External Hard Drive /System Compatibility Looking Fwd

TidBITS Talk
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Dear listees:

I have an “old Apple Hard Drive” that is installed in a FW800 external enclosure that also supports a USB-B connection.

I have a USB-B to USB-C 3.1 cable and I am able to get the drive to mount on my MBP M2 Max running system 15.7.7 (24G720).

Given the below information, and what little I know of the upcoming operating systems, will there come a point soon that the operating system will not let me mount these hard drives to my MBP?

The following additional info is provided

Disk Utility says this:

ASMT 2105 Media

USB External Physical Disk • GUID Partition Map

System Info says this:

Old Apple Drive 750 GB:

Free: 536.24 GB (536,239,943,680 bytes)

Capacity: 749.95 GB (749,946,617,856 bytes)

Mount Point: /Volumes/Old Apple Drive 750 GB

File System: APFS

Writable: No

Ignore Ownership: No

BSD Name: disk9s2

Volume UUID: 26506FD7-DFA6-452B-A655-C0464286017A

Physical Drive:

Device Name: 2105

Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia

Protocol: USB

Internal: No

Partition Map Type: Unknown

Untitled - Data:

Free: 536.24 GB (536,239,943,680 bytes)

Capacity: 749.95 GB (749,946,617,856 bytes)

Mount Point: /Volumes/Untitled - Data

File System: APFS

Writable: Yes

Ignore Ownership: No

BSD Name: disk9s1

Volume UUID: 9E5DF4E7-D0B1-4F45-94B6-4F62B471DE14

Physical Drive:

Device Name: 2105

Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia

Protocol: USB

Internal: No

Partition Map Type: Unknown

I looked into the drive and found nothing I wanted to keep.

Using Disk Utility, I erased it and Disk utility reports:

Erasing “ASMT 2105 Media” (disk8) and creating “Old Apple Drive 750 GB”

Unmounting disk

Creating the partition map

Waiting for partitions to activate

Formatting disk8s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Old Apple Drive 750 GB

Initialized /dev/rdisk8s2 as a 698 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 57344k journal

Mounting disk

Creating a new empty APFS Container

Unmounting Volumes

Switching disk8s2 to APFS

Creating APFS Container

Created new APFS Container disk9

Preparing to add APFS Volume to APFS Container disk9

Creating APFS Volume

Created new APFS Volume disk9s1

Mounting APFS Volume

Setting volume permissions

Operation successful.

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Breaking it down:

HDD: The internals of the HDD don’t matter so long as it has a USB connector. The FW connection is irrelevant.

USB: Your HDD uses USB 2 protocol. No reason to suppose that will stop being supported.

Cable: You have found a cable which will connect to HDD USB-B to Mac USB-C. So that is good.

Disk format:

  1. You have formatted APFS and Apple are not going to stop supporting that!
  2. If you had formatted HFS+ there might be a fairly distant question mark over how long that will be supported.

Overall, I am fairly confident that the disk will have a hardware failure long before Apple stops supporting it.

You may have performance issues if you use the drive very actively (creating, modifying and deleting lots of files). If so you might be better served formatting as HFS+.

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Gilby 101, Thank you. I break out these drives about once every 6 months or so to put stuff on them (duplicated) that I no longer need on my Samsung 2 GB SSDs but I also do not want to trash.

So, I assume these drives will more than likely materially fail long before Apple discontinues support.

Thanks again

Lee

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Question on storage drives. Do I need to reformat all my old drives to APFS to be able to read them in the future? It sounds like some support will drop away in OS 28 (I think from what I have read) but I don’t want to go through the time unless I need to.

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Agreed on all points.

I’d also say that the USB 2 interface is going to massively throttle performance. USB 2 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 480 Mbit/s (or 60 MB/s). In practice, you can expect real-world throughput to be half that (30 MB/s).

In contrast, USB 3.0 tops out at 5 Gbit/s (or 625 MB/s). And if the enclosure supports UASP (as most do these days), you can expect real-world performance to come close.

In terms of why that matters, HDD performance can be expected to max out at around 125-200 MB/s (source: reddit). Well within the capabilities of USB 3, but will be massively throttled by USB 2.

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The future is anybody’s guess. What we know is:

  • The original HFS file system is no longer supported at all. You need third-party software or an old version of macOS to access these.

  • HFS+ is supported today. You can’t create encrypted HFS+ volumes anymore, but non-encrypted volumes work fine. It will provide better performance (compared to APFS) on hard drive media.

    There have been rumors about Apple dropping it in the future, but it’s just rumors, and we have no time-frame for this.

  • APFS is the future for Mac storage. But it is designed for SSDs and doesn’t perform well on HDD media. But if you aren’t going to be actively using them (e.g., for archives or backups), that shouldn’t matter.

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What I’d do with an old drive like that:

  • Re-format it to HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format). DO NOT encrypt it. DO NOT use “case sensitive”.
  • Run disk utility’s “first aid” feature on the newly-created volume. Do you get “a good report”?
  • If so, REPEAT the first aid procedure about 5 times in succession, looking for a good report each time.
  • Because the disk is old and platter-based, I wouldn’t rely on it for critical stuff (unless you back that up somewhere else as well)
  • I WOULD use the disk for non-critical things that you could “afford to lose” – such as copies of applications, copies of older OS’s, videos that are “replaceable”, etc.

I have at least one drive that must be more than 20 years old. still works. It’s an old “software archive” of sorts.
Perhaps a few more that are even older, 25+… they still work! (but are accessed very rarely)

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I have a few drives that are 25+ years old, not including 40+ year old floppies. I’ve moved most of the data to the cloud, but I still have some more drives to look through before I wipe them.

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The cost of NVME SSDs has increased three fold and more. Even for SSD SATA drives the price is exorbitant. I have an old OWC Thunderbay thunderbolt 2 setup. It is quite adequate as a backup, non critical storage device. All 4 drives are formatted HFS and the performance is acceptable for purpose. The drives are all spinners with SATA interface. I won’t be buying more NVME SSDs until the AI datacenter craze has abated somewhat.

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Also note that macOS 27 will be the last version to be able to access an encrypted HFS+ volume. So if you have any encrypted HFS+ volumes, you must either decrypt the volume or move the contents to an encrypted APFS volume before upgrading macOS to version 28 or later.

Apple has said that macOS 28 will retain support for unencrypted HFS+ volumes.

2 Likes
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See also a related discussion here (accessing Firewire drives)

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I am somewhat worried about my reply. :frowning: Hopefully unnecessarily.

I made the assumption that the USB-B connection on the HDD is using USB data protocol. My research (not previous knowledge) is that the ASMT 2105 is a SATA to USB converter and all should be good. Please check in System Information (click Apple at top left, hold option key, click on System Information). Find the USB devices - is your disk there? - great (it might even be USB v3.0 up to 5 Gb/s). But if it is listed under Firewire not good and won’t work with recent macOS.

David, Please comment on what I have now said above?

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Gilby101 et al:

Here is what I am seeing under the USB Topic within System Information:

USB 3.1 Bus:

Host Controller Driver: AppleT8112USBXHCI

Mini Pro:

Product ID: 0x0250

Vendor ID: 0x0dc4 (Macpower Peripherals Ltd.)

Version: 1.00

Serial Number: 140114430144

Speed: Up to 5 Gb/s

Manufacturer: Oyen Digital

Location ID: 0x02200000 / 1

Current Available (mA): 900

Current Required (mA): 144

Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

Media:

2105:

Capacity: 750.16 GB (750,156,374,016 bytes)

Removable Media: No

BSD Name: disk5

Logical Unit: 0

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

USB Interface: 0

Volumes:

disk5s2:

Capacity: 749.95 GB (749,946,617,856 bytes)

BSD Name: disk5s2

Content: Apple_APFS

The FireWire Topic said that no FireWire ports were found.

Thoughts?

Lee

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Michael,

Thanks

I am doing fine with the current setup. If and when these HDDs fail, I will replace them with current technology, whether Huge HDDs or SSDs

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That is good. It really is being detected as a USB 3 device. Forget my worries!

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A reasonable assumption. Nothing other than USB uses a USB-B connector. Either a 4-pin connector for USB versions 1 and 2, or a 9-pin connector for USB 3.

Regarding the drive’s internal connection, I don’t think anyone has ever made a hard drive with a native USB interface. Every USB hard drive you buy will be a SATA drive, with a SATA-USB bridge board in the enclosure. (Some ancient models may have used parallel-ATA drives.)

Most of the time, there’s no technical reason why you can’t remove the drive from one enclosure, and place it in another. (e.g., because the original enclosure is broken, or because you want to upgrade the drive from USB 2 to USB 3).

I say “most of the time” because some external drives from large manufacturers have been known to use custom firmware that locks the drive to the manufacturer’s enclosure. Using it in a different enclosure, or directly attached to a computer will fail. I think WD MyBooks fall into this category.

If it’s a FireWire drive, it will not be connecting with a USB cable. The two connectors are completely different and will use completely different cables. See also Wikipedia: USB and Wikipedia: IEEE 1394.

If the enclosure has both ports, then there will be two bridge chips, and the internal board will select one based on which cable is connected.

1 Like