Deciding which file system to use for hard disks can be difficult. Here are the advantages and disadvantages explained in detail, for HFS+ and APFS.
APFS
How snapshots are created from a volume in around 0.01 second, why they will grow in size over time, how they can only be of complete volumes, and can’t be edited.
It’s September 2016. Apple has just released the iPhone 7, with its first big.LITTLE CPU cores, then 4 days later macOS 10.12 Sierra. How does it transition from there to release the M1 in four years?
Frameworks provide much of the macOS API. Over the last 5 years, the percentage of Private Frameworks has risen from 76% to 84%. Why is macOS becoming more private?
What separates System and Data volumes, and how does macOS know they’re part of a boot volume group? What distinguished backup volumes, and what is Sidecar?
Understand how TM backs up and how snapshots work to minimise the size of local snapshots and backups, and the time they take. How to ensure files in iCloud Drive are backed up properly.
First securing the Home folder in an encrypted sparse disk image, then to whole-volume encryption using CoreStorage, now using T2 and Apple silicon chips.
How to tell whether someone has been eating the (APFS) porridge on one of your disks, using Get Info and DiskUtility’s First Aid. And a surprise hidden volume from 3 years ago.
The only disk images of varying size used to be sparse bundles and sparse disk images. Now plain read-write disk images can also vary in the disk space they take, as explained here.
When do sparse files explode to full size, and how could you preserve them in transit? Can you copy clones or snapshots? How to preserve extended attributes?
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