Newer macOS installations should use APFS by default, and if you’re formatting an external drive, APFS is the faster and better option for most users. Mac OS Extended (or HFS+) is still a good option for older drives, but only if you plan on using it with a Mac or for Time Machine backups.
Which is better Apfs or Mac OS Extended Journaled?
Mac OS Extended is a journaling file system used by macOS 10.12 or earlier. APFS is best for solid state and flash drives while Mac OS Extended is best for mechanical drives, or drives used on older macOS.
What is the advantage of Apfs?
ApFS performs TRIM-operations asynchronously after saving metadata to stable media. Flexible native encryption – choose different encryption schemes for each ApFS volume, including multi-key encryption when using separate keys to encrypt the file and metadata.
Which Mac disk format is best?
exFAT. Designed by Microsoft to provide similar compatibility to FAT32 without the pesky limitations, exFAT is the format of choice for drives that you’ll share between both Windows and Mac computers. macOS and Windows can each read and write to exFAT volumes, making it ideal for flash storage and external drives.
What format should I use for Mac external hard drive?
The Best Format for External Hard Drives
If you want to format your external hard drive to work with Mac and Windows computers, you should use exFAT. With exFAT, you can store files of any size, and use it with any computer made in the last 20 years.
Is Apfs good for HDD?
APFS currently works only with SSDs, although Apple says that full support for mechanical hard disks and Fusion drives is coming in macOS 10.14 Mojave. It’s possible to format a hard disk drive as APFS, but you’re likely to experience a performance hit compared to it formatted with Mac OS Extended.
Can Windows read a Mac hard drive?
Windows can’t normally read Mac-formatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. But third-party tools fill the gap and provide access to drives formatted with Apple’s HFS+ file system on Windows. This also allows you to restore Time Machine backups on Windows.
Is Apfs only for SSD?
Windows cannot natively read or write to HFS+ (journaled) volumes. APFS (Apple File System)—An Apple file system optimized for solid state drives (SSDs) and flash-based storage systems. … APFS is only supported on macOS 10.13 or later.
How do I know if my Mac is using Apfs?
Assuming your MBP has an SSD it would have been automatically converted to APFS. in disk utility you can click on the disk symbol and the used file system should be displayed.
Is Apfs required for Mojave?
APFS in Mojave works fine on all regular storage media
When you install Mojave onto an SSD, hard disk, or Fusion Drive, if that is still in Apple Extended (HFS+) format, the installer will try to convert that storage to use APFS. There is no option for it to do otherwise.
Should I use exFAT for Mac?
exFAT is a good option if you work often with Windows and Mac computers. Transferring files between the two operating systems is less of a hassle, since you don’t have to constantly back up and reformat each time. Linux is also supported, but you will need to install appropriate software to take full advantage of it.
Is exFAT slower than Mac OS Extended?
Our IT guy always told us to format our hdd storage drives as Mac osx journaled (case sensitive) because the exfat read/write speeds much slower than osx. … ExFat is fine for a backup, for moving around stuff or a flash/transfer drive. However it is not recommended for editing or long term storage.
Is exFAT slower than NTFS?
Make mine faster!
FAT32 and exFAT are just as fast as NTFS with anything other than writing large batches of small files, so if you move between device types often, you might want to leave FAT32/exFAT in place for maximum compatibility.
What’s the difference between Apfs and Mac OS Extended?
APFS, or “Apple File System,” is one of the new features in macOS High Sierra. … Mac OS Extended, also known as HFS Plus or HFS+, is the file system used on all Macs from 1998 until now. On macOS High Sierra, it’s used on all mechanical and hybrid drives, and older versions of macOS used it by default for all drives.
Do you need a special external hard drive for Mac?
In general, you don’t need special Mac-only hardware stuff anymore. Hard drives, RAM, peripherals, etc. are all fairly generally universally compatible; even the stuff that’s generally seen as “Mac” (i.e., FireWire and now Thunderbolt) is Windows- and Linux-compatible and will generally work fine.
Is NTFS compatible with Mac?
Apple’s Mac operating system can always read the Microsoft Windows NTFS-formatted drives but cannot write to them. … Many people will choose to format NTFS to a FAT file system (FAT, FAT32 or exFAT) to make the disk compatible both with Windows and macOS.