since its ssd stopped working and I can’t replace it cuz it’s soldered to the logic board. I wanted to ask about the format i should use for the external ssd. All youtube tutorials say it should be macOS extended journaled but i think it should be APFS since it’s optimized for ssds.