HFS Plus or HFS+ is a file system developed by Apple Inc. to replace their Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system used in Macintosh computers (or other systems running macOS). It is also one of the formats used by the iPod digital music player. HFS Plus is also referred to as Mac OS Extended (or, erroneously, “HFS Extended”), where its predecessor, HFS, is also referred to as Mac OS Standard (or, erroneously, as “HFS Standard”). During development, Apple referred to this filesystem with the codename Sequoia.
Mac OS Extended format is Supported by Mac OS 8.1 and Later.
HFS+ always tries to write the file on a contiguous block: HFS+ always tries to write the file on a contiguous block In terms of fragmentation, the file system will try to find a contiguous block of free space, which will have enough space to fit the new file. This also works for any file undergoing revision. The newer version will be written as a whole, instead of in pieces. This also allows for faster writing and file saving.
Mac Format Hfs Web
Benefits of HFS versus HFS+. Typically, the HFS+ file system is better than its predecessor, but there is one case where the Mac OS Standard beats out the Mac OS Extended format. Volumes that are smaller than 32 GB cannot be initialized as Mac OS Extended format. I’ve written quite a bit about the not-quite-so-new Apple File System (APFS) format that Apple adopted for both iOS and—with macOS 10.13 High Sierra—for SSDs that are a Mac's boot volume. So, if you’ve bought a USB drive that’s formatted as Fat32, or any other format other than Mac OS Extended (also known as HFS+) or APFS, here’s how to format a USB drive on Mac. It’s exactly the same procedure if you need to reformat a flash drive on a Mac. How to format a USB drive on a Mac. Format: APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), as recommended by Disk Utility; Click Erase Volume Group. If you don't see this button, click Erase instead. If asked, enter your Apple ID. Forgot your Apple ID? Hfs Format For Mac Os Erasing your disk: For most reasons to erase, including when reformatting a disk or selling, giving away, or trading in your Mac, you should erase your entire disk. Erasing a volume on your disk: In other cases, such as when your disk contains multiple volumes (or partitions) and you don't want to erase them all, you can.
Mac’s Hierarchical File System Plus was designed to solve fragmentation
Not all computers, however, need to defragment their hard disks. That is not to say that fragmentation occurs, only that whatever fragmentation does happen resolves itself internally as part of the file system. The Mac OS X uses the Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+), which is a based on the older HFS system used on the Macintosh Plus and later systems, up to Mac OS 8.1. The advantage of HFS+ is that it is a journaling file system, which helps in data recovery in the event of a power interruption while the hard disk is writing data to the disk. The methods used by a journaling system also enables the file system to be able to defragment on the fly, or while the computer is running.
What are the differences between Mac OS Extended format and Mac OS Standard format?
The most visible difference between Mac OS Extended format and Mac OS Standard format, other than the minimum file size, is the maximum number of files.
HFS Plus is an improved version of HFS, supporting much larger files (block addresses are 32-bit length instead of 16-bit) and using Unicode (instead of Mac OS Roman or any of several other character sets) for naming the items (files, folders) – names which are also character encoded in UTF-16 and normalized to a form very nearly the same as Unicode Normalization Form D (NFD) (which means that precomposed characters like å are decomposed in the HFS+ filename and therefore count as two characters and UTF-16 implies that characters from outside the Basic Multilingual Plane – typically seldom-used characters or those from ancient writing systems – also count as two characters in an HFS+ filename).
HFS Plus permits filenames up to 255 UTF-16 characters in length, and n-forked files similar to NTFS, though until recently, almost no systems software took advantage of forks other than the data fork and resource fork.
Hfs Plus
HFS Plus also uses a full 32-bit allocation mapping table, rather than HFS’s 16 bits. This was a serious limitation of HFS, meaning that no disk could support more than 65,536 allocation blocks under HFS. When disks were small, this was of little consequence, but as larger-capacity drives became available, it meant that the smallest amount of space that any file could occupy (a single allocation block) became excessively large, wasting significant amounts of space. For example, on a 1 GB disk, the allocation block size under HFS is 16 KB, so even a 1 byte file would take up 16 KB of disk space. Unlike most other file systems HFS Plus supports hard links to directories. Like HFS, HFS Plus uses B-trees to store most volume metadata.
The size of an allocation block is the chief distinguishing feature between the volume format known as the Hierarchical File System (HFS) and the newer, and optional, Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) introduced with Mac OS 8.1. The differences are as follows:
- HFS (Mac OS Standard Format).For HFS-formatted volumes, the File Manager can access a maximum of 65,535 allocation blocks on any volume. For small volumes, such as volumes on floppy disks, the File Manager uses an allocation block size of only one logical block. However, the larger the volume, the larger is the allocation block. For example, on a 500 MB volume, the allocation block size is 8KB under HFS.
- HFS + (Mac OS Extended Format).For HFS+-formatted volumes, the File Manager can access a maximum of 4.29 billion allocation blocks on any volume. This means that even huge volumes can be formatted with very small allocation blocks.
HFS+ continued as the primary Mac OS X file system until it was itself replaced with the release of the Apple File System (APFS) with macOS High Sierra in 2017.
HFS is default file system for MAC and iOS device. This means if you are only going to use your external hard drive on MAC, then it’s best to format your drive to HFS+. However, if you later decide to use that on Windows, it won’t work.
But don’t worry, there are workarounds. You can format your hard drive to FAT32, exFAT and use it on both Windows and MAC. Or if you want to keep your HFS format then use HFS Explorer. With this software, you can read the content of HFS formatted HDD on Windows. Though there is no write option.
Here is a detailed video why external HDD do not work with all operating system and what can we do about it.
Use HFS+ Format on Windows with HFS Explorer
Follow the steps
1. Before installing HFS explorer, you need to install JAVA on your computer. However, this can be little tricky for a newbie but it is also important. So here is a small overview.
JDK contains all the files require to developing JAVA application. If you already running JAVA on your computer (like Android app development) then you already have it installed and you can skip this step.
Server JRE is for deploying JAVA application on the server. This is not important in our case.
JRE is for running JAVA application on the user computer. If you have no idea about what the above two means, then you have to install JRE or java runtime environment on your computer.
So go to its download page, download the latest version of JRE (Windows x64 .exe file is around 54 MB). If your operating system is 64-bit then install x64 version, else install x86 version for 32-bit system.
To find out which version of windows you are running go to Control PanelSystem and SecuritySystem. And look for system type. (see screenshot)
2. Once done with the downloading, run the setup and install it like you install any software on your computer. It’s always a good idea to restart your computer after installing a software.
3. Next, download HFS Explorer from its official website and install it on your computer. Again restart your computer.
4. Now, open HFS explorer as administrator (it’s important to run it as admin or you will not be able to detect the drive)
5. The program will still not recognized your device, to fix that go to file > load file system from device > auto detect > That’s it. you will see your files
To download files on your hard drive, select the folder > click on extract > specify the location where you want to download it and hit OK.
[PARAGON HFS EXPLORER]
HFS explorer is free, but it only lets you read files from your external HDD. But say you want to do both i.e. read and write files then you will have to buy Paragon HFS explorer (20$). To see how it works, I install 10-days trial version.
And unlike the free HFS explorer which open in the hard drive in a separate software, Paragon HFS explorer opens the drive in windows explorer — just like a normal NTFS drive. Overall, you will feel no difference while using HFS drive on Windows.
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