APFS format

[pucho812]

after this past week I learned way more then I thought I would need to know about APFS and mac computers.

APFS is the newish  format Mac is doing on their hard drives.  it is compatible with OS high sierra 10.13.XX and beyond. (until the next one)

What it's interesting is  a few of things. 

1. there are no partitions like we used to have. In the past with mac, you could format a drive and then assign in partitions. it would then divide the total space available by the number of partitions and give space to each partition. Well not anymore, sort of. You can still partition a drive like we used to do or you can do the new way, Containers.  When you partition  a drive the disk utility will recommend you make a container.

2. containers. They are the new way to make a volume on a drive.  you can have as many containers as you would normally have on a drive. Each container can be assigned a minimum and maximum space or you can have it where each container is dynamic space(there is no size limit of the container and it spreads across the disk until the disk is full).  So say for example I have a drive I just formatted. I would add a container and do with it as I wish. I can at any time add a second, third and so on  container.  each container would show up as a hard drive on the desktop. each container can be any size and if I do it dynamically it shares space across the entire drive. So I can have a drive that is 1tB in size set up among 3 x containers showing up as 3 separate drives on my desktop.  I  can have them all dynamic in size so they all will hold data until the 1tB is taken up vs not being able to store info on one of them because it is maxed out.  I can adjust the containers to be a physical size if I want to and say a minimum and maximum of space is that container by dynamic seems to be a better option.

3. containers can get corrupted.  Our system drive on a computer here that was APFS and os 10.13.06  had an issue where it wouldn't boot. tried to repair/reinstall  the OS  and nothing. tried disk utility/first aid and it came up with an error,  saying the drive could not be fixed that it had an error. There is only one solution I have found for this across ever Mac site on the net, you have to remove the container and make a new one, then reinstall whatever was in that container or recover a backup of what was in that container.  removing the container will delete any data in that container. This is different then erasing the container. While the outcome is the same, a corrupt container can still have issues.  Luickly we had a backup and we could get back to working after reinstalling it.

Boy what a nightmare, the OS got screwed up because the container got corrupted.  we could not repair it using disk first aid, we could only remove it and start all over. 

 

[Bo Deadly]

If the machine is used for more than just personal stuff, I would imagine most folks will try to decouple the machine from it's storage to some extent in part to avoid problems like that. Of course for potentially huge sound files that have some copyright value, you probably shouldn't be using "cloud" storage. The simplest semi-solution would be to use an external drive (preferably formatted with an old reliable widely understood format (do DAWs work with exFAT external SSDs?)). A more complete solution would be an rsync backup to a nearby machine over gigabit ethernet used possibly in conjunction with one or more external drives.

 

[Tubetec]

I've no experience at all on Mac , but I did spend quite a while wiping and re-installing Windows over the years , for me there was nothing ever at risk data wise,  but getting the hang of freshly installing an OS is a very worthwile skill , on the odd ocassion I actually did have issues 'bang' I was able to wipe it clean and reinstall in no time at all , and not bother spending time looking for needles in haystacks . 
Windows has its own unique way of updating a drive when you install a new OS with prexisting stuff already on there  but I generally find a clean slate a better way to approach things . What I find very often is a new Win OS on a drive wont allow a previous generation OS to format that drive . My guess is next time an issue crops up the learning curve you've dealt with recently will stand you in good stead . The vast majority of computer users use a factory  pre-installed fully loaded OS from day one to end of life of their machines, a trimmed down 'needs' only OS  beats that bloated  pre loaded OS back down into hell anytime . 

 

[pucho812]

If the machine is used for more than just personal stuff, I would imagine most folks will try to decouple the machine from it's storage to some extent in part to avoid problems like that. Of course for potentially huge sound files that have some copyright value, you probably shouldn't be using "cloud" storage. The simplest semi-solution would be to use an external drive (preferably formatted with an old reliable widely understood format (do DAWs work with exFAT external SSDs?)). A more complete solution would be an rsync backup to a nearby machine over gigabit ethernet used possibly in conjunction with one or more external drives.

Around here  the only thing on the OS drive is the OS and applications. All audio and important data is recorded to external drives and backed up on a NAS and secondary cloud backup.  I would suspect most professionals do some combo of that. I don't know how many personal computers are done that way.  In the old days I would have 3 audio drives, one with the session 2 x backups. one backup always went with me. backups were done daily.  As i explained this is in case the studio were to burn down, then we could continue elsewhere. While that never happened to me personally, I know some engineers who were working a session and they left the candles lit while the broke for lunch. Came back to major damage from the candles falling over.

as for what daws work with, we use pro tools and pro tools is particular  with what you can and can't do.  While it has gotten less specific in the last few versions, it's a hassle and I would prefer we use something else, but it's not my call.

I've no experience at all on Mac , but I did spend quite a while wiping and re-installing Windows over the years , for me there was nothing ever at risk data wise,  but getting the hang of freshly installing an OS is a very worthwile skill , on the odd ocassion I actually did have issues 'bang' I was able to wipe it clean and reinstall in no time at all , and not bother spending time looking for needles in haystacks . 
Windows has its own unique way of updating a drive when you install a new OS with prexisting stuff already on there  but I generally find a clean slate a better way to approach things . What I find very often is a new Win OS on a drive wont allow a previous generation OS to format that drive . My guess is next time an issue crops up the learning curve you've dealt with recently will stand you in good stead . The vast majority of computer users use a factory  pre-installed fully loaded OS from day one to end of life of their machines, a trimmed down 'needs' only OS  beats that bloated  pre loaded OS back down into hell anytime .

Mac is a bit more streamlined in that it treats the OS as it's own thing. if the OS gets corrupted or something gets erased from the OS causing a crash, you can recover the OS so that you are back to a working OS with your settings.  In a perfect world, you can easily do that either with a bootable usb stick of that OS, or a secret recovery partition you get access to by hitting some key strokes on start up. They are the command key + r. hold that down and it boots in recovery mode to fix the mac. But as shown this past week it does not always work.  While I am sure there is need to progress is drive formatting, no different then moving on from fat 32, the APFS is such a new thing that little is known about it beyond apple. I guess they really want you to go to then when shit hits the fan.