Performance on HDD and APFS

[neliason]

I have a mid 2011 iMac that boots from the HDD. I am wanting to upgrade, but I was wondering how High Sierra performed on spinning disks. Does anyone have any experience?

Also, does anyone have any experience with converting a boot HDD to APFS. If so how was the performance? I know Apple doesn’t automatically convert. The only reason I can see not to is performance. But what about APFS would make it less performant on a HDD?

 

[LarryJoe33]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/high-sierra-success-on-two-machines.2072361/#post-25126883

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-13-trim-working.2058880/page-3#post-25126919

 

[neliason]

Just to follow up I upgraded. It took forever. But, once upgraded everything seems fine. I haven’t found performance to be an issue. In fact some things seem to perform better. There are definitely some bugs. But I’m happy I upgraded.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

Only problem or difference, (depends how you look at it) is my boot time has doubled...

 

[LarryJoe33]

Only problem or difference, (depends how you look at it) is my boot time has doubled...

From memory, Sierra booted a little faster. I would say High Sierra takes maybe 30 seconds more. I don't reboot all that much. Nothing I can't live with. Not to mention, it's still pretty fast as compared to the spinner HDD days.

 

[EugW]

My 2010 iMac with 2 TB hard drive (clean install) takes 50 s to boot High Sierra off APFS.
My 2017 iMac with 1 TB SSD (upgraded from Sierra) takes 23 s to boot High Sierra off APFS.