External Drives and Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

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External Drives and Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I’m going to be formatting an external drive to store photos, videos, and other files. I’m a professional photographer and have photos and videos that take up a lot of space. In the past five years or so, I have formatted many external drives. Four of the drives went bad. Three of the four drives that went bad were drives that I partitioned. I partition part of the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and part ExFAT. As a photographer, I share photos with other photographers when we team up to photograph events. Some of them use PCs, so I need to have both formats on some drives. The fourth drive that went bad was just formatted as OS Extended (Journaled).

Of the three partitioned drives that crashed, only the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition crashed. The part that was partitions as ExFAT never went bad on any of the three drives. I still use the ExFat partition on those drives today.

I’m going to be formatting another drive and I'm considering just formatting it as ExFAT, even though I only plan to use this drive with just my Mac. It seems like a drive formatted as ExFAT is not as likely to go bad.

Is there a reason to use Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? Is it actually better? Or should I just go ahead and format that drive as ExFAT?

Thanks!

PM

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Mar 6, 2025 2:51 PM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Mar 6, 2025 3:20 PM in response to pasqualerose2

How to format a drive, or disc for maximu… - Apple Community

Explains what it means. HFS GUID Extended Journalled is best for booting Macs from 2006 to September 24, 2017.

APFS is best for booting Macs newer than September 25, 2017, or running an OS newer than that date.

Case sensitive is rarely used.

Macs with those drives connected using Windows file sharing and SMB sharing or third party remote control hosts like AnyDesk, Teamviewer, Kaseya, and Netconsole can share data with Windows machines.

ExFAT offers the best crossplatform storage compatibility, but no booting on a Mac and visibility directly on Windows platform.

MacDrive is third party Windows software that supports Mac formatted drives on Windows.

Ultimately you need to choose which format it should be based on where it will be used the most. Platform specific formats are best for the apps in those formats to run from.

Virtualized hosts like VMWare, Virtualbox, Parallels and UTM all offer encapsulated environments that when run in Windows can also see Mac OS partitions on the same computer that boot into Mac OS.

Boot Camp only works as a separate partition of the internal drive of 2006 to 2019 machines, and does not support Windows 11.

This tip goes over the options in more detail:

Running Windows on a Mac, and Connecting … - Apple Community

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Answer 2

Mar 8, 2025 7:49 AM in response to pasqualerose2

pasqualerose2 wrote:

why I'm not getting the APFS option.

Format as APFS (this deletes all info on that disk so make sure you have backupped any important files):

Disk Utility.app > View > Show All Devices [Command-2]

[select the topmost Device that usually has the Manufacturer's name like "SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Media", NOT any Containers or Volumes listed under it]

Scheme: GUID Partition Map, THEN you can select Format: APFS > Erase.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2025 3:53 PM in response to a brody

Thanks for the info and the link How to format a drive…

I looked at Some of the links that link to. I read the article about Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba drives. I have used all three of those brands. I noticed that the post was from June 2, 2014. That’s 11 years ago. I would think there’s been changes since then. Are those brands still a problem today? They seem to be the most common brands.

My Mac does not give me the option for that APFS. (See the screenshot). Why is that? I am running Sonoma on a MacBook Pro that’s about five years old.

Thanks!

PM

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Answer 4

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Mar 6, 2025 4:09 PM in response to pasqualerose2

Excellent question. You would hope these brands have taken the hint from prior complaints. I would go based on individual reviews of drives you see on Staples, Best Buy, MicroCenter and other electronics outlets. If the drive has less than 100 reviews, it may be difficult to determine how biased they are.

2014 was also the last time I could afford any peripherals. So my information could be dated as far as manufacturers.

Now NTFS is a weird beast because by default Macs do not write to that format. So it is probably best just to get it as journalled if you want to use it regularly on your Mac.

NTFS Mac-Fuse is a third party solution allowing writing to NTFS on the Mac.

The Disk Utility will not show APFS unless you are running High Sierra or higher Mac OS.

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Answer 5

Mar 7, 2025 3:04 PM in response to a brody

I do look at the reviews before purchasing hard drives. They always seem to have good reviews and 4.5 star ratings. Maybe I just keep the unlucky bad ones.

As far as my operating system, I'm using Sonoma, which is a later version than High Sierra. So I don't understand why I'm not getting the APFS option. Did they discontinue it?

Thanks,

PM

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