APFS Is Not Optional (apple.com) 330
From a new Apple knowledge base article: When you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems with all flash storage configurations are converted automatically. Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won't be converted to APFS. You can't opt-out of the transition to APFS.
Thanks for the memo (Score:3)
Was this approved accidentally...?
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whipslash, can you please deal with msmash? (Score:2, Informative)
whipslash, if you still come around this site, could you please do something about msmash?
This submission should be considered totally unacceptable for the front page. The topic matter is interesting and very relevant, but the summary itself is beyond atrocious. As you can see, it is completely lacking any and all context. I can't see how any editor would look at this submission and think it's anything but garbage. Yet apparently msmash considered it good enough to put on the front page of this site!
This is
it certainly reads like it was written in a bubble (Score:2)
Phrases such as "Devices formatted as HFS+ can be read and written to by devices formatted as APFS." do not inspire confidence in comunication.
Ok... and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok... and? (Score:4, Informative)
I had to read some more to actually understand WTF this was about. It seems this APFS is some new, flash device optimized, encrypted filesystem for Apple products that is supposed to replace the incredibly crappy HFS+.
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The way the summary is written, most readers might be concerned that this affects USB flash drives.
Re:Ok... and? (Score:5, Funny)
Apples still have USB ports?
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If you want to get technical, they are Thunderbolt ports that are also compatible with the USB 3.1 spec.
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Linus agrees with me. From the Wikipedia page for HFS+:
HFS Plus lacks several features considered staples of modern file systems like ZFS and NTFS. Data checksums is the most routinely cited missing feature. Additionally, the core of the filesystem uses case-insensitive NFD Unicode strings, which led Linus Torvalds to say that "HFS+ is probably the worst file-system ever."
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User name checks out.
So, you tell me: What does ext4 have that HFS+ doesn't? Nevermind, I will tell YOU:
From the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
1. Twice the theoretical filestorage limit. But in a practical sense, how many users are going to bump up against HFS+'s 8 EiB limit, anyway?
2. Better Hard-Links support.
3. Case-sensitivity by Default (although it is highly debatable as to whether this is actually an ADVANTAGE for most users!)
4. XIP (Execute in Place). Whatever...
5. Filesystem-level Encryption (Exper
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the incredibly crappy HFS+
Is HFS+ really all that crappy? I recognize that HFS+ is ancient technology (by computing standards) and doesn't support a lot of new features, but OTOH for me it has always done its job and not caused me any problems -- my files are always where I left them in the morning.
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the incredibly crappy HFS+
Is HFS+ really all that crappy? I recognize that HFS+ is ancient technology (by computing standards) and doesn't support a lot of new features, but OTOH for me it has always done its job and not caused me any problems -- my files are always where I left them in the morning.
Exactly.
I have been using Macs since they were called Lisas, and in all those years, the only time I have had HFS or HFS+ lose or corrupt a byte of data was when a hard drive went suddenly and catastrophically, south. Maybe a ZFS pool would have not lost any data; but this was before that time.
HFS+ may not be the snazziest FS; but it is reliable as the day is long.
Re:Ok... and? (Score:5, Informative)
It seems APFS is automatic on flash storage, but not on spinning disks for reasons relating to the security of data-deletion.
Flash storage without strong encryption is insecure - since the Flash Translation Layer abstracts the Logical Block Address from the Physical Block Address for wear-levelling purposes, and the drive includes a pool of additional storage space that cannot be accessed directly. Therefore secure file deletion is not possible - files cannot be securely overwritten.
In the past, Apple have withdrawn 'secure delete' (overwriting deleted files) from their operating systems for this reason.
Full disk encryption sidesteps this issue since destroying the key that encrypted the file prevents the file from being recovered, even if it's in the wear-levelling reserved pool.
Reading through Apple's information [apple.com] about APFS, it seems Apple are moving to a file-system that's encrypted on a per-file basis to permit secure deletion of individual files, not just a single-key per container system that only allows secure wiping of the entire container.
Security and privacy are fundamental in the design of Apple File System. That's why Apple File System implements strong full-disk encryption, encrypting files and all sensitive metadata.
Multi-key encryption with per-file keys for file data and a separate key for sensitive metadata.
Multi-key encryption ensures the integrity of user data. Even if someone were to compromise the physical security of the device and gain access to the device key, they still couldn't decrypt the user's files.
Re: Ok... and? (Score:5, Informative)
The good: it makes your drives faster/better
The bad: many people are quesy about touching their data structures and don't understand the importance of backups.
It's a non-story, we've known about this for a few years and it's already been rolled out to the entire iOS codebase.
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APFS is a new _File_System_ not a new driver. Use of Apple or 3rd party hardware changes nothing.
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Choice good, no choice bad.
Further, New is bad, old is better (except when it is not). In this case, New is "untested" and Old is "reliable", which accentuates the Old Good/New Bad theme.
Additionally, there is the fear of "Something Might Go Wrong(tm)" whenever faced with change. And having no choice increases that fear, and hence is bad.
This is /. in 2017, so you don't actually have to know the technical merits to argue the case. And if you do know the technical merits, you'll be shouted down as a "Fanboi"
Re:Ok... and? (Score:5, Informative)
Re the actual technical merits:
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Is that really a list of the merits of APFS, or the shortcomings of what it's supposed to replace?
Re:Ok... and? (Score:5, Funny)
You're right, let's stick with HFS+ then.
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You're really moving the goalposts here. Yes, it's "no worse" in every technical way. There are some things it doesn't do better: it doesn't increase your flash drive's internal capacity. It doesn't conjure unicorns any better than HFS+ did. It doesn't mow your lawn. There are some things it does worse: conceivably there's some program somewhere that does
to detect whether it's running on a Mac, and that program will break.
Macs ship with Samba built in. I'm gonna go ahead and s
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Spoken as though this could only be addressed in the filesystem (or even that you'd want it to be).
If only storage devices had ever thought to implement ECC to protect against bit errors!
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Every iOS device running 10.3 (IIRC) is running APFS. That's more devices than there are Macs which can run High Sierra.
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You're going to wait a long time for the answer of the guy that's using Windows 10 on a FAT32 filesystem :)
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Couldn't even bother reading TFSummary?
Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won't be converted to APFS
I really want to see your Mac Plus, PDP-11 and VIC 20 that are running off of an SSD.
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Apparently you can't opt out of something that sometimes doesn't happen. I'd have thought that meant you can't opt in, but there you go.
Windows and Linux support (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be a weird stance if they did though, since APFS is better than HFS+ in litterally every way.
Including readability and writability by the non-macOS operating systems that you have installed on other partitions in Boot Camp in order to port your Mac apps to those other operating systems?
Or are Mac owners expected to carry an external drive on which to store any file that should be accessed by more than one operating system? And if so, in which file system should said external drive be formatted?
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The only reason any other OS can read HFS+ is because someone reverse-engineered the structure and wrote drivers. So go ahead and write drivers for APFS.
What patents affect APFS? (Score:2)
The only reason any other OS can read HFS+ is because someone reverse-engineered the structure and wrote drivers. So go ahead and write drivers for APFS.
And end up on the business end of a patent infringement lawsuit. Microsoft is already requiring royalties for exFAT from every manufacturer of SDXC hosts and cards.
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The only reason any other OS can read HFS+ is because someone reverse-engineered the structure and wrote drivers.
As someone who has done exactly that: there's very little reverse engineering involved. The main points of the filesystem are well-documented in Tech Note 1150. For the newer features and some details, you need to look at the publicly-available kernel source. A few features, like file compression, are not well-documented and require reverse engineering, though you can get pretty far with existing third-party documentation (like the Singh book).
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Or are Mac owners expected
Mac owners, in general, aren't expected to do jack. Mac owners with the technical knowledge required to contrive the setup you describe are expected to be able to support their own inventions.
"Argh, what do you mean this doesn't support the custom CPU microcode I wrote?" Well, if you're doing that then you should be able to figure it out yourself.
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Or are Mac owners expected
Mac owners, in general, aren't expected to do jack. Mac owners with the technical knowledge required to contrive the setup you describe are expected to be able to support their own inventions.
Boot Camp is an Apple product, built into the OS. Booting to Windows or another OS from a Mac is expected and supported, and this change makes that supported configuration less useful. Apple even ships drivers for Windows on the OSX install image to make specialized Mac hardware operable under Windows. Hopefully they ship at least a read-only APFS Windows driver at some point.
Re:Windows and Linux support (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Not even close. Other operating systems tend to be much more accommodating. Either the OS vendor itself is more accommodating or the end users pick up the slack.
You're so full of shit it's running out your ears.
Natively, macOS can read/write the following filesystems:
APFS, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ext2 (or maybe later).
And with MacFuse, it can read/write more.
https://osxfuse.github.io/ [github.io]
So, what were you saying, again?
Must be a slow news day... (Score:2)
apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card (Score:4, Interesting)
apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card
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apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card
Damn good question.
Knowing Apple, I think we may sadly already know the answer.
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so the update will auto convert and then boot to a non apple hardware error screen on boot
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No, not Apple hardware only. I've formatted a Sandisk thumb drive and an WD USB drive with APFS.
It's just a new file system. You should be able to use it in place of HFS+, anywhere where you could use HFS+.
No Backing Out? (Score:2)
So this means High Sierra is a one-way upgrade, 'cause Sierra (and older) doesn't grok APFS. Well, not totally, but you'd better have a full Time Machine backup before upgrading, and if High Sierra breaks something you like (e.g., old but great Garage Band sound generators, old but great software, some driver for some great thing you use) you'll have to do a complete wipe, including re-formatting the drive, before re-installing Sierra (or older) from scratch and then restoring from Time Machine.
Workable,
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This. I would recommend actually making at least two USB boot drives and setting them aside, or even make a bootable DVD just to have hardware media squirreled away somewhere. It also is wise to copy off the application directory as a backup.
Re:No Backing Out? (Score:4, Informative)
Workable, and thankfully Time Machine and Apple's Recovery Mode works so well, but damn you'd better have a reliable Time Machine drive, and better yet some install media with your last working Mac OS.
Actually, in addition to the "Recovery Partition", OSX/macOS has had the ability for quite some time to automagically download and install the ORIGINAL OS for your particular Mac, and/or to create a USB Installer. No "Install discs", "Recovery Partition", or TM backup needed.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-... [macworld.co.uk]
New Story Submission! (Score:3)
I am going to have a roast beef sandwich for lunch, I will opt out of the potatochips. However, lettuce, tomato and mayo are included with each order. You cannot opt out of the lettuce, tomato and mayo.
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Lettuce and tomato I understand because they're solid toppings. But I don't see how it's so easy to remove mayonnaise from a sandwich.
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Lettuce and tomato I understand because they're solid toppings. But I don't see how it's so easy to remove mayonnaise from a sandwich.
Easy!
Same way you wash dishes! Just use a Kenmore!
"Here you go! Good dog, Kenmore!"
Strat :)
Looks like a nice modern filesystem (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a Mac guy, so I had to look this up: Apple File System [wikipedia.org] (APFS) is a decent modern filesystem with most features you'd expect from something developed somewhat recently. Here's a FS comparison [wikipedia.org] where you can compare it to the latest and greatest competing formats like Linux's ex4 [wikipedia.org] and Btrfs [wikipedia.org], Sun's (Oracle's) ZFS [wikipedia.org], and of course Microsoft's NTFS [wikipedia.org].
Features uncommon elsewhere include native snapshotting, encryption, and error correction.
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Features uncommon elsewhere include native snapshotting, encryption, and error correction.
I don't think error correction is actually part of it. Perhaps the filesystem data itself is protected, that could be true. However for the user data integrity, Apple are trusting the hardware to do the right thing. That might be fine for their SSDs, which they control themselves.
But I'm a little bit disappointed that checksumming isn't present, because I'd love to be able to just ram that filesystem on external sticks and harddrives, and know that my data is checksummed.
I wouldn't stress about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I know: filesystems take a long time to mature and not lose data. You want your FS tested — widely — before you rely on it to not eat data.
Here's the thing: iOS 10.3 included an upgrade to APFS. Since March, every updated iPhone and iPad has been running this in production. Most of them have no idea, because it's basically invisible. I haven't heard of any problems stemming from this change.
So, while OS X has different (more variable, probably) use cases from the sealed systems in iOS, it's very likely that in "normal" usage, APFS is going to be reliable for folks.
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So, while OS X has different (more variable, probably) use cases from the sealed systems in iOS
One of them being Boot Camp. What file system should be used for data shared among macOS, Windows, and Linux?
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I have a USB SSD with a FAT32 partition on it. That usually does the trick.
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Neither the new one nor any filesystem that it would replace. This is a moot point.
Question (Score:2)
What about a Mac with two internal drives, a non-Apple SSD and regular HDD? The HDD prevents the OS from using APFS?
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It probably only cares about the drive with the operating system on it.
All's Good (Score:2)
This is a good upgrade to improve the file system. Among other things it improves protection against hackers and hostile governments (try and find another kind...).
A new file system? Where can I buy this? (Score:2)
I better get in line at Best Buy right now, I'm sure people will be standing in line for this release!
Seriously though this is another reminder that maybe I need a new laptop. This MacBook I'm typing on is somewhere around 10 years old and it's stuck at macOS 10.11, which will soon be two versions behind. I hit this wall before when my previous Apple laptop was stuck at 10.4 as I recall. Sure there's hacks to work around the software enforced system requirements but I think I got my money's worth out of
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only problem I can think of is that the drive may be inaccessible by other file systems.
If the OS breaks down for some reason, this may make recovery of data a serious issue.
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough, but not enough of a reason not to upgrade. HFS+ must go at some point, you need to get it over with eventually. It's been widely known that this change was coming for quite a while, any external tooling has had enough time to migrate where necessary.
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Re: Glad I opted out of... (Score:2)
And smaller drives on a Mac can be FAT or HFS or whatever. If you order a new Windows laptop what is the default file system?
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If you order a new Windows laptop
This is Slashdot, why on Earth would I do that?
To install Linux onto it?
I know that there are places that sell laptops with Linux pre-installed but this is Slashdot, who doesn't wipe the drive and install their own OS of choice anyway? There's just a much wider choice of hardware if one ignores which OS comes on the laptop knowing they'll just blow it away once the computer is in their hands.
The question to ask how the Windows partition is formatted on the drive from the factory is something someone might just notice as they go to gparted and blow away
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No, to install Linux on it and then bitch about the lack of commercial support for it.
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> Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
It takes change control out of the hands of the end user.
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Which end user is truly concerned about the file system? Which end user even knows what that is? As far as most users go, this is exactly the same as any other OS X update in the past: you either update or you don't; if you update, the system either works or it doesn't. It hardly matters why exactly the system may give you issues after an upgrade; in the past there have always been slight incompatibilities here and there after a major upgrade which have been ironed out by affected 3rd parties rather quickly
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which end user is truly concerned about the file system? Which end user even knows what that is?
That's the argument? It's OK because Apple users don't know what a file system is?
If you can't run High Sierra for whatever reason right now
OK, but if Apple users don't even know what a file system is, how will they know if updating any one of their plethora of Apple devices might break compatibility with any other devices? If they upgrade, and it doesn't work, can they revert?
if you update, the system either works or it doesn't.
Is that the updated motto? Apple: it either works or it doesn't.
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Yep, that's pretty much the argument. Do you think any end user cared when /usr was locked down a couple of years ago?
The people who need to know (developers) have long since known that this transition is going to happen and they've had a while to prepare for it if they needed to. What good does it do to allow anyone to opt out at this point? APFS is going to happen eventually, no two ways about it. If not this year, then when is it convenient for you to do the transition? It's a lot simpler for everyone in
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Do you think any end user cared when /usr was locked down a couple of years ago?
I don't know, did it cause problems for anyone? If it didn't affect anyone, I doubt anyone cared. If it caused problems, I'm sure that people cared even without understanding the underlying reason why.
What good does it do to allow anyone to opt out at this point?
I guess we'll find out. If Apple forces an update to hardware and it causes problems, then we'll have our answer.
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the PROGRA~1 folder?
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Which end user is truly concerned about the file system?
Me! I work in a lab with nearly every OS imaginable, either on instrumentation or user-facing systems. A robust multi-OS filesystem is very important. I'd settled on HFS because I almost never use Windows, find FAT too small/limited, and find NTFS support a bit tedious and not MacOS friendly
I wander back and forth between Mac OS and Linux depending on how much coffee our BSOFH had today, so it's hard to guess what kind of file system I'll need to use to resurrect the smoking ruin of my workspace (Eurocra
Who cares? (Score:2)
It takes change control out of the hands of the end user.
Yeah I can't count the number of Mac users I've heard complaining about not being able to control which file system they use....
Yes that was sarcasm.
Seriously, hardly anyone actually gives a shit. If it works then it is fine. As long as it doesn't cause problems 99.99999% of users aren't going to give a shit. The few that might are probably running linux anyway. Quite frankly you will have a hard time even finding Mac users who could tell you what the current file system used on the Mac is and even fewe
Re: Glad I opted out of... (Score:2)
I probably am close to the average end user. As long as my system keeps working, preferably better than before the update, I'm fine with it.
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Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
Notwithstanding the fact that this Slashdot "article" looks like someone who was trying to reply to an email on an existing conversation accidentally posted an out-of-context chunk to Slashdot instead, clicking on the one link and looking at the bullet points would suggest that APFS is not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6, so that any computers running those prior versions would not be able to read or write to the updated devices, it sounds like Boot Camp does not support APFS, and it may aff
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... clicking on the one link and looking at the bullet points would suggest that APFS is not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6, so that any computers running those prior versions would not be able to read or write to the updated devices, it sounds like Boot Camp does not support APFS, and it may affect network file shares.
- Time will tell, but I have a hard time believing that High Sierra is going to convert external drives as well as boot volumes. If we're only talking about boot volumes, then being "not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6" is only going to be problematic for a tiny number of Mac users.
- Why would the file format on a network file share matter? It should be irrelevant to any machine other than the server actually sharing the drive.
That said, I'm not planning to update to High Sierra for a good,
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Why would the file format on a network file share matter? It should be irrelevant to any machine other than the server actually sharing the drive.
I'm just taking that from TFA. It *should* be irrelevant, but apparently it depends how the share points are set up.
Volumes formatted with APFS can't offer share points over the network using AFP. SMB and NFS are supported when using APFS.
Not being part of the Apple ecosystem, I'm not familiar with AFP or why someone would choose that over either SMB or NFS, but apparently there is a situation where converting to APFS will cause problems for network shares.
Sierra was a big bag of hurt; so as long as Apple keeps offering security updates for El Capitan, I'm good.
That's fine, but you wouldn't be able to read a USB device formatted with APFS. I don't know whether or not that matters for your particular situation, but Apple has made t
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Apple does get a pass. Mostly because they have always been a company willing to break backward compatibility at the drop of a hat. This is nothing new.
Microsoft does not because they are the kind of company that will make changes to their OS to ensure that specific legacy applications continue to work with new versions.
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're comparing Apples to Windows here...
*ba-dum ching!*
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:5, Informative)
What gives you the idea APFS is "two months old"? It's been announced in June 2016, at which point it must have been pretty darn complete already, and it's been running on millions of iOS devices for the past half year with virtually no incident whatsoever.
And nobody's forcing you to upgrade to High Sierra, unlike Microsoft's extremely aggressive Windows upgrade push. That would be a comparable point, if Apple did a virtually automatic upgrade without your consent. Including a new file system in a major system upgrade is a far cry from that.
Re:Glad I opted out of... (Score:5, Interesting)
it's exactly like windows.
being forced into a feature solely to boost the size of the user base for testing (captcha: debugs)...... it's beta. it's two fucking months old.. will be less than six months old when sierra goes gold.. still beta at that point, afaiac..... and it's a damn file system... just, ya know, the most important piece of an operating system that uses storage. no big. good thing apple has a totally flawless history of introducing new features with no bugs, huh? absolutely nothing to worry about.. not the first time apple has forced something on users.. won't be the last. this one just has the potential to be the nastiest..
i get it though. i wouldn't want to run "..the worst file system ever" (l.torvalds) either. hfs dates back to 1985. the year 'back to the future' hit theaters. hfs+ enhancements to it are from 1998 (os 8.1... EIGHT POINT ONE.. 680x0 was still a thing then, for fuck's sake). it's about time they use a file system actually designed for a unix-like operating system (everything has been duct tape and bailing wire since the first osx). yo, apple..what the fuck took you so long? your meta data engineer finally retire? and your new youngins don't know how to byte-swap on read or write?
Actually, APFS has been in development for almost 5 years now. Pretty much right after they decided to ditch the ZFS Project (Thanks, Oracle!). And it was actually "silently" deployed publicly (sort-of) in iOS 10.1 (IIRC) (that was the bug-check you speak of). That is a lot longer than you claim.
https://www.macobserver.com/an... [macobserver.com]
And, Apple actually has a nearly spotless record when it comes to File Systems. You can say some things about HFS+; but "unreliable" ain't one of 'em! And, generating from the LACK-of "all my data is gone!" reports from iOS owners, it looks like, despite its young age, that APFS is already quite reliable. That's why Apple feels like it's ok to roll it out to macOS.
So, if your iPhone/iPad is on 10.1 or greater, you have actually been at least temporarily exposed to APFS for that long, and so has the rest of the iOS-owning-public. That's why they felt it was trustworthy enough to roll-out permanently in iOS 10.3. Because they had already done a "dry run" on Millions of iOS devices.
I think the reason that HDDs/Fusion Drives aren't being automatically converted to APFS yet, is that they have spent the lion's share of optimization up to this point on Flash-Based systems, and will eventually circle back-around to optimizing HDD metrics, too.
Apple is definitely not "done" with APFS; but it is far from a Beta at this point.
And as for age: How old, exactly, is NTFS? How about ext? For NTFS, the first version was created in 1993, and the most recent version in 2001. Not too bloody different from HFS and HFS+. As for ext, it started as just plain-ol' "ext" in 1992, and the most recent version ("ext4"), like most open-source stuff, has a more, er, "storied" history. It looks like it was finally adopted in 2008, which is still nearly a decade ago.
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HFS+ is shit and is dangerous. It's based on very old standards and is a total mess under the hood, not so different than NTFS.
https://www.cio.com/article/2868393/linus-torvalds-apples-hfs-is-probably-the-worst-file-system-ever.html
And just because St. Linus spews out garbage, you lap it up like the good Apple-Hater you are:
But here's da facts, Jack. Read 'em and weep:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
APFS also has huge Unicode issues:
https://eclecticlight.co/2017/04/06/apfs-is-currently-unusable-with-most-non-english-languages/
Bullshit. APFS supports Unicode 9.0. PLENTY of multilanguage support!
https://developer.apple.com/li... [apple.com]
http://unicode.org/versions/Un... [unicode.org]
Further, APFS is still very new. Apple is a multinational company. Do your REALLY think they won't be ironed-out sooner, rather than later?
Btrfs is still in development and has quite a while to go. Filesystems are very difficult and are something you cannot fuck up on! You needs years of testing and verifiability before you push a new fs to market.
And yet, Synology, to name a company with a LOT to lose by embrac
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My only gripe about APFS is the lack of checksumming. Which means no bitrot detection... which is a really bad thing when storing media for long term. One minor item would be the lack of deduplication.
However, this filesystem was definitely needed. It will change how a lot of things work, and upgrade security. The ability to back up via snapshots makes this very useful. The faster I/O due to copy on write cannot hurt either.
All and all, I think this will be the absolute best feature that 10.13.x comes with.
I REALLY don't know where this "No Checksumming" meme started; but it simply ISN'T true:
https://blog.cugu.eu/post/apfs... [blog.cugu.eu]
And just an an anecdote, I Upgraded my iPhone 6 to iOS 10.3.3 a couple of nights ago. iOS 10.3.3 is APFS-based, period.
Not only did I regain about 3 GB of storage; but every single thing is about 3 times as fast! Some of that may be some code-optimization; but I think a good portion of it is due to APFS.
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MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
I'd replace "MS" with "Most big tech corporations". Apple, Google, Lexmark, HP, MS are all very good examples of lock-in crap.
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Well, ya know, the patents on NTFS are surely running out by now, and Linux knows NTFS inside and out too. MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
macOS has had Read support for NTFS since at least version 10.1, and "experimental" R/W support since, IIRC, 10.8 or so, if not earlier.
"Experimental" means you have to flip a config option in Terminal. Since NTFS is undocumented, Apple pretty much HAS to call their support "Experimental".
http://www.techrepublic.com/ar... [techrepublic.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Because someone has custom software written around another file system?
The point is that no matter how good APFS is, there many be reasons some users can't use it. Apple's our way for f*** you is just plain wrong.
Add to that, Apple never gets version 1 right...it makes sense to hold off adapting an entire new file system for a few months.
It has already been running on millions of iOS devices longer than that.
Re: (Score:3)
Your point being? Do you believe a FAT32 USB stick will silently be converted to APFS when you plug it into a Mac? Errrrrrrr... no.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like Apple did the transitions to APFS seamlessly on hundreds of million of devices already without a hiccup,,,,oh wait...they did.
Re:Welcome (Score:5, Informative)
It's already been beta tested on all iOS devices for the past half year or so, with no widely reported incidents whatsoever. Also, some recent point macOS update already did a safe dummy conversion of everyone's disk behind the scenes, reported the results back to Apple and then discarded the changes; again, with no incidents that anyone noticed. So, uhm, yeah... I think the beta test is pretty much done at this point.
Re:Welcome (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say that APFS earned its bones earlier this year when Apple pushed out iOS 10.3. This is actually the first time in history a vendor has actually converted this many people from one filesystem to another, with pretty much zero complaints on various forums. Had even an outlier even happened with more than 1-2 people affected, there would be people in the streets yelling about a "filesystem-gate".
I would dare to say that migrating to APFS on macOS will be relatively painless.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a close miss in acronyms, yet still somewhat ironic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are we done now?
Almost -- we just need:
[Obligatory meta-commentary on the predictable trajectory of every Slashdot thread]
[Obligatory meta-meta-commentary on that commentary]
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[Stack overflow -- core dumped]