My Archive disk for putting aside files is usually a HDD and I recently moved them over to a 14 TB drive. I usually format this as Mac OS Extended as I heard that APFS is not very good on a hard disk drive and better for SDD. I have many folders and subfolders and it seems that every time I run Disk Warrior on it, the drive index is very inefficient and needs repair. Would this be a problem if I used APFS. I know it would be slower, but this is an archive disk. Should I still use Mac Extended and just run Disk Utility and Disk Warrior on it at times? Is APFS more stable with less likely to cause the directory problems?
You can expect strongly worded replies from both camps. Personally, I have for many years used exclusively APFS for HDD - I value the reliability and flexibility compared with HFS+ and have not had any issues with performance. For an archive role, APFS will be best - you are looking for reliability.
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(Post moved to start a new thread related to APFS case-sensitivity.)
If this is an Archive HDD disk where you’re copying files to it, I don’t think is any disadvantage to using APFS. The problem with APFS on HDD is excessive file fragmentation, but that’s created by updates to the files. When you copy a file to the archive disk, it creates a new unfragmented file.
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The bigger problem is when the file system itself becomes fragmented. The only solution to that is to start again.
I would agree with the others. I don’t think there’s any particular advantage to using APFS, but since it’s an archive, I don’t think there’s any particular disadvantage.
If you were using this drive for active documents and not an archive, then I’d have a different opinion.
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The two big advantages are: 1) Much more robust file system, 2) Volumes in place of fixed size partitions.
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