I am spending a bit of time backing up data from older encrypted hard drives that were formatted HFS+ since that support will be going away with the next OS update and reformatting the drives in APFS. But I have other archive drives (only used for writing o occasionally) and I was wondering if I should also convert these to the new drive format. I know that on hard drives it can lead to fragmentation, but since these are written once and put aside, that should not be a problem,
I usually move data to new drives (I have folders that were previously entire magneto-opitical drives) but is HFS+ something I should move away from now before I find a drive can’t be accessed in years ahead?
One thing that could enter into the formatting choice is thinking about who would be trying to read the files on the drives in the future. A TBT reader who has a few old Macs lying around or who likes to tinker with things like emulation or virtual machines probably wouldn’t have any problems getting into HFS+ drives. But an heir or trustee might have no idea how to mount and get files off of an ancient storage device.
From that perspective, a more universal format that would work with Windows or Linux systems, like exFAT, might be a better choice. The drawback is that you’d lose some subtleties, like POSIX permissions, journaling, and if you have “classic” files, direct support for resource forks.
Otherwise, it’s perfectly reasonable to move to APFS for an archival drive, as long as it is supported by all machines that might need to access the data.
I went to exFAT when I bought a new archive drive a few years ago, so it could easily be read on any platform. Because it’s specifically for storing archives, not working files, I also try to make sure that all the files are in basic and standard formats; jpeg, pdf, plain text, and the like.
Note that HFS+ isn’t going away, only support for encrypted HFS+.
Assuming encryption of your archive volume is a requirement, another possible option would be to format the volume as normal (not encrypted HFS+) and encrypt the files, either using encrypted disk images or encrypted zip files.
This may prove to be too inconvenient, but it’s another option.
I would note, however, that since you’re talking about an archive, not a volume in active use, APFS file fragmentation should not be a big issue, even on a hard drive. You probably won’t be modifying the files very often, and high performance is not likely to be a concern.
I would have a different opinion if you were talking about a large HDD used for active projects, where files are being modified all the time. APFS fragmentation there might be unacceptable.