![]() ![]() ![]() That demonstrates that the differences seen between HFS+ and APFS on hard disks was the result of the physical location of the partitions on the hard disk platter, rather than anything inherent in the file systems themselves. APFS read rate fell from 149 to 124 MB/s, HFS+ rose from 118 to 149 MB/s.APFS write rate fell from 148 to 116 MB/s, HFS+ rose from 116 to 148 MB/s.However, when the order of partitioning and testing was reversed on one of the hard disks, that also reversed the advantage in transfer rates: These results are summarised in terms of percentage differences in the table below. The two SSDs were slightly faster when reading from HFS+ than APFS, by 4% (980) and 9% (X5). Expressed as a percentage of APFS read speed, APFS was 14-23% faster for the hard disks. a Samsung 980 SSD delivered the maximum for its enclosure, of 1.6 GB/s.Īll hard disks tested were also faster reading from APFS than HFS+.Measured read rates using APFS were also as expected: Expressed as a percentage of the APFS write speed, APFS was 20-22% faster for the hard disks. a Samsung 980 SSD delivered the maximum for its enclosure, of 1.5 GB/s.Īll hard disks tested were faster writing to APFS than HFS+, but there was no difference in the two SSDs.a Samsung X5 SSD quickly filled its SLC write cache, and only achieved 687 MB/s overall.Measured write rates using APFS were much as expected: During testing, transfer rates for the HFS+ volume were measured before those for APFS. On one of the hard disks tested, the order of volume creation and testing was reversed, so that the disk was initially formatted in HFS+ with the APFS container being added afterwards. read 160 test files from the HFS+ volume.īy alternating tests to the two volumes, chances of caching were minimised.read 160 test files from the APFS volume,.write 160 test files to the HFS+ volume,. ![]() write 160 test files (over 50 GB total) to the APFS volume,.For each disk, the sequence of measurements was: Transfer rates were then measured using Stibium 1.0 (55). The two SSDs were connected using the same CalDigit TB4 cable to a TB4 port. Hard disks were connected to a Mac Studio Max using their manufacturer’s supported interface and supplied cable, most to a USB-A port. I then repartitioned each disk to shrink the APFS container to half the disk size, and added a second partition in HFS+, giving two volumes of equal size, one APFS and the other HFS+. In that formatting, a single APFS container and volume were created, filling the whole disk. Each disk was formatted using Disk Utility in macOS 12.3.1. To assess this, I’ve measured read and write performance for a range of six modern hard disks, all of 2 TB capacity, and two SSDs, when running HFS+ and APFS in adjacent partitions. Although objectively assessing the effects of fragmentation is fraught with difficulty, one basic question is whether there is any difference in performance between the file systems to begin with. That argument may hold good for storage which is in active use, such as boot disks and those containing working files, but appears less compelling in more static use, to contain relatively stable archives or backups in which there is limited turnover of files or data. The most compelling argument for retaining HFS+ is on rotating hard disks, because APFS can result in severe fragmentation, most importantly in the file system metadata, so causing degraded performance as SSDs don’t suffer those performance penalties, this could be a good reason for continuing to use HFS+ on hard disks, while switching SSDs to APFS. The only significant feature of HFS+ lacking in APFS is support for directory hard links, but they are seldom used outside Time Machine backups, and Time Machine now backs up to APFS volumes using a better method in any case. Among these are volume snapshots, sharing of free space between volumes inside the same container/partition, improved reliability thanks to copy-on-write, and special file types such as clones and sparse files. This article considers whether you should choose to continue using HFS+ or switch completely to APFS.īeing the more modern file system, APFS has many features that HFS+ lacks. It’s common knowledge that HFS+ was developed primarily for use on hard disks, and APFS for solid-state drives. ![]() Monterey currently supports two native macOS file systems for general use: Macintosh Extended (HFS+) and Apple File System (APFS). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |