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Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
#49053 06/11/18 12:25 AM
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andycap Offline OP
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I have a late 2013 Fusion drive iMac running Sierra and was, until spending a distressing amount of time on Google, about to upgrade to High Sierra in preparation for Mohave in the Autumn (er, Fall!). I think I have understood from this research that in installing High Sierra

a) my Time Machine external drive will not be upgraded to APFS,
b) the SSD part of the Fusion drive will be left as HFS+ while the rest of it converts to APFS (although there is supposedly an Apple announcement due “soon” about this),
c) my routine Carbon Copy Cloner cloning and Time Machine backup strategy may, right now, be compromised by somewhat confusing information from Apple, CCC’s developer and others on the consequences of the upgrade, and finally
d) Diskwarrior will not, right now, repair/rebuild APFS volumes.

I have to say that I have never, yet, had to use Time Machine to restore files, never had any serious drive problems that required Diskwarrior repair, and never needed to make significant use of the clone other than to boot from it to run Diskwarrior on the startup disk. In other words, I am statistically due for grief soon.

I don’t know if High Sierra will make much difference to what passes for my workflow but Mohave might. However the above issues suggest that I should remain with Sierra for the time being. Is this right?

Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49054 06/11/18 09:59 AM
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I have a fusion drive as well (see my signature) and it was not changed to APFS, either in the SSD part or the HDD part when I upgraded to High Sierra. As you stated, my Time Machine backup was not changed either. I have not noticed any difference in day-to-day operation between Sierra and High Sierra. Carbon Copy Cloner works fine with High Sierra.

Of course, I backed up the Sierra system before I upgraded but, fortunately, that was not necessary.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49058 06/11/18 01:31 PM
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HIGH SIERRA
  1. The only drive that is automatically converted to APFS when installing High Sierra is the boot drive IF and only IF it is a Solid State Drive. (A Fusion Drive is NOT a solid state drive even through there is a solid state component.)
  2. APFS is not supported on Fusion drives in High Sierra
  3. I have encountered no problems cloning an APFS volume using CCC 5.1.2 or its predecessor.
  4. To the best of my knowledge the only Volume repair utility currently available for an APFS volume is Apple's Disk Utility > First Aid.

MOJAVE
  1. In Mojave APFS on Fusion Drives will be supported, but whether or not that conversion for the boot drive will be automatic is TBD.
  2. Whether or not Time Machine will be supported on an APFS volume is TBD.
  3. Whether or not APFS will be supported on RAID arrays is TBD.
  4. If and when Diskwarrior, Drive Genius, and TechTool Pro will support volume repair on APFS volumes is TBD.

Last edited by joemikeb; 06/11/18 02:09 PM. Reason: typo

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49060 06/11/18 11:10 PM
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Thanks both for your advice. That’s good enough for me, I will take the plunge to High Sierra shortly. While there are a few “TBAs” to be wary of, I’m pretty sure CCC and Diskwarrior will eventually put APFS to bed and these are really the only utilities I rely on. Let’s hope that Apple implements TM conversion while maintaining the integrity of existing (or at least recent) HFS+ backups.

Apologies for my spelling of Mojave - was that your typo edit joemikeb?! Australians are usually phonetically driven smile

Andy

Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49061 06/12/18 02:34 AM
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Actually Mohave is an accepted alternate spelling of the Spanish word Mojave and both are pronounced the same way. (I suspect Mohave is an anglicized spelling of the original Spanish) The different spellings are regional with Mojave being used in California and Mohave next door in Arizona. Since Apple is a California company and their OS versions are named after geographic locations in California, MacOS 10.14 is named "Mojave" with a "J".

My typo was a run on word.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49071 06/12/18 06:14 PM
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I use DiskWarrior, High Sierra and have an SSD as my primary drive. The High Sierra installer converts your drive to APFS. But, it's easy enough to clone the new system to another drive, partition the SSD back to HFS+, then clone the system back.

Then, DiskWarrior works as you would expect.


iMac (19,1, 3.1 GHz i5, 12.7.4, 40 Gb RAM); MacBook Air (1.8 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, 10.14.6, 256 Gb SSD) Vodafone router and Devolo Wi-Fi Extender, Canon TS8351 printer/scanner.
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
freelance #49073 06/12/18 08:40 PM
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Didn't you report a while back that running a HighSierra update on an HFS+ volume on an internal SSD would change it to APFS? That would tend to make your workaround a recurring nuisance, and out of curiosity, when's the last time you actually NEEDED DiskWarrior?

I had intended to follow the clone out and back procedure, but the total lack of reports of APFS issues swayed me, and I'm totally happy with it. (Not to mention that I haven't upgraded DiskWarrior from v 4.x, because I've had no cause to even think about using it since Snow Leopard.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
artie505 #49074 06/12/18 10:15 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
I had intended to follow the clone out and back procedure, but the total lack of reports of APFS issues swayed me, and I'm totally happy with it. (Not to mention that I haven't upgraded DiskWarrior from v 4.x, because I've had no cause to even think about using it since Snow Leopard.)

My experience with APFS has been the same as Arties, zero problems and that is with some not so stable beta versions of MacOS. Look at it this way, APFS has been in use on tens of millions of iOS devices for a good while now and I have not heard the first complaint or problem related to it in that environment.

As for Diskwarrior, although I still have Drive Genius and TechTool Pro and have kept them up to date out of habit, the only actual task I have performed with either of them in over three years is creating Bootwell (Drive Genius) and a ProToGo (TechTool Pro) bootable flash drives. No actual repairs have ever been needed. I seriously doubt I will install the next paid upgrade for either. They are not "paying their keep."


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
joemikeb #49075 06/13/18 01:23 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
As for Diskwarrior, although I still have Drive Genius and TechTool Pro and have kept them up to date out of habit, the only actual task I have performed with either of them in over three years is creating Bootwell (Drive Genius) and a ProToGo (TechTool Pro) bootable flash drives. No actual repairs have ever been needed. I seriously doubt I will install the next paid upgrade for either. They are not "paying their keep."

Don't you still run surface scans?

I think DiskWarrior's adding checking xml format to its functionality - In v 3? - was the official recognition of the beginning of the end of maintenance apps; their functionality was maxing out other than for keeping up with changes in OS X, which in and of itself was becoming less and less in need of repair, and "make believe" new functionality was their only remaining avenue for "improvement".


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
artie505 #49076 06/13/18 03:47 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
...I think DiskWarrior's adding checking xml format to its functionality - In v 3? - was the official recognition of the beginning of the end of maintenance apps; their functionality was maxing out other than for keeping up with changes in OS X, which in and of itself was becoming less and less in need of repair, and "make believe" new functionality was their only remaining avenue for "improvement".


Crikey! That DW for many years has never reported anything other than wrong nodes or icons (or something like that, I can't remember) seems to bear out what you say. Maybe though I should run a surface scan with V5.1 which I've just downloaded. Or maybe not. The thought of bad blocks or whatever makes me nervous and could force me to go get a new SSD iMac. Hmmm.

Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49079 06/13/18 06:40 AM
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Originally Posted By: andycap
Maybe though I should run a surface scan with V5.1 which I've just downloaded. Or maybe not. The thought of bad blocks or whatever makes me nervous and could force me to go get a new SSD iMac. Hmmm.

Do recent versions of DW do surface scans? The last version I ran - 4.4 - did not...I think. (It's been years since I've run it.)

Bad blocks on a HDD could eventually cost you all your data if you don't deal with them; they're a fear that's best confronted.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
artie505 #49081 06/13/18 10:04 AM
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DW 5.1, the current version, does not do a surface scan (as was the case in previous versions). The closest it comes is testing SMART. TechTool Pro, on the other hand, can do a surface scan, as can Checkmate.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
artie505 #49084 06/13/18 06:11 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
Didn't you report a while back that running a HighSierra update on an HFS+ volume on an internal SSD would change it to APFS? That would tend to make your workaround a recurring nuisance, and out of curiosity, when's the last time you actually NEEDED DiskWarrior?

Yeah, I did. My main OS was Yosemite at the time, and Yosemite would not see APFS partitions in Startup Disk. I had to hold down the alt key if I wanted to change startup drives.

Now, I've committed to High Sierra. However, I am a creature of habit and have been routinely using DiskWarrior to check/repair the directory. I think I have only used DW in anger twice to recover a hard drive, once back in OS 8.6 days to recover a system, and once to recover a data only drive that was on it's way to failing.

Often enough for me to keep buying the upgrades. I still use TechTool Pro, too. However, it was mainly to optimize drives and TechTool says not to do that to SSDs. Again, I've kept it up-to-date.



iMac (19,1, 3.1 GHz i5, 12.7.4, 40 Gb RAM); MacBook Air (1.8 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, 10.14.6, 256 Gb SSD) Vodafone router and Devolo Wi-Fi Extender, Canon TS8351 printer/scanner.
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
freelance #49085 06/13/18 09:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: freelance
Now, I've committed to High Sierra. However, I am a creature of habit and have been routinely using DiskWarrior to check/repair the directory. I think I have only used DW in anger twice to recover a hard drive, once back in OS 8.6 days to recover a system, and once to recover a data only drive that was on it's way to failing.

Often enough for me to keep buying the upgrades. I still use TechTool Pro, too. However, it was mainly to optimize drives and TechTool says not to do that to SSDs. Again, I've kept it up-to-date.

Micromat (TechTool Pro), Prosoft Engineering (Drive Genius), and Apple computer are all in agreement that optimizing files and/or volumes on SSDs is not a good thing to do as there is a risk of reducing drive life and is counterproductive on drives formatted APFS where the location of data on the drive is intentionally randomized. In fact data in multiple APFS Volumes is intermingled on the solid state media.

I still have TechTool Pro and Drive Genius and keep them up to date, but I don't remember the last time I used either "in anger" (thanks freelance I really like that phraseology) if for no other reason than my Time Machine drives still have to be formatted Mac OS Extended. If Mojave supports Time Machine on APFS. OWC's SoftRAID is working on APFS for RAID 0, 1, 2, 5 and when that happens my last possible rationale for updating either will be gone.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrading to High Sierra and APFS
andycap #49091 06/15/18 02:58 AM
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Oh dear my brain is starting to hurt. I have upgraded to High Sierra and everything is fine with no APFS related issues to worry about right now.

Could it be that full implementation of APFS might blow away many of the problems which DiskWarrior and other similar utilities were originally designed to fix? In view of the above view that optimising SSDs (and my next iMac will no doubt have one) might actually be counterproductive, I may abandon Diskwarrior altogether unless it comes up with some new and indispensible repair functionality. I'll stick with Carbon Copy Cloner though.


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