macOS High Sierra brings with it a new filing system known as APFS (Apple File System). APFS replaces HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus), and offers a new, modern file system that is optimized for use with SSDs (Solid State Drives), while still being usable on hard drives and, in the near future, even on tiered storage systems such as Apple’s Fusion drive.
As part of the upgrade process, the macOS High Sierra installer will automatically convert an SSD to the new APFS. The conversion process leaves the drive’s data intact, or at least it’s supposed to; be sure you have a recent backup before upgrading, just in case. At the time of this writing, the automatic conversion process is limited to internal SSDs. External SSDs being used as startup drives seem to be left with their original file system, with no conversion to APFS occurring. However, this could change with the next update to macOS High Sierra, as it seems Apple is committed to growing APFS usage across all Apple devices.
Although the conversion to APFS will happen automatically if your Mac startup drive meets the criteria, specifically, an SSD occupying a connection internally to your Mac, you can choose not to use APFS and force the installation to bypass the conversion process, leaving your startup drive in the older HFS+ format.
How to Prevent Automatic Conversion to APFS There are a couple of strategies you can use to prevent the upgrade to APFS and retain the older HFS+ formatting:
Sep 26, 2017 To avoid the APFS conversion when updating to High Sierra from an already existing version of macOS you trigger the installer with a terminal command instead of through the normal High Sierra Install app when it pops up after downloading. Oct 24, 2017 Until High Sierra my macOS system has been super stable. But since the upgrade I am having periodic crashes were the system hangs and just freezes. Apps go into Spin, Mail usually disappears. I have to force reboot. There is no crash log to lead the way. I am stumped. I have used the release.
Use an external drive: You can choose an external drive as the target for the macOS High Sierra upgrade. This will allow you to retain the current formatting on the external. Once the upgrade is complete, you can clone the external drive back to your normal internal startup drive. Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are two popular apps for creating clones. You could use Disk Utility’s Restore feature to create your clone as well.
Use startosinstall: macOS High Sierra includes a command line tool hidden away within the installer that can be used to control the conversion to APFS. By using this tool, you can tell the installer not to convert to APFS during the installation process.
While either method will work, using the startosinstall utility is the easiest and quickest process. It allows you to perform the macOS High Sierra upgrade without any conversion to APFS. It also allows you to skip the additional step and save the additional time needed to make a clone, as required in the external drive method.
Using Startosinstall to Prevent Conversion to APFS Startosinstall is included as part of the macOS High Sierra installer. If you downloaded the installer from the Mac App Store, you’re all set. If you happen to have the installer open, waiting for you to start the macOS High Sierra install process, simply quit the installer (Command + Q). You need to invoke the installer from the Terminal command line for the option to not install APFS to be available.
Before you begin, make sure you have a recent backup of all the data on your current startup drive and the target drive for the installation (if they’re different). Better to be safe than sorry.
Startosinstall has a number of options for automating the installation process. This includes the APFS option, which can be used to prevent the conversion to APFS, or for that matter, to force the conversion, making it a bit easier to upgrade an external SSD to macOS High Sierra should you decide you want to use APFS.
(The startosinstall command can prevent the conversion to APFS.)
When you’re ready, launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities/.
Disable APFS Conversion At the Terminal prompt, enter the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs NO
and then press enter or return to start the upgrade process with no conversion to APFS. By the way, you can triple-click the above command to select the entire command, and then copy/paste it into Terminal.
Press enter or return, then supply your administrator password and press enter or return.
Note: When you enter your password in Terminal, no text will be displayed, giving the impression that Terminal isn’t accepting your input. This is a security feature to ensure prying eyes can’t see your password as it is typed.
You’ll be presented with the license for using macOS High Sierra. You can agree to the license terms by entering a capital A at the prompt.
The startosinstall script will start copying needed files to the target disk (in this example, the current startup disk). You’ll see Terminal counting up to one hundred. When it reaches 100, all the needed files will have been copied, and your Mac will reboot and start the actual installation of the new operating system without converting the startup disk to APFS.
(You can use Disk Utility to check to see if the startup drive was converted to APFS. In this image, you can see that the description says Mac OS Extended (Journaled).)
Force APFS Conversion You can use startosinstall to force a conversion to APFS in some cases, but not all. Apple currently prevents any Fusion drive from being converted. You can, however, use this command to force conversion on hard drives or SSDs. Please note: at this time you may want to limit the use of APFS to just your SSDs. See the Take a Deep Dive into Apple’s APFS video for details.
At the Terminal prompt, enter the following:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs YES
Press enter or return.
Terminal will start copying the needed files to the startup disk. Once the process is complete, your Mac will restart and complete the installation of macOS High Sierra, including the conversion of the startup drive to APFS.
Install macOS High Sierra on a Drive Other Than the Startup Disk So far we’ve seen how you can use Terminal to install macOS High Sierra on the startup disk while either preventing or forcing the conversion of the target drive to APFS. You can also use the startosinstall command to specify the target for the install.
The feature in startupinstall to specify a target isn’t documented, though it’s present in earlier versions of OS X and macOS installers. When the documentation for a command option is removed, it could indicate that the feature is deprecated, and may not be supported at some later date. For now, the feature to specify a target using the “–volume ” switch (without the quotes) seems to still be working.
To specify what drive to install macOS High Sierra on, other than the startup drive, you need to add the following to either of the Terminal command lines listed above:
— volume /path to the volume you wish to use
An example for installing macOS High Sierra on a drive named HighSierra without converting the target volume to APFS would be:
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sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs NO –volume /Volumes/HighSierra
This would force the installation to occur on a volume named HighSierra. An easy way to enter the actual pathname to the drive you wish to use is to enter the command in Terminal without the actual pathname, so the command would end after — volume (make sure there’s a space after the word volume). Now drag the drive from the Finder and drop it on the Terminal window. Terminal will add the actual pathname to the drive for you. All that’s left to do is press enter or return.
(Instead of trying to figure out the correct pathname to the target drive, simply drag the disk to the command line. Terminal will enter the pathname for you.)
The — volume switch will also work when you wish to force a conversion to APFS, as shown in this example, which will convert the drive named HighSierra to APFS and install the new version of macOS:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app –converttoapfs YES –volume /Volumes/HighSierra
By using the startosinstall command from within Terminal, the choice to convert to APFS or leave the target drive’s format unchanged is entirely up to you.
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Developed with newer storage technologies in mind – in particular SSD – and designed to address the faults of the dated HFS+ that was used in Mac OS Extended, the Apple File System or APFS packs in appealing new features such as point-in-time snapshots and more. When it launched in the fall of 2017, every Mac compatible with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and equipped with an SSD was automatically migrated to the new file system. But the transition from HFS+ wasn't that smooth, since APFS included several nasty bugs.
A severe security flaw exposes passwords of encrypted APFS-formatted external drives. Discovered by computer forensic expert Sarah Edwards, the passwords are displayed in plain text in the unified logs. This means that anyone with physical access to the Mac is able to obtain that data. Furthermore, if the cyber criminal develops malware with the purpose of collecting such data, this can be done remotely as well.
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Edwards has tested various versions of macOS 10.13 High Sierra but the bug still wasn't addressed by the time of writing with the macOS 10.13.3 update.
Disk Utility Bug Exposes Password of Encrypted APFS Volumes
A nasty bug hidden within Disk Utility exposed the passwords of encrypted APFS volumes in plain text on macOS 10.13 High Sierra. After adding an encrypted APFS volume to a container, setting a password hint, and then unmounting and remounting the volume, Brazilian developer Matheus Mariano discovered that by clicking on the “Show Hint” button, Disk Utility displayed the password instead of the hint.
He couldn’t replicate the issue following the same steps using Terminal commands, and Apple addressed the Disk Utility security flaw with the macOS 10.13 Supplemental Update.
Disk Image Flaw in APFS Could Lead to Loss of User Data
A serious bug affecting APFS-formatted sparse disk images passed unnoticed by Apple and thousands of developers: despite being completely full, a sparse disk image would show ample free space. These types of files are used for various purposes ranging from backups to network volumes and this is how Carbon Copy Cloner developer Mike Bombich became aware of the issue and notified Apple about it.
Briefly put, a sparse disk image allows users to add as much data as the underlying disk permits. In other words, if you created a sparse disk image with a capacity of 256GB on a volume that permits 256GB and you then added 200GB of data to the latter, the disk image would show only 56GB of free space to reflect the change in capacity.
Due to a bug in Apple's new file system, however, APFS-formatted sparse disk images don't properly reflect that. Instead, they create the illusion of lots of free space, which leads to data loss if the file(s) moved to the disk image exceed its real capacity. The copy process won't give any errors either, but any affected files will become corrupted because they won't actually end up on the sparse disk volume.
This bug only affects sparse disk images, so regular users won't run into this error with an APFS-formatted startup volume.
One More Thing…
APFS apparently surprised Geniuses as well, which Charles Arthur, formerly of The Guardian, experienced with his machine running macOS 10.13 High Sierra. Since Geniuses are Apple employees dealing with hardware or software issues affecting the company's products, this is something you wouldn’t expect from the world's biggest tech company.
Instead of booting from a networked drive running the latest operating system, the Genius dealing with Arthur's issue booted his Retina MacBook Pro from a macOS 10.12 networked drive.
Because HFS+ formatted drives can’t read files encoded in APFS, this triggered additional issues that would never have happened if Apple had updated their procedures to take users of the new file system into consideration.
Have you encountered any issues since migrating to APFS? If so, let us know in the comments section below.
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