Many Mac users face three common options when choosing the file system for an external disk or USB drive: APFS, HFS+, and exFAT. What is the difference between them, and how should I choose? If you are confused, you're in the right place. In the following, we will take a look at the three file systems in detail and give suggestions on how to choose between them for your Mac external hard drive in different situations.
This is similar to the way items are classified and managed in a warehouse; the file system determines how files are stored and organized on the disk. In addition, it also affects the reading and writing speed of files in the storage device, how much space it occupies, and its own compatibility. Therefore, an efficient file management system can not only improve the performance of the hard drive but also enhance the security of data.
As mentioned above, although the file system is invisible to us, it's very important to the hard drive, which people often ignore. APFS, HFS+, and exFAT are three file systems supported by macOS and can be used as external hard drive file systems, but they also differ from each other. Here in the following, we summarize their advantages and disadvantages for your reference.
It was launched with High Sierra in 2017 and has become the default file system for macOS in subsequent versions. It is also used for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and TV.
As the name suggests, it is an improved version of HFS and is the default file system for macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and formers.
Microsoft launched it to solve the problem of FAT can't support files larger than 4GB and partitions larger than 8TB.
When choosing a file system for an external hard drive, performance and usability should be the most important concerns for people. Here, we compare the three file systems in several key factors.
In order to give you a more intuitive understanding of the read and write speeds of different file systems, we put multiple files ranging from 1MB to 10GB into the test hard drive and used AmorphousDiskMark to obtain the following data.
As shown in the figure above, APFS is optimized for SSD and is better than HFS+ and exFAT in read and write speed. However, this is limited to specific scenarios, and the difference between them is not so great in daily use. However, without considering compatibility, if you need to use this external hard drive for special effects rendering, 3D modeling, loading games, video cutting, multitasking, etc., then you can give priority to the APFS file system.
Without considering the cross-platform use of this hard drive, HFS+ beats APFS because it is compatible with almost all macOS versions. If you occasionally use it in Windows, then exFAT will be your first choice. If you want to use it for Time Machine backup, then APFS is your ideal choice.
Because APFS uses a 64-bit architecture and adds a copy-on-write mechanism, it does a better job of protecting the integrity of data. Although HFS+ has a journal function, the chances of file and file system itself corruption are higher when the program crashes or people are forced to eject the external hard drive. Finally, exFAT does not have these features we mentioned above, which makes it most likely that you will lose important data due to unexpected situations.
Although both HFS+ and exFAT support full-disk and single-file encryption, using APFS as the hard disk file system is more useful because itself is an encrypted file system.
If you have ever lost important data due to accidental deletion or formatting, then you know the importance of data recovery success rate. In our test with iBeesoft Free Data Recovery for Mac, the external hard drive with exFAT as the file system has the highest data recovery success rate, followed by HFS+, and finally APFS. This is because APFS is highly integrated and encrypted, resulting in more uncertainties, while exFAT uses a lightweight design compared to HFS+, which performs better when recovering data after deletion or incidents.
Do you want to maximize the performance of an external hard disk and ensure the safety of the data in it but don't know which file system to choose? Here are some common usage scenarios we have compiled; you can use them as a reference for choosing the appropriate file system.
| APFS | HFS+ | exFAT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The external hard drive is a traditional HDD (mechanical) and is only used on Mac. | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| The disk is an SSD (solid state drive) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Only use on macOS High Sierra and above | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Need to use in older macOS | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Occasionally used in Windows | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Used it to store privacy or Time Machine backup | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| For professional users with high reading and writing speed requirements | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| For simple file storage and careless users | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| For users who are used to using multiple volumes to manage data | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| You need to install applications on this external hard drive | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
With the above information, you should know how to choose the file system for the Mac external disk. Next, you can follow the steps below to convert the file system.
Important Tip: This process will erase all data on the hard drive. Therefore, before starting, please copy your important files from this external hard drive to a safe storage device.
Once the process is complete, you can use the external hard drive on your Mac again.
When choosing the file system for an Mac external hard drive, you need to consider your needs and usage scenarios. If it is mainly used to store your data or backup for Time Machine, then APFS will be a good format. If you occasionally transfer files on Windows, exFAT will be a better choice. As for HFS+, since Apple has deprecated it and considering that there should be no users using macOS 10.12 and below, we do not recommend it as a file system regardless of whether your disk is HDD or SSD.
First, please do not save new data to this hard drive, and then use iBeesoft Free Data Recovery for Mac to retrieve the erased files.
If you only use it on Mac computers, APFS will be the best choice. Compared to HFS+ and exFAT, it can not only maximize the performance of external hard drives but also better ensure data security.
Yes. Usually, you can change the file system by formatting it, but please back up the data before starting.
No. If you need to temporarily use this disk in Windows, you need to use Paragon APFS for Windows to mount it. If you often share files between Windows and Mac, consider converting one of the volumes or the external hard drive to exFAT.
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