Mac OS drive format advice + NeoFinder
Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2024 8:32 am
Q: I'm using NeoFinder 8.6 on a MacMini Sonoma 14.14.1 with an M1 chip and have recently purchased an 8TB WD external drive for my documents. Could you advise whether to format this drive as APFS or Mac OS Extended? Which type of Mac OS Extended, if applicable? I rely heavily on NeoFinder's content search capabilities for managing text files, PDFs, and Word documents. Have you observed any performance differences between these formats in terms of content retrieval?
A: That is really a good question!
We would have always preferred the Apple HFS+ format, but it did get old a bit, and if you have a very large number of small files, the APFS will use your disk space much more efficiently.
That being said, cataloging an APFS disk is slower than a HFS+ volume format, especially on physical, rotating devices (SSDs are better, as much fast for random access).
So It is a trade-off, and you probably run better with APFS for that task.
Regarding the specific format variant, for your document, you can just use plain APFS.
A: That is really a good question!
We would have always preferred the Apple HFS+ format, but it did get old a bit, and if you have a very large number of small files, the APFS will use your disk space much more efficiently.
That being said, cataloging an APFS disk is slower than a HFS+ volume format, especially on physical, rotating devices (SSDs are better, as much fast for random access).
So It is a trade-off, and you probably run better with APFS for that task.
Regarding the specific format variant, for your document, you can just use plain APFS.
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