Formatting my HD disk

Which formats should I choose. I have a iMac Catalina.?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 26, 2024 11:17 AM

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Posted on Sep 26, 2024 1:05 PM

Catalina (and any macOS after Mojave) must use APFS (case insensitive) for the boot disk.


But your disk seems to be a spinning HDD which is VERY slow with APFS so I'd not use that as a Catalina boot disk. Instead, you might either replace it with a SSD disk (might be difficult to do to an iMac) or use an external SSD as a APFS formatted boot disk and internal disk formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled, case insensitive, GUID) as a data disk.


Data volumes can be other formats but usually it is MacOS Extended for HDD, and APFS for a SSD. exFAT or FAT (GUID or MBR) if you must share files with Windows users.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 26, 2024 1:05 PM in response to Sonny1000

Catalina (and any macOS after Mojave) must use APFS (case insensitive) for the boot disk.


But your disk seems to be a spinning HDD which is VERY slow with APFS so I'd not use that as a Catalina boot disk. Instead, you might either replace it with a SSD disk (might be difficult to do to an iMac) or use an external SSD as a APFS formatted boot disk and internal disk formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled, case insensitive, GUID) as a data disk.


Data volumes can be other formats but usually it is MacOS Extended for HDD, and APFS for a SSD. exFAT or FAT (GUID or MBR) if you must share files with Windows users.

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Formatting my HD disk

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