Internal or external? Hard disk or SSD? USB or Thunderbolt? Cooled or compact? Branded or separates? An external boot disk? Do you have a return and refund option?
HFS+
Born secretly on 27 March 2017, it was Apple’s biggest gamble. Introduced in High Sierra, it didn’t work on Fusion Drives and had other problems. Also explains version numbering.
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.
Problems with the file system of Time Machine backups haven’t gone away with APFS. As there’s no way to copy your backup volume, how to tackle such problems?
Confused by this on APFS? So you should be, as it’s complicated by features like snapshots, sparse files, and the file system itself. There’s no single figure.
For many users, it’s essential to be able to check the integrity of the data which are in a backup. This feature has changed when backing up to APFS.
Tired of HFS+? Disenchanted by APFS? Why not copy or back up to a different file system? Here are crocodiles waiting to bite you.
The differences between HFS+ and APFS volumes explored. What a container is, and how to add new HFS+ and APFS volumes to a disk.
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.
