Asked by Paul Waldo
I have a 2017 5K iMac running Mojave 10.14.6. It has a 2 TB Fusion drive internally formatted as HFS+. FileVault is not enabled, but I wish to do so. Will the disk have its format changed to APFS if I enable FileVault?
You can convert to APFS in Disk Utility. Just right click on the name of your disk, and it'll do the conversion. I do strongly recommend you make sure you have good backups when you do this, although this is supposed to be a non-destructive operation. HFS Explorer is a pretty good software that can help you read your Mac-formatted drives on Windows. As its name suggests, the software only works with the drives that are. Installed 10.13b8 and was not given the option to upgrade to APFS on install. System worked fine under HFS after install. Booted into recovery console and convert to APFS was greyed out. Made sure drive was unmounted still grey. Mounted drive and ran first aid through recovery console.
Read this informative post to convert HFS to APFS in an effortless way. We have provided easy steps to convert HFS to APFS with a recovery tool tutorial.
My recollection is that the disk was originally formatted as HFS+ from the factory and when I turned on FileVault, the format changed to APFS. Granted that was over a year ago, so I could be very off-base.
I want to prevent going to APFS again. The performance degraded to dismal levels. Now that I have reformatted as HFS+, it is surprisingly speedy.
One Answer
FileVault and APFS are two very different things; enabling one doesn’t enable (or necessitate) enabling the other.
Convert Hfs To Apfs External Hard Drive
FileVault is encryption - it scrambles, to put it simply - the contents of your drive with a known key. Specifically, it uses a 128bit AES encryption with a 256bit key. See Use FileVault to encrypt the startup Disk for additional details. You can encrypt JHFS+ formatted volumes as well as APFS volumes.
APFS (Apple File System) is simply Apple’s next generation file system. As far as encryption goes, it supports it natively unlike JHFS+.
Answered by Allan with 1 upvote
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High Sierra Hfs
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APFS, short for Apple File System is a new file system implemented on Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra. It brings with it a number of advantages over HFS+; a previous file system by Mac OS. Most notable advantages are reliability and more resistance to data corruption due to bugs and power failures.
How to convert an external hard drive to APFS
If you install macOS High Sierra on an SSD drive of a Mac, then the drive will automatically convert into APFS file system. In other cases, you can follow the steps to convert to APFS manually.
- Open Disk Utility and click on View at the upper left corner
- Click on Show All Devices
- Select the external hard drive to convert to APFS and click the Partition button
- Double check if the scheme is set to GUID Partition Map and set the format to Mac OS Extended Journaled
- Then click on Apply > Partition
- Right click on that partition and select Convert to APFS
This will convert your external hard drive to APFS file system. To verify, right click on your external drive and select Get Info. In general, you should see Format: APFS if it is successfully converted.
Can data be lost on APFS file systems in MAC?
Convert Hfs To Apfs Without Losing Data
Despite increased resistance to data corruption in APFS, data can still be lost due to errors in partitioning or formatting the drive. Improper upgrading or reinstalling of operating systems may at times lead to data loss scenarios. Another common cause for data loss is the presence of bad sectors on the drive. When encountered with such situations, it is helpful to know what data recovery tools like Remo Recover can do for you.
How can Remo Recover Mac help you in data loss situations?
- Remo Recover Mac is a hard drive recovery tool to recover deleted or lost data. It can also be used for non-mounting and inaccessible hard drives as well. It can recover data lost due to format or partitioning errors, improper OS installs errors etc.
- At times, your hard drive may contain bad sectors due to logical damage. In such cases, Remo Recover creates disk images bypassing such sectors. Disk images can then be used to retrieve lost data.
- In addition to recovering files from external hard drives, it can also recover data from USB’s, memory cards and other storage devices. This article describes in detail how to recover lost files from USB flash drive on Mac.
- In addition to supporting APFS file system, it also supports old file systems such HFS, HFS+ etc. on Mac.
It supports data recovery from Mac Book Pro, Air, Mini, iMac and other Mac devices. The software can be used with various brands of hard drives like Seagate, SanDisk, WD, Buffalo etc.