HFS+ or AFPS for basic 'drag and drop' hard drive backup

etresoft wrote:

Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is "aka HFS+". Encryption on HFS+ drives used the awful Core Storage technology which is no longer supported, and hasn't been for years. HFS+ encryption gone ? - Apple Community

I did notice this warning in the Disk Utility Guide. Its first appearance was for macOS Catalina, so I guess all encrypted disks are now APFS as you said earlier.

WARNING: When you encrypt a disk or other media, the disk format is converted to the APFS format and then encrypted. Macs with older versions of macOS that don’t support the APFS format will not be able to read the device’s data. Consider whether you need to connect the media to a Mac with an older version of macOS before you encrypt the data. You can also update your other Mac to the latest version of the macOS that supports the APFS format.

AglaVerin wrote:

Which format is better to use for the 4TB hard drive, HFS+ or AFPS?

It's 2025. You don't have the option anymore. If you want an encrypted hard drive, you must use APFS.

MartinR wrote:

Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) aka HFS+ formatting is supported up to macOS Sequoia, which is what the OP appears to be running (15.7). My understanding is that Tahoe (macOS 26) can read & write HFS+ drives, just not format them.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is "aka HFS+". Encryption on HFS+ drives used the awful Core Storage technology which is no longer supported, and hasn't been for years. HFS+ encryption gone ? - Apple Community

Tahoe can still format HFS+ drives, just not encrypted ones.

FWIW, in present circumstances I wouldn't encrypt the entire drive. I think that's asking for trouble in the future. If there is something the OP needs to protect, I'd suggest creating an encrypted sparse disk image file (.dmg) instead. This, too has changed in Tahoe to Apple Sparse Image (ASIF).

I wouldn't touch any sparse disk image format, especially not an encrypted one. That's just asking for corruption.

I always encrypt all of my drives. Theft is my primary concern.

If you want to make backups that are "less reliant on special software or one specific computer to access the files", would suggest making additional backups using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! .

These applications can make full and incremental clone backups – a system which is more reliable than attempting to manually keep track of which files you have backed up, and which you haven't. But you can access the backups in the same way that you would browse the original disk.

The one thing that is getting harder these days – because of Apple's security changes – is making bootable cllone backups. (Because of this, CCC's default is now to make non-bootable backups.)

etresoft wrote:

It's 2025. You don't have the option anymore. If you want an encrypted hard drive, you must use APFS.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) aka HFS+ formatting is supported up to macOS Sequoia, which is what the OP appears to be running (15.7). My understanding is that Tahoe (macOS 26) can read & write HFS+ drives, just not format them.

If the OP is using traditional spinning HDDs, HFS+ would be preferable ... unless the OP upgrades to Tahoe first, in which case there is no choice but to format as APFS.

FWIW, in present circumstances I wouldn't encrypt the entire drive. I think that's asking for trouble in the future. If there is something the OP needs to protect, I'd suggest creating an encrypted sparse disk image file (.dmg) instead. This, too has changed in Tahoe to Apple Sparse Image (ASIF).

MartinR wrote:

Interesting. I have used encrypted sparse disk images for years, on multiple Macs & versions of macOS. I have never had a problem with any of them, ever.

Interesting. First time I tried an encrypted sparse image it corrupted almost immediately.

The problem is, you never know what someone is going to use a particular feature for. If they only use it for exactly the same things that you've tried, on exactly the same hardware and software, then it should be fine. But what if they try something clever? What if they think an encrypted sparse image would be a great encrypted cloud solution because only the modified parts would need to be synced. Well, maybe you didn't test that.

And this is Apple 2025. I think any proprietary Apple data format is risky for people who don't have multiple machines of varying vintages. Just the other day I finally got around to rebuilding one particular disk image that would kill the Finder in Sequoia every time I tried to open it. This image isn't sparse or encrypted. It just isn't supported anymore. Oh wait, my bad. It's totally supported by Apple. It just kills the Finder every time I try to open it. But I could just copy the image to a Big Sur machine and re-create it there. Now it's fine. But not everyone can do that. Lucky for me I never trade anything in.

I'll second CarbonCopyCloner.

I was using CarbonCopyCloner before Apple rolled out Time Machine and it's still my main go to for backups. I dabbled with Time Machine over the years, but never used it to recover files or to migrate to a new Mac. I always found that it was much faster, easier and more reliable to migrate from a CCC clone. Currently I have 5 Tasks setup (1 daily, 2 weekly, 2 monthly) and rotate the weekly and monthly drives. All CCC Tasks are set to update when the source drive is mounted. My daily CCC drive stays local, but not connected 24-7. My weekly and monthly CCC drives are retrieved from their hiding places for updates. Years ago I started out with all HDDs, but over time I have replaced all but the monthly CCC drives with SSDs.

etresoft wrote:

I wouldn't touch any sparse disk image format, especially not an encrypted one. That's just asking for corruption.

Interesting. I have used encrypted sparse disk images for years, on multiple Macs & versions of macOS. I have never had a problem with any of them, ever.

I'm not especially concerned about theft, especially of my backup disks, which are kept in safe places (that I'm not identifying for security reasons). But I am concerned about protecting certain more sensitive information from prying eyes, which is my reason for using encrypted sparse disk images instead of encrypting the entire disks.

MartinR wrote:

etresoft wrote:

I wouldn't touch any sparse disk image format, especially not an encrypted one. That's just asking for corruption.

Interesting. I have used encrypted sparse disk images for years, on multiple Macs & versions of macOS. I have never had a problem with any of them, ever.

I have a single, relatively small (couple of MB) sparse disk image I have been using for at least 7 years now. I have very little data that truly needs security. I too haven't had any issues with the encrypted sparse disk image transitioning from Mavericks through to Sequoia.

AglaVerin wrote:

I suppose another possible issue is my Mac Mini has 4TB storage and the external drive in question is 5TB in size (sorry guys, I realised in my question I got the size wrong), so may be too small for versioning software like Time Machine and CCC.

You would just find there isn't much room for older versions if you do a lot of changing of your files. I used CCC on a 3TB backup volume with a 1TB main drive in my computer and I had 3 year old files still on the backup volume.

Remember that none of those backup utilities will backup the core system files anymore, so you don't have the basic system taking up space on a backup drive. They backup your settings, etc, but anything that gets installed by the system installer won't be backed up since with newer macOS versions the idea is if you need to rebuild a drive from scratch you install the system as-new and then migrate your personal files from a backup.

I'll third CarbonCopyCloner!!

Like @den.thed, I have a set of CCC scheduled backup tasks that run daily, monthly and every 6-months. The 2x daily backup is to a locally-connected drive and it's only certain folders that hold important data that I know changes frequently. The monthly & 6-month backups each consist of two sets of drives that I rotate, so there are always a 1-month & 2-month backup (stored offline, locally) and a 6-month & 12-month backup (stored in my safe deposit box at my bank).

I don't use Time Machine because over the years I have seen too many people find out the hard way that they couldn't use their TM backups to restore their files (for a variety of reaons). With CCC, your backup copies are exact copies of your original files and they are not held inside anything that could become a data jail.