does Mojave change the internal HD to APFS? Does it matter?

[chestbox]

I have a late 2012 iMac.

The context of my question is - had high Sierra until last week, erased HD last week and installed Catalina. Decided to downgrade to Mojave. Erased HD again, but I think that it was formatted as type APFS (not aware that Catalina creates a 2nd partition and that there is something else to do other than select disk and click erase), ended up in internet recovery mode somehow, had to install 10.8 and upgraded to Mojave from there. Once Mojave was installed, i noticed that the HD’s type was APFS.
By now I thought that I did not erase the HD completely after Catalina. I wanted to erase the HD again, initially could not select macOS extended as the type, but after research I was able to do so by showing all devices in disk utility and selecting the actual disk, and not the container or volume within.
Now I was able to erase the HD including all of the partitions and select macOS extended (journaled) as the type.
Made a fresh install of Mojave and after install the HD’s type is APFS.

Does this matter? I’ve read that for older HDs (mine was included with the iMac), it’s recommended to use macOS extended.
Did I do something wrong along the way?

After trying to look into this, I thought that the problem came from Catalina’s partitions and/or my lack of knowledge when trying to downgrade, but does this happen with Mojave as well?

is it worth keeping high sierra to keep macOS extended journaled? or am I good with an HDD with the type as APFS with Mojave?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Mojave uses APFS as well. There is no harm keeping it as is.

File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, format disks or volumes using Apple File System (APFS), Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), and ExFAT.

support.apple.com

 

[chestbox]

Mojave uses APFS as well. There is no harm keeping it as is.

File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, format disks or volumes using Apple File System (APFS), Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS (FAT), and ExFAT.

support.apple.com

thank you for the input! so running APFS on an HDD drive does not matter? from my (not really existing) understanding, i thought that APFS is beneficial to SSDs and not that great for HDDs. that was the only reason i worried

 

[Apple_Robert]

thank you for the input! so running APFS on an HDD drive does not matter? from my (not really existing) understanding, i thought that APFS is beneficial to SSDs and not that great for HDDs. that was the only reason i worried

When I had an older Mac, I didn't do APFS early on (I believe I kept it HFS+) due to people having trouble. I think that that was more a software issue at the time more than anything.

If you want to take the time to start over and format the drive back to extended journaled for peace of mind, you can certainly go that route. If it were my Mac, I would leave it be and make sure I had a good backup of my important files in case I ever had a problem with the drive (for some reason).

 

[chrfr]

I have a late 2012 iMac.
is it worth keeping high sierra to keep macOS extended journaled? or am I good with an HDD with the type as APFS with Mojave?

APFS is much slower on hard drives than HFS+. I would consider getting a USB 3 SSD and running your Mac from that. It’ll perform much better than the internal HDD on HFS+ does.

 

[chestbox]

APFS is much slower on hard drives than HFS+. I would consider getting a USB 3 SSD and running your Mac from that. It’ll perform much better than the internal HDD on HFS+ does.

thank you for the input! i was always skeptical about running an OS and everything of an external drive, idk, it just feels like lots can go wrong. is this method really recommended? i do want to replace the internal HD for an SSD at some point. not to mention, it feels there is a lot more maintenance and know-how involved with an external, compared to a one time internal change.

regardless, since I can't upgrade to a SSD today, you'd choose HFS+ and high sierra over APFS and mojave?

 

[justashooter]

regardless, since I can't upgrade to a SSD today, you'd choose HFS+ and high sierra over APFS and mojave?

Yes, that is what I would choose. But get a SSD either internally (prefered) or via USB3 (if it has USB3?). You will love the speed difference. And go to Mojave, which I have found to be very stable, when you get the SSD. I love the SSD and Mojave I have running on a 2012 MBP.

 

[Boyd01]

i was always skeptical about running an OS and everything of an external drive, idk, it just feels like lots can go wrong. is this method really recommended?

I have no idea whether it's "recommended", but ran my 2012 quad-core Mini from a 1tb Samsung T3 boot drive for several years with zero problems. And I was using Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro pretty heavily during that period. I was running MacOS Sierra then, but doubt that makes a difference.

My 2012 Mini had an original Apple 256gb internal SSD, but I wanted more space and also wanted to leave Mountain Lion on the internal drive in order to run some legacy CAD and 3d software. The internal SSD was faster, but from a user-perspective, the only difference I noticed was that it took longer to boot from the external SSD.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Does Mojave change the internal HD to APFS?

I don’t recall the initial versions forcibly converting the startup drive during the install — perhaps due to going the upgrade route. However, If you perform a fresh install, it most certainly will. I know because I recently did a restore of my Mac mini's internal Fusion Drive using the latest Mojave installer (which includes the final, up-to-date v. 10.14.6). The volume was erased and formatted as HFS+ before running the installation, but sure enough it is APFS again now — and I’m going to leave it that way.

thank you for the input! i was always skeptical about running an OS and everything of an external drive, idk, it just feels like lots can go wrong. is this method really recommended? i do want to replace the internal HD for an SSD at some point. not to mention, it feels there is a lot more maintenance and know-how involved with an external, compared to a one time internal change.

As @Boyd01 states, “I have no idea whether it's 'recommended’ “ but does work. In the case of these old(er) machines, the notable downsides are extra clutter (even if just a little) on your desk and the risk of accidentally disconnecting the drive, which could indeed cause big trouble/hassles (i.e., corruption).

regardless, since I can't upgrade to a SSD today, you'd choose HFS+ and high sierra over APFS and mojave?

That would depend if you feel it’s worth the hassle and older OS limitations.

As also mentioned earlier, APFS was designed with the specific operations of SSDs in mind and doesn’t perform as well on HDDs as HFS+. I didn’t notice it much because I don’t request my Mac perform a lot of I/O intensive tasks, plus my 2012 mini has enough RAM to cache at least a few GBs of files. With that said, after reading all of the suggestions to go external I finally gave in and did just that. I’ve been using an NVMe SSD via a USB 3.1 enclosure — restricted to USB 3.0 -- as the primary drive with the latest version of Catalina for my mini (until I move to a new Mac) without problems.