The differences between HFS+ and APFS volumes explored. What a container is, and how to add new HFS+ and APFS volumes to a disk.
HFS+
Can you migrate your old backups from HFS+ to APFS format? What can slow your backups down? Can you still use AFP, and what about restoring the system?
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.
A lot of what Time Machine does when making backups to an APFS volume remains a mystery. So far we don’t understand the magic used by Apple.
Close to the top of my shortlist of new features in the next Apple Silicon Macs is that kernel panics become a thing of the past.
Track down all those duplicated files, and you could save yourself loads of disk space. Rather, you used to be able to. Why this doesn’t work so well now.
How Café and Café are actually different, and only one of those can be a filename in macOS, despite APFS being a non-normalising file system.
A summary of the known benefits and current limitations of Time Machine backups to APFS, with links to more detailed accounts.
Does Big Sur’s Time Machine preserve sparse files and clones when backing up to APFS volumes?
