It depends whether you’re going to boot macOS from it, on the space required for snapshots, and how large they could become. And there’s more.
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Apple wants us to run our Macs at Full Security and not use third-party kernel extensions, but refuses to build S.M.A.R.T. access into USB in macOS.
All disks cache data to be written, which makes benchmarking them tricky. It has more serious consequences which macOS tries to allow for in file systems and backups.
In Monterey, these haven’t changed much since Big Sur. However, those small differences are significant, particularly on M1 Macs.
Want to create a bootable external disk for your M1 Mac? Here’s how to do it in full detail, from erasing the volumes through to how to remove it safely.
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.7, it remained an HFS+ partition until High Sierra. With Mojave, it became an APFS volume, except for M1 Macs.
Turning the data blocks into files and directories, these have common functions and additional features which can give rise to tricky problems.
Making an external bootable SSD for an M1 Mac has proved tricky. Has this changed in macOS 11.2? If you’ve already got 11.1 running on one, how do you update it to 11.2?
Disk structure diagrammed for comparison, from the partition table, to HFS+ and APFS volumes, with further references.
What you need to know about the APFS file system, its containers and volumes, so you can understand errors and how to repair them.
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