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As of May 2021, for Machines running Big Sur or later, is it better to format a new external HDD to use APFS? I notice that on my older external HDD, a APFS partition was created for TimeMachine backups and I understand that an external SDD should be APFS. I did not find any recent advice for formatting HDDs. Is APFS more reliable for HDDs-- any disadvantage to using APFS other than portability?
MacBook Pro Retina
According to Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support:
"APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk. If you select a new backup disk that’s not already formatted as an APFS disk, you get the option to erase and reformat it. If the disk is a Mac OS Extended format disk that contains an existing Time Machine backup, you aren’t asked to erase and reformat the disk."
I'd recommend Mac OS Extended for HDD because APFS might be or get slower. Most of my data HDDs are Mac OS Extended.
That said, APFS has more flexible partition/volume options and Mojave and up require APFS so I have one HDD data volume also formatted as APFS.
AFAIK APFS might be less reliable than Mac OS Extended because there is limited official info about its specs. So if it gets corrupted, there are less repairing options and 3rd party tools for that.
https://bombich.com/blog/2019/09/12/analysis-apfs-enumeration-performance-on-rotational-hard-drives
format external HDD as APFS when not TimeMachine backup?
