Can a computer with its hard drive formatted with APFS be connected and is it compatible with an external hard drive formatted with HFS Extended? Could the computer be backed up on the external with HFS Extended say, using Super Duper?
MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), , Apple since 1979!
Yes. I am doing that except that I am using both Carbon Copy Cloner are Time Machine for my backups to the external drive.
Yes! You can just copy a file from a SuperDuper created file system to any other file system, include APFS. But it could be FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, an SMB server to anywhere in the world, to the cloud, etc....
A file system is worried about how to keep track of your data. It does not change the format of your data as created by the application.
And then, if you needed to retrieve a file lost on your computer, you could simply access it on the external (with HFS extended) and copy it to the computer with APFS? Is that right?
This is what I was talking about - not using some software retrieval process but simply copying a file from the backup drive back to the computer.
Thank you all for your kind and helpful responses!
I don't use Super Duper and don't know what options they offer for file retrieval but with Time Machine and with Carbon Copy Cloner there is no difference in backup options and in retrieval method due to the file format. i.e., you can retrieve files in the same way as if the external and main drive were in the same format.
The actual file, or folder content that resides on the external HFS drive are guests of the underlying filesystem architecture. Restoring them to an APFS formatted drive is just a change of physical location, and underlying host filesystem.
Case in point. My MacBook Air is formatted APFS, but my Time Machine drive continues to be HFS+. Restoring files to APFS is no different than if the boot drive were HFS+ as previous.
Can HFS and APFS be intermingled?
