Hi, I bought a 2TB SS (WD Blue SN580 2TB, M.2 NVMe SSD, PCIe Gen4 x4) and UGREEN Enclosure for my TimeMachine Backups. After testing it, it was extremely slow (50MB/s write and 600MB/s read). I bought another enclosure, and the same happened. I bought a WD_Black (WD_BLACK 2TB SN770 M.2 2280 Game Drive PCIe Gen4 NVMe hasta 5150 MB/s), same result.
I tried formatting to ExFat because I did not know what else could fail and lo and behold it gave me 1600MB/s (write) and 800 MB/s (read).
What is actually happening? Why a non-Apple format is WAY faster than the APFS which was thought for SSDs? Should I leave it in ExFat format for my TimeMachine Backups? What is happening? Thanks
APFS
ExFat
Videos
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 Guys,
This seems nonsensical to me! I just bought a Sandisk extreme ssd expecting 2000MB/s speed but I'm getting nowhere near that. Worst of all, it seems that exfat is faster than AFPS. I've reformated several times (even tried encrypted AFPS and MacOS Extended (HFS+) which we both worse. What I am doing run? Should I return the drive? Thanks for your help!
edit: I have an macbookair m1.
AFPS Speed test Exfat speed testtldr APFS and MacOS extended format are giving slower speed on HDD than exFAT - unable to understand why?
I just bought a new hard disk (Western Digital Elements) - we'll call it HD1 - and quickly formatted it to APFS format with GUI Partition Map to use with my Mac. I have another hard disk (Western Digital Elements) - HD2 - that was formatted to exFAT and I used it with my Windows/Mac computer. It has many files on it.
To my surprise, I see that read/write speed for my brand new APFS-formatted HD1 are absymal compared to HD2. https://imgur.com/YNtLBWH I checked everything - same port, tried to switch cables, etc. but to no avail.
Reformatted twice, still same result. Then I tried formatting to MacOS Extended (Journaled) as well - same results! (30-40MB/s)
On the other hand, just to experiment, when I formatted HD1 to exFAT, it gives a much higher speed (similar to HD2, 400MB/s).
I looked through multiple videos/blogs but don't understand the issue. My use case is just file/media backup but I do need fast read/write and reliability.
What's going on? How can I fix it?
Fwiw, I am running latest MacOS (Sonoma 14.5).
Edit: Downvoted? I am asking this in good-faith, would really appreciate your help. Check this latest comment
when I formatted HD1 to exFAT, it gives a much higher speed (similar to HD2, 400MB/s).
Man the typical write speed of a HDD is roughly 30MB/s to 100MB/s, depending on what kind of write operation you have (multiple small files v.s. single large file). The write speed of your HD1 is clearly breaking the limit of human science.
The only plausible explanation to these numbers: that HD1 is a SSD and HD2 is a HDD.
So this comparison is simply absurd and meaningless.
APFS and HFS+ (Journaled) both write a journal, in addition to the actual file data, in order to improve file-system integrity in the event of an unexpected shutdown or interruption. A mechanical hard drive has to move its head when writing the journal, and then move it back to write more data. When writing smaller files, this overhead can have a significant impact on performance
exFAT doesn't have a journal and so doesn't have this overhead.
Another aspect is that journals aren't worth anything unless the data is written to the disk, as a result, when writing the journal, the OS will bypass the disks's cache so it can be sure the journal data is safe. Without a journal involved, a benchmark could potentially operate entirely within the drives cache.
I got a 2TB External NVMe SSD - which I'm planning to work off from now on (projects/video files).
I'm wondering which file system should I format it to?
I'm probably gonna use it exclusively on Mac, but I wanna know if there is any advantage to APFS vs. ExFat. Because if there is no major advantage (speed, stability) - I might as well go with ExFat for multi-OS support.
Thanks
Don’t use EXFAT for your projects or any data that you care about.
It isn’t a reliable file system and lacks journaling and other checks that Mac OS Extended, NTFS and others have. Read online about this, people both frequently lose data (or they report “I’ve been using it for years without problems” which doesn’t disprove those who lost data.)
In your case, I would use neither APFS or EXFAT. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). For times you need to use that drive on Windows, then MacDrive or Paragon become options available to you on that Windows machine.
Just because of journaling alone use APFS.
Exfat is extremely fast to lose files if it wants to. Use sparingly and never as a primary IMO
APFS gives several benefits over exFAT, for example:
Protection against meta-data corruption caused by for example sudden power loss, system crash or if disconnect the external hard drive without unmounting it first. exFAT only detects corruption using checksums, but cannot rollback like APFS.
Better support for full disk encryption
Allows snapshotting the file system (i.e. you can create "frozen" versions of everything on disk, which will never change - even when you continue to alter the contents of your files)
Allows cloning a file into two copies that can be independently changed while only requiring the disk space for one file plus the size of the differences compared to the other file
On the other hand, exFAT has a range of advantages too:
Older file system that is "tried and tested" for years on macOS
Simpler file system with less overhead
Most probably slightly faster (but this will depend on the final implementation in the release version of High Sierra)
As you mentioned, the drive can be used without extra drivers on Windows
Only you can decide which set of benefits are most important for you.
One further reason to reformat is if you may use the drive for Time Machine.
As of September 2018 there's no direct official support for exFAT according to this Apple support document
Unofficially, you can create a sparsebundle as described on MacOSHints
First, connect the unsupported volume (in this case, an exFAT external hard drive.) When it mounts, open the Terminal and type these commands, substituting 'My External HDD Name' for the name of the unsupported volume.
cd /Volumes
cd 'My External HDD Name'
Next, type this code, substituting for your needs:
hdiutil create -size 320g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs "HFS+J" MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle
open MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle
Here, a 320GB sparse bundle named 'MacBook-Backup' is being made and mounted. You can change these values as you see fit. From herein, I'll refer to the sparse bundle name as 'MacBook-Backup'.
After you've run these commands, a new volume named untitled will appear on your Desktop. This will become your Time Machine backup volume. If you want, rename it to something else (I called mine MacBook Pro Backup) and run the command:
diskutil list
You should see a list appear of all connected volumes. Find your new volume's name and read along until you find the disk identifier. In this case, my identifier is disk2s2, but yours may be different.
Finally, enter the commands below (entering your password if prompted). Replace disk2s2 with your identifier, and 'MacBook Pro Backup' with the name of your new Time Machine volume.
sudo diskutil enableOwnership /dev/disk2s2
sudo tmutil setdestination '/Volumes/MacBook Pro Backup'