- DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA INSTALL
- DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA UPGRADE
- DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA FULL
- DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA PLUS
Flash-equipped or not, make sure your Mac is backed up.
DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA INSTALL
No one wants to install software that could potentially leave our Mac as a doorstop.Īs always, having a backup and recovery strategy is important. If that’s the case, Apple’s decision to delay APFS conversion for those Macs is prudent. I’ve heard through the grapevine that a certain number of hard drive-equipped Macs were failing the installer’s initial conversion. In announcing High Sierra’s release, Apple said, “APFS currently supports every Mac with all‑flash internal storage - support for Fusion and HDD Mac systems will be available in a future update.”Īpple hasn’t explained the delay.
DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA PLUS
In fact, beta testers who have made the conversion on their hard drive-equipped Macs are required to reformat them to HFS Plus to install the general release.Īpple has also said, unequivocally, that APFS will be coming to hard drive-equipped Macs in a future High Sierra update. Apple decided before High Sierra’s release to automatically convert only those Macs powered by pure flash storage. If you’re using a Mac with a spinning hard drive, or Apple’s “Fusion Drive” equipped models, High Sierra will not automatically convert your device to APFS. I put a third-party SSD in my Mac mini, and High Sierra’s installer managed the conversion to APFS without complaint. The conversion to APFS even happens if you’ve upgraded your Mac with some Solid State Drives (SSDs). If you’re using a Mac equipped with all-flash storage – a Retina MacBook Pro, for example, or a MacBook Air, MacBook, a 2013 or later MacBook, some Mac mini and iMac models – the conversion to APFS will be automatic when you first install High Sierra. With the general release of High Sierra for the Mac, APFS has come to Macs too.Īuto-Conversion to APFS for Flash-Only Macs You won’t notice anything visibly different, but the way in which your Mac stores files and interacts with its storage system are more efficient and better suited for the future than how it’s worked up until now.ĪPFS was rolled out to iPhone and iPad users earlier this year with the release of iOS 10.3. It’s also tremendously more efficient when it comes to copying files and folders – you’ll see almost instant operations.ĪPFS is very much an “under the hood” change. APFS employs advanced data integrity features to make sure your data is safe. Now devices across Apple’s product like rely on flash storage – writing data to silicon instead of to the surface of a spinning disk.Īpple needed to future-proof its core file system technology, and needed to adapt it to the changing needs of flash storage. Floppy disks are a historical relic, and hard drives are headed that way too. When HFS Plus was introduced floppy disks and spinning hard drives were the way most devices stored data. What’s more, there’s been a sea change in how storage works. Now devices in your pocket can hold 128 GB or more. At the time HFS was first introduced, a 20 MB hard drive was astonishingly big. Times change, and so does technology – rapidly. Storage needs have increased exponentially HFS debuted in 1985. So the Mac – and by extension, the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and other Apple devices – used a file system that was 30 years old. HFS Plus was introduced in 1998, updating an earlier file system (plain old HFS) that had already been around for 13 years. The file system Apple has used on its device up until recently was called HFS Plus.
DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA FULL
Read on for the full story.Īll computing devices rely on a file system to control how your device stores and retrieves data. File systems aren’t a sexy feature or even a visible one, but the last time the Mac’s file system changed, Bill Clinton was president. There’s a hitch if you’re using a Mac with a hard drive, including Macs with Fusion Drives. One of the key features of High Sierra is a new file system.
DO I NEED TO BACKUP MY MAC BEFORE INSTALLING HIGH SIERRA UPGRADE
Apple has released High Sierra, a new upgrade to macOS that’s installable on most Macs built since 20.