Apfs slow on hdd. Responding to the Sonoma and Time machine.

Apfs slow on hdd Yesterday on Monterey it was perfect! Anyone else got this issue? Jul 5, 2022 · A Mac Studio Max has an SSD delivering up to 7. Nov 29, 2017 · After 16 months of using and testing APFS—Apple's new file system—I’ve come to the conclusion that you probably don’t want to use it on HDDs (disks with rotating platters). It's clear that something happened between Ventura and Sonoma which crippled performance. com But notably, if you prepare to use the external hard drives under these scenarios, you shouldn't format it to APFS. What is not yet clear is exactly how to get Apple's OS (Mojave in this case) to adapt to a single SSD. Now, it won't even find it when it's plugged in. I installed on my DIY Fusion drive running on a mid 2012, 15" non-retina, MBP with 16GB Ram and an INTEL 520 SSD / WD Black HDD (180GB/750GB). I’ve lost a lot of files to less reliable file systems like FAT and HFS+. When would you use ExFAT? When would you use APFS? Does it matter if you have an external SSD (Solid State Drive)? Or an external HDD (Hard Disk Drive)? Read on and discover the reasons why you’d choose one rather than the other. NOTE: HFS+ is a hard drive format, invented by Apple many, many years ago, for hard disk drives. I have a handful of external USB hard drives that I keep in a rotation and use for backing up some files. When I noticed that current "diskutil apfs createContainer" command wants that the "Main, "Faster" Disk Use" (in diskutil apfs list) needs to be smaller than "Secondary, Designated Aux Use" (in diskutil apfs list) May 29, 2020 · Hi guys, this has been annoying me for a while, finally decided to post about it. 1 Gen 2 compatible disks? Also anyone else seeing huge performance drops with APFS Encrypted volumes? Jan 22, 2015 · I'm seeing reports of slow startups on Apple Discussions. 5 TB of data to the new drive. I am SO confused. Dec 12, 2023 · APFS without encryption on Studio Display, Test size 1TB: So I found, that the APFS formatted SSD has nearly the same speed when plugged directly into the Macbook Pro or into the Studio Display, roughly about 900 MB/s. Feb 6, 2024 · これからはHFS+は自然消滅しAPFSの時代に… な〜んて先走らず（笑）、 素直にHDDはいままでどおりのHFS+が安牌で、 APFSはSSDに最適化されたSSD用フォーマットだと思えていれば…。 数日前の自分の好奇心が憎い（苦笑）。 唯一の救いは内蔵HDD（APFS）がOSやアプリの格納場所じゃなく、 作業中の Jul 13, 2004 · The system sorts out which is the SSD and which is the HDD and assigns them automatically. Using APFS I get write speeds of around 390–405 MB/s. Spoke to apple support they’re clueless. She was complaining that the computer was running really slow. Problem is that you often don’t notice the corruption immediately, so the corruption spreads to 1 day ago · Should you use APFS or APFS Encrypted? This post explains their differences, APFS Encrypted vs FileVault and the steps to erase an APFS ENcrytped drive on Mac. Apr 16, 2025 · NTFS vs exFAT vs FAT32 vs APFS, what are their differences? Check the analysis in this post to choose the right file system format for your hard drive. As you know, Windows 11 and Windows 10 do not support APFS by default. Aug 25, 2010 · First of all, stop using exFAT as your external HDD format. as it came from the factory), and it seems that both drives were APFS when my iMac was originally built. " I know converting an SSD should only take a minute or two, but I wasn't sure about normal HD's. Anyway, thanks for your reply. Of course, at the last 5% there was some APFS is designed with SSDs in mind. It's garbage, unless you are planning on using it across multiple operating systems. Macbook pro mid 2015 upgraded to 1tb ssd samsung 980 pro, solved slow speed after rebooting from startup disk, but still it lags slightly and is not blazing fast, what can i do to make it faster? current drive format is APFS Sep 17, 2022 · It also seems that Apple's APFS does not (effectively) support conventional (rotating disk) HDDs - meaning that the HDD component of Apple's Fusion Drive must be replaced with a SSD. However, on Windows and Nov 12, 2025 · This video should give anyone on Apple ARM computers a good idea about the differences in read and write speeds between ExFAT and APFS. 2 and then going even slower once you exceed your drives' cache. This is something that's a serious consideration for anyone on ARM Macs with Resolve using external media drives. incorrect password takes an additional 4. Apr 23, 2007 · I recently tinkered with making bootable Ventura install in external ssd & hdd. 1 reads 35% slower than in Monterey! Also, once a drive is formatted as APFS, the process of re-formatting a drive into ExFAT changed. Nov 28, 2020 · Formatted to APFS has slowed hard drive speed I recently have a Samsung SSD T7, and ran an initial speed test, which gave me up to 900 read speeds: I was unable to encrypt it (and I didn't want to use Samsungs touch ID) so I formatted it to APFS to allow encryption, but now my speeds are much slower: Any idea why this is? Thanks MacBook Pro Jan 11, 2013 · Previously I've read that was best to format an external hard disk in MacOS Extended instead of APFS, with Monterey release are things still the same? Sep 12, 2019 · This activity generates the "chatter" that you hear when an APFS-formatted HDD is doing filesystem enumeration, and it's this high-latency seek performance of the HDD that causes enumeration to go so slowly. Sep 12, 2022 · There’s nothing more frustrating than shipping a hard drive only to find out the recipient can’t mount the thing. Jul 4, 2017 · APFS is not good for any mechanical HDDs at least not yet, it's so slow on both Macintosh and Hackintosh. HFS+ vs. With the assistance of Apple support, The LaCie drive was erased, reformatted to APFS (Apple File System) and Time machine is working perfectly Having 2 backups for my machine, I bought Sep 13, 2018 · Deep apologies if this isn't the right place. This extra reliability is part of the reason that APFS is slower. 1 writes 25% slower than Monterey. Jun 30, 2007 · But a hard disk has millisecond delays positioning drive heads to access extents. Sep 5, 2019 · Secure erase APFS-formatted hard drive done in seconds My iMac 5K Late 2015 has an internal 1TB mechanical hard drive, APFS-formatted. Dec 3, 2022 · P. Encryption should be an essential feature of all RAIDs at this point. " Are there any tools for APFS to fix the performance? I guess the best option might be to get an SSD and use CarbonCopyCloner to Copy the System over to an SSD. I’m looking for possibly formatting my HDD to APFS. Jan 28, 2023 · The reasoning being that the way APFS handles file changes creates a large number of small file fragments which on a HDD take longer to read. An APFS snapshot is a read-only copy of its parent APFS volume, taken at a particular moment in time. The problem is, HFS drives can no longer be encrypted without being converted to APFS. It is While APFS is optimized for the Flash/SSD storage used in recent Mac computers, it can also be used with older systems with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external, direct-attached storage. At any point in time, each drive probably has around 300,000 files Mar 21, 2023 · It was formatted as APFS but I tried MacOS Journaled instead. The sustained transfer speed remains around 25 MB Jul 29, 2022 · And you realize you have a choice in the file system format you can format your drive to. 13 High Sierra Sep 11, 2018 · I bought an external SSD with a USB 3. Dec 24, 2023 · On quick review, the most significant performance issue is your hard drive. I have swapped cable and ports on my Studio Display where they are connected. If I use external SSD will Graphic Cards work fine or will give problems. What I can't quite understand is, why is mounting so slow? It takes over a minute to mount a 4TB APFS hard drive. 13 or later supports APFS for both bootable and data volumes. Aug 24, 2017 · I'm using late 2013 iMac Mojave with regular 1Tb HDD that's got VERY slow despite only using 150Gb, so now trying to run whole system on Samsung 250gb T5 SDD. S. Oct 23, 2023 · Even though APFS might be better and moving to APFS might get around the issue for a lot of people, the root issue is that there shouldn't be any reason HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (journaled)) should suddenly have become cripplingly slow with Sonoma. However, it doesn’t have built-in Dec 17, 2020 · Is APFS on spinning media really this slow? I'm helping out a former colleague with her 2019 iMac. Unfortunately, one of these features, copy-on-write, can result in a volume that quickly becomes unusably slow. The activity LED on the hard disk flashes continuously. I 'thought' this had done something as when I tried to copy a file across it went really quickly so thought it was something to do with APFS however that doesn't seem to be the case. "After the very first simulation, APFS starts at a deficit — APFS takes three times as long to enumerate a million files on a rotational disk compared to HFS+ enumerating the exact same collection of files on the exact same hardware. Currently I have been waiting well over 6 hours now Jan 8, 2018 · Apple's newest file system, APFS, has modern advancements over the antiquated HFS+, but how does its pros and cons stack up in comparison to its venerable predecessor? Read on to find out. I formatted the new drive to APFS (case sensitive) and copied the 1. It's designed to optimize performance on solid-state drives (SSDs) and provide robust features like strong encryption, space sharing, and crash-safe protections. This is because APFS, while efficient, doesn’t offer defragmentation capabilities like HFS+. I read that APFS was recommended on SSD but still could be used on HDD, this thing sends me into confusion. Dec 17, 2022 · Ventura 13. This is a great article from TechRepubic that has some specific pros and cons of both the systems. However formatting the Jun 12, 2025 · The article: If Time Machine takes a long time to back up - Apple Support says if you are using Time Machine and Sequoia you should be using an APFS formatted drive as your destination. 3 minutes. When a PCIe SSD is formatted using APFS (the current Apple file system): Ventura 13. Sep 25, 2017 · Can you convert a Hard Disk Drive (not SSD) to APFS? If so, is it a good idea to do so? Would it slow down the system or be unstable? iMac 2015 MacBook 2010 macOS 10. Oct 25, 2022 · I’ve got a major problem with Ventura, I’m getting really slow transfer speeds after the update it’s as if everything has reverted to USB 2. 12 is designed to work best with smaller capacity solid Feb 4, 2023 · External SSD Woes - APFS or HFS+ So I have Big Sur on a 2019 Macbook pro and have an old HDD that's starting to get a bit slow and inconsistent so I bought a replacement external SSD - a Sandisk 4TB SSD. All writes are committed to the SSD and only then moved to the HDD when not used for a certain amount of time, always leaving 4GB (IIRC) free on the SSD for fast writing. The Problem with APFS APFS (Apple File System) is a modern file system designed for speed and efficiency on solid-state drives (SSDs). The raw number that has been important in my environment is the number of relocated disk . So far, so good. Writing the 8GB slowed from 1:05 to 2:30 per pass. Overall, APFS offers a snappier experience for most file operations on modern Mac systems. Does this shorten the life of the HDD since APFS saves file system information randomly or are the benefits outweighing the risks? Sep 26, 2024 · Sequoia update has caused mounting issues with external hard drives. Source: From alphr. I am, so far, reasonably happy with APFS. At only 5400rpm it's a very slow drive and is the slowest component in an otherwise very good iMac; it is probably the source of your performance issues. It is running Mojave because she doesn't want to lose access to a few 32 bit apps that she still uses. They are USB-C 2 (not 2x2) drives. Aug 15, 2020 · From looking at the linked page, the performance issues are mainly noticeable when booting from a HDD or when enumarting files (so, as mentioned on the page "If performance of your rescue backup is of paramount importance, then you should consider replacing your HDD backup disk with an SSD"). Is the APFS format on the HDD in a Fusion Drive a necessity (perhaps due the the need for the SSD using APFS)? ExFat: kinda slow, more prone to corruption if the transfer gets aborted dirty, I cannot open a folder with a lot of folders / files in it in Mac, uses more space, slower to copy stuff over APFS: great on Mac, can be used on Windows with programs (paragon, etc) but it becomes unreliable (found a lot of sources, mostly on reddit of data Feb 15, 2025 · APFS and Mac OS Extended are two file systems used on Apple devices. This means that after you installed APFS for Windows and performed a reboot it starts automatically and loads during PC startup sequence. APFS, also invented by Apple, is a newer format specifically designed for SSDs. I'm on macOS 10. And APFS' slow mode doesn't thrash the drives as badly as HFS+. A second Crucial 4TB (same X9) formatted as APFS gets me 900 and 930 respectively. We need to install third-party file system drivers to open files in APFS drives. Aug 24, 2023 · So in conclusion, APFS encryption on the Thunderbay 8 using 4 SSD drives (bays A-D) works great in RAID 0, acceptable as RAID 10 for write speed, but write speed is too slow in RAID 5. 4 on the same machine, MacBook Air M1. Mar 19, 2022 · I feel like APFS would be better for being the same as my computer hard drive, but then I read other articles which said the advantages of APFS are lost on non-SSD external hard drives. Booting from an APFS drive is also faster than booting from exFAT. That seems like a bug. Some quick background but, I have a Time Machine backup on another partition of a total 2TB HDD, but I wanted to reformat and install a fresh version of the OS. I have checked the disks using Disk Utility and also using fsck from Responding to the Sonoma and Time machine. You can't convert APFS to HFS you need to erase the whole hard disk using disk utility and format it as HFS. Encryption passwords on keychain. APFS has a bunch of safeguards against data corruption and other kinds of bit rot that ExFAT doesn’t. APFS allocates disk space within a container (partition) on demand. I had Mac OS Extended Journal and with Time machine was running into issues. Oct 22, 2023 · For traditional hard drives, the differences are less pronounced. An APFS volume can have zero or more associated APFS snapshots. Click to expand It's even simpler than that. Connect the USB or HDD to your Mac computer. 0 speeds. 1 gen 2 enclosure. It works so well, you can partner a good SSD with a slow USB 2 HDD and still get impressive results. Why does it write an encrypted disk image at the speed of a slow hard disk? Aug 13, 2021 · A "system snapshot" is used by APFS for a number of reasons and should not be deleted. It's still stuck on the last step, "reporting pre-conversion statistics. Conclusions: exFat may have its optimisations for SSDs. Here is the 1 day ago · Should you use APFS on external drives? Though APFS is the default file system for Mac internal hard drives, it also can be used on external hard drives. Oct 25, 2022 · As mentioned I made some benchmarks comparing Monterey 12. diskutil apfs resetFusion I replaced the 1TB spinner in my Late 2015 iMac with a 1TB SATA SSD. It will help you choose the right file system for your external hard disk. 5 days ago · This is a guide about APFS vs. I have a 6TB HDD (rotational disk drive) on a dock that I will be using to back up a 500 GB internal drive on a brand new Mini and an external 2 TB HDD drive (mostly music and videos) I will be using pretty Aug 16, 2023 · Slow 2019 iMac with Fusion Drive I have a 2019 iMac which is has been having speed issues for quite a long time now. For example, any time you update macOS, that process starts by first making a copy of the APFS system volume (Macintosh HD) to a snapshot. While you may think that it would be fairly obvious that APFS would be the faster and preferred file format option. Aug 8, 2019 · Found this note according to APFS: "Copy-on-Write may cause a performance degradation over time as the drives become fragmented. If you are a new Mac owner, you will notice that your file system is no longer HFS+ but APFS. Jan 29, 2025 · Slow writing on WD 5 TB APFS external HDD Hi, I have a WD extern HDD of 5 TB APFS, and from few weeks I noticed that it slowed down a lot in writing, I thought that the problem due to the fact that it was almost full and therefore I freed up about 400 GB but still to copy 20 GB of video files from as waiting time 3 hours. I have tried mounting it on other Macs, and it’s the same way (slow). Jan 16, 2015 · I have a 5TB Seagate OneTouch HDD USB external disk and this disk takes 15 to 20 minutes to mount. Jan 3, 2024 · 1. 1 reads 25% slower than I’ve had similar issues when using APFS on the Time Machine hard drive, it’s slow for working with small files as it’s not designed for hard drives. This external HDD is meant for user data only, though I might shift data to and fro other ex MacDrive 11 is the most powerful solution for accessing Mac disks, drives, and even RAID Volumes on Windows. The Apple File System (APFS) that was developed and released alongside Mac OS 10. Nov 15, 2024 · It is 5 years old but I believe it is still valid. P. I have no use for Time Machine, it will purely be used for video files. This disk has 3 partitions all APFS, 2 encrypted. Jan 14, 2024 · My Crucial 4TB x9 SSD, run as factory default with ExFat formatting gets me about 1400MB/s write and 900 Read with Black Magic Speed Test. Mar 8, 2023 · I recently bought a 12 TB external HDD to replace an ageing and free-space-volatilising 6 TB hard drive. How Dec 12, 2023 · APFS without encryption on Studio Display, Test size 1TB: So I found, that the APFS formatted SSD has nearly the same speed when plugged directly into the Macbook Pro or into the Studio Display, roughly about 900 MB/s. You might get errors while doing it in macOS High Sierra and some times it won't be formatted as HFS even in Sierra, if disk utility in Sierra failed you can use El Capitan to However, drives formatted with APFS still seems to be slower. This would result in (relatively) very slow disk access times if the disk were formatted with APFS. Most show that Ventura is slightly faster but my external HDD access is slightly slower but not significantly slower at all (in fact, some accesses are a bit faster). I would have expected the APFS drive to be faster. Ventura 13. I hope SoftRAID/OWC can work with Apple to fix this RAID 5 APFS encryption speed slowdown soon. very slow back up time and in some cases backup failing because of a specific file type. It also reports "raw" SMART statistics. Should I go with HFS or APFS? In this specific situation, what are the benefits and the disadvantages of both and Oct 24, 2018 · If you are running macOS, my guess (speculating without answer to other questions) is that you are hitting both issues -- your drives are going slow due to slowdown of APFS Encrypted in macOS 15/15. What performs better in day-to-day use? APFS is very optimised for flash storage and I think it would performe worse than MacOS Extended on HDDs. It takes about 30+ minutes for it to mount on MacOS once connecting it, and once it mounts, it’s extremely slow to browse directories in the Finder and copy files to the drive. macOS 10. But if that's your plan, then I still wouldn't use exFAT and would instead format it as NTFS and purchase a third party NTFS app like Paragon Partition so you can read and write to NTFS We recommend using APFS whenever you are creating a volume which only uses SSDs as this allows you to take advantage of these great features. It is able to do SMART testing on USB disk drives. Dec 20, 2024 · But, I wondered, is that just hearsay or is there some truth to it? So, during my recent performance testing of an OWC Thunderbay 4 HDD RAID, I put this to a detailed test. Each drive is formatted APFS, encrypted. This is Monterey on a new 24" M1 iMac. When I attempt a 2-pass secure erase with 150GB internal volume used, it's done in less than 30 seconds (option+cmd+r OR cmd+r > disk utility > erase). Opening Nov 23, 2022 · I checked a diskutil output made before the repair work was done (i. So, to do so I have gone into Disk Utility from startup and clicked Erase on my "Macintosh HD". e. . Forecast: approx. Oct 26, 2022 · Reads were extremely slow - loading the list of files was excruciatingly slow and it seemed to have more trouble with files that had specific icons (not folders, but pdfs, apps, images, etc. Back up any important data to another device since formatting will erase all data on the drive. Jan 11, 2023 · Hi, I just bought a WD Elements 5TB HDD, and I was wondering what was the best file system to format it with. TL;DR: How good is formatting an external drive with Encrypted APFS? Dec 27, 2020 · Anyone else experiancing this with slow transfer speed on the M1 with USB 3. The articles I have seen all seem to be from 2017 when APFS was young. It takes several minutes just to boot up, and it's almost unusable for my work as a graphic designer. Device works fine on other devices. upon plugin takes about 4. I formatted T5 as APFS and used Carbon Copy Clone ("CCC") to copy everything to the T5 and then set T5 as Startup Disk from Preferences. 4 GB/s, and a CPU up to 50% faster than a 16-core Xeon. encrypted backup time machine hard drive. Aug 30, 2025 · Thank you for developing such excellent software—it's been incredibly useful. May 16, 2022 · Which is faster with a hard disk: using APFS or sticking with HFS+? Are there any differences in their performance on SSDs? I have an external WD drive connected via USB-C, formatted ExFAT on my 2020 Intel MacBook Pro. I'm not willing to test this again. 1 writes 14. 9 hours remaining time. 3 for the drive to prompt for the password. ) Copying files from the SSD to my computer was extremely slow (5mb/s, sometimes slower), regardless of the method used Feb 20, 2009 · So I am buying a new external mechanical hard drive to use as a media storage drive to use on my M1 Mac mini. Sep 24, 2025 · This article offers you 3 ways for how to convert external hard drive to APFS, including 2 ways for how to convert an external disk to APFS without erasing data. Jan 6, 2022 · The activity LED on the hard disk flashes continuously. Oct 17, 2015 · But APFS isn't great for hard drives because the memory addressing of APFS has to translated into track/sector addressing with moving heads and spinning platters of the hard drive, if the hard drive is formatted for APFS. I connected remotely, and sure enough it was dog slow. Here was another reformat of the 2TB SanDisk Extreme SSD to APFS Is it any faster? Yea, where are those 1050 MB/sec read times From Promise R4: 0:18 The APFS volume switched to a slower write mode at 600 GB free 10% free space. Should I change the HDD or use external SSD. Apple also limited Time Machine to only officially support APFS, forcing HFS+ drives to be formatted to APFS before being allowed to be used. Regarding SMART testing, I use and recommend DriveDX for this purpose. 6 and Ventura 13. Scenario 3 (Mac on APFS): I format the external hard disk with the Mac and start the copying process. I am currently experiencing the following issue: Device: MacBook Pro M1 Source Drive: SanDisk Extreme Pro 2TB SSD (APFS Volume) Backup Drives: Two Seagate 8TB Enterprise HDDs in RAID 1 (APFS Volume) I am using two-way sync mode to back up approximately 2TB of data. As a native macOS file system, APFS has deep integration with macOS and firmware for rapid booting. Much, much better than HFS+ which switched from 1:44 to about 80:00 per pass. Sep 20, 2020 · WTH, Apple? Why have you forced APFS onto HDDs when it's so horrifically slow? All those people who bought brand new Macs in 2019 with a HDD have been completely ripped off. Jul 23, 2018 · macOS High Sierra switched to APFS (Apple File System) for Macs with solid-state storage, but what does it do? Jeff Carlson explains why Apple made the change, how APFS works, and what it can do for you. It is significantly slower than the Apple APFS partition format. Apple, you need to fix APFS on HDD, or allow the use of HFS+ on HDD! This is CrAzY! Jun 25, 2024 · I just reformatted a WD RED 18TB after swapping out the Seagate EXOs in the Orico external enclosure for both MacOS Extended Encrypted (aka HFS+ with Core Storage), benchmarked, and APFS encrypted, and benchmarked and APFS encrypted is significantly slower on writes than good ol MacOS Extended Jul 24, 2017 · I started a conversion to APFS for my time machine backup, an external Seagate Backup Plus, about 45 minutes ago. Dec 5, 2023 · Reports are coming in that the new macOS Mojave automatically converts not just SSDs but also hard drives to APFS when users upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave. Ex: had one working and then all of a sudden M3 Max MacBook Pro stops recognizing the device. 7% slower than Monterey Ventura 13. Nov 28, 2020 · I contacted Samsung and this seems to be an Apple issue I did some experiments and found that it's not the Partition Map but the encryption When decrypted the drive is fast, but when encrypted it's about 200 mbps slower Is there any reason why encryption would slow hard drive speeds? Thanks May 8, 2025 · To format a new Time Machine HDD as APFS Case Sensitive on Mac, open Disk Utility, select the drive, choose "Erase," and then select APFS as the format and Case-Sensitive as the scheme. I used the inline APFS conversion during the public beta HS install without issues. APFS is faster and more reliable for solid-state drives, while Mac OS Extended works I find Encrypted APFS much more convenient, given that I mostly use them in macOS, although I don’t save the password on the system keychain because with the Mac unlocked, everyone would have access to my drives. 6 with a MBP (late 2013). Jul 28, 2023 · My iMac is running very slow and I want to know the solution for it. Long term it makes little sense for Apple to make any trade-offs in APFS that would benefit HDDs if it disadvantages SSDs. In addition, APFS is not kind to HDD performance due to the way it stores metadata on the drive; the drive ends up doing a lot of seeking, which further slows it down Aug 15, 2023 · APFS is a new file system that has been introduced by Apple. Dec 9th Update: Full video explaining the issue here. P. Booting from an external USB drive will be slower than booting from your internal drive. exFAT on a Mac External Hard Drive. Supporting HDD specific features would also add extra complexity in the APFS code base, which in turn will likely cause APFS bugs and potential data loss. Oct 28, 2023 · Drive is very slow to mount Details So I have a 5TB HD, APFS formatted. Have you considered replacing your internal HDD with the SSD external? May 26, 2025 · Or if you export to an APFS formatted external fast SSD (that does not choke to slow HDD speed with large sustained writes as some cheap SSDs do, not to a flash/thumb drive)? Apple has updated exFAT under the hood and it might still have teething problems so that's why I suggest testing this with APFS. This result on its own is staggering. 13. I've run an Etrecheck report on it a few times, and the results in terms of disk read/write speed seem to vary massively. APFS encrypted the speed drops to 720MB/s write / 780 MB/s read when plugged into the Macbook. Just fairly frustrated at what is wrong. So using APFS as a target for an SD! backup might be fine as long as one doesn't expect to boot from Jun 14, 2010 · APFS works just as well with Fusion Drives, it's your superslow HDD that hinders the setup. It's actually quite surprising View APFS snapshots in Disk Utility on Mac On your Mac, you can view a list of APFS snapshots, copy information about the snapshots, and delete them. I can't believe they were selling such slow solutions only a year ago. Whatever Apples decides, I cannot use APFS formatted devices in the ~90% of the market made up by Windows, and of course not with perfectly good Android gear (also far more prevalent, than any slow iPhone/iPad virtually “anywhere” outside the US with 95+% of the population of this world). Apr 24, 2024 · APFS, or Apple File System, is a modern file system developed by Apple Inc. APFS for Windows is not an application or program – it is a filesystem driver. Oct 2, 2019 · External seagate HDD - 4 TB, freshly formatted to APFS - out of severel tests: about 45 MB/s for 500MB file about 72 MB/s for 4GB video file I also got two write errors while attempting to copy the drive never once failed before (was in a home nas for a while) transfers from a macbook pro for the same drive 105 MB/s for the smaller 500MB file Aug 5, 2025 · This article talks about how to delete an APFS partition/volume/container from the Macintosh HD or an external hard drive. Aug 5, 2025 · Guide to fixing hard disk drives (HDDs) that takes a while to mount on Mac and explain the reasons why external hard drives mount slowly on Mac. Troubleshooting reformatting brings back the performance until it hits the threshold again then the issue returns. Format Drive to APFS with Disk Utility To format a USB drive or external hard drive to APFS (Apple File System) format on Mac, you can use the built-in Disk Utility app to easily realize the task. Way slower than normal. Perhaps APFS is also a factor, since my newer drives have SMR hardware and APFS formatting. Thank you for your help! Apr 22, 2015 · I haven't noticed any issues with APFS on my SSD's, but when checking on the G-Technology site to see if there was a firmware update for my old 3TB spinner, I ran across this: "For the bulk of G-Technology products we use mechanical or rotational hard drives. PSA: If your external hard drives on your Mac are super slow, charge the drive format to APFS Discussion Dec 4, 2024 · Many Mac users experience slowdowns on their hard drives (HDDs) when they are partitioned with APFS and reach full capacity. wigbm kibu yhox qgbneoi sssvg vumuk fgefm lwpz zbfycjb xpf csrdmd ioht msehknp jrkppzw qhgxwgtd