SSDs are currently the fair-haired children of computer storage, but the real work-horses (to mix metaphors) are hard disk drives. They hold more, last longer, and cost far less per megabyte.
I’ve always “known” that HFS+, also called “Mac OS Extended,” is better for formatting spinning hard drives for the Mac than APFS. But, I wondered, is that just hearsay or is there some truth to it?
So, during my recent performance testing of an OWC Thunderbay 4 HDD RAID, I put this to a detailed test.
NOTE: HFS+ is a hard drive format, invented by Apple many, many years ago, for hard disk drives. APFS, also invented by Apple, is a newer format specifically designed for SSDs.
The short answer: HFS+ (Journaled) is absolutely the best choice for formatting spinning media (traditional hard disk drives). This performance benefit becomes especially pronounced when creating RAIDs.
NOTE Journaling is the process of tracking data changes made to a hard disk that have not yet been fully stored, because saving or erasing data is a multi-step process. In the event of a system crash or power failure, journaled hard disks can be brought back more quickly with a lower likelihood of becoming corrupted.
RELATED ARTICLES
For my tests, I set the speed of an HFS+ formatted drive or RAID to 100% (the green line at the top). Then, I measured the speed of the same configuration formatted using APFS.
In all cases, the APFS-formatted drive was slower. Dramatically slower as the number of drives increase. For example, read speeds for a 4-drive RAID 0 were cut in half! The percentage number at the top of each bar indicates the speed of APFS for that test compared to HFS+.
NOTE: Because APFS affects individual disk performance, you would see these same performance drops whether you format the RAID as RAID 0, 4, 5, or 1+0; though the amount of slow-down will vary.
When formatting a new HDD (hard disk drive) using Disk Utility, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), which is the current name for HFS+, to get the best performance, meaning read and write speeds, out of your gear.
To determine how your storage is formatted, open Utilities > Disk Utility and select the drive from the sidebar on the left. The text under the name of the drive describes its format. (In the screen shot above, the “Webinar Archives” drive is formatted using HFS+.)
NOTE: If you discover that you formatted your drive incorrectly, you must FIRST copy all data off it before you reformat. Reformatting will erase all existing data on the drive or RAID.
EXTRA CREDIT
2,000 Video Training Titles
Edit smarter with Larry Jordan. Available in our store.
Access over 2,000 on-demand video editing courses. Become a member of our Video Training Library today!
Subscribe to Larry's FREE weekly newsletter and
save 10%
on your first purchase.
9 Responses to Why You Should Always Use HFS+ to Format Mac Hard Disk Drives
Larry:
One problem that my brother and I have both run into is that if you want to use a drive, hard or SSD, for backing up to using TimeMachine, you don’t have a choice. The drive MUST be formatted APFS. Which results in backups being pretty darn slow sometimes when going to a hard drive. 🙁
Lew:
REALLY??? (Not that I don’t believe you, but, that makes no sense.)
Now you force me (quite happily) to do some testing.
Thanks for the information.
Larry
This is interesting news, Lew. I remember that for several years after the macOS required APFS for internal drives, Time Machine backup drives could NOT be APFS. Then, APFS became an option for Time Machine drives. I didn’t realize that it was now the only choice for Time Machine drives.
Lew:
I am VERY surprised to learn that you are correct. I took an empty HDD. Formatted it as HFS+, then assigned it as a Time Machine destination.
Time Machine changed the formatting to APFS, without notification = it just did it.
Fascinating. I have no idea when this format change occurred. Thanks for letting me know.
Also, keep in mind that this forced formatting is ONLY when you assign an HDD as a Time Machine destination. The rest of the time, the Mac honors the current format of the HDD.
Larry
I wonder what would happen, if you formatted an external hard drive as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended format (Journaled)), and then partitioned it into a ‘Time Machine ext HDD’ partition and a small ‘Housekeeping and temp storage’ partition.
Next, designate the ‘Time Machine ext HDD’ partition as a Time Machine destination, as you mentioned before. Will the macOS still change the formatting to APFS? Will it modify the ‘Housekeeping’ partition?
If modern versions of the macOS ALWAYS reformat the Time Machine drive to APFS, then the Apply Support Page quoted above is incorrect, when it says ‘Time Machine still supports backups on Mac OS Extended format (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), and Xsan formatted disks.’
I did the experiment to answer my own question, I formatted an external HDD as HFS+ using Disk Utility and Sequoia 15.2. I then created two partitions, both HFS+ journaled. Next, I designated one of them as a Time Machine backup disk.
Sequoia converted the Time Machine partition into a case-sensitive APFS volume, within a newly created APFS container. The other partition remained HFS+.
‘Curiouser and curiouser’. I just found this active Apple Support page. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac.
The page has a dropdown menu for selecting a version of macOS, including Sequoia. The page recommends APFS, but includes this sentence for all the recent versions of macOS. ‘Time Machine still supports backups on Mac OS Extended format (Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), and Xsan formatted disks.’
For Catalina and before, it recommends ‘Mac OS Extended format (Journaled)’.
You’ve sold me on hard disc drives for stable, long-term storage, but how do I connect my Fantom Green Drive, which I used Firewire for with my G5, to my Mac Mini 2018, which is all USB-C ports?
Obviously, a USB-C adaptor. But, to which port on the hard drive? It has 4 different ports, some I’m not even familiar with.
Or, is it even possible?
Barry:
First, remember that these drives are not very fast. But, they are relatively easy to connect.
1. Get a Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 adapter. eBay has them, made by Apple.
2. Get a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter. Apple makes these, as well.
This will allow you to transfer data off your Green drive to store somewhere else. Your older drive will still work, but it is way past its “expiration date” and it has a very limited capacity compared to today’s gear. Transfer your data to keep it safe.
More than likely, it would fit on a thumb drive.
Larry