Will/does APFS work on non-SSD Macs ?

Hi,

My imac(2017) is working on apfs-formatted hdd with 10.13 beta6, at least.

Hi,

Does your 2017 Mac have a fusion drive or any kind of SSD. So far, I've not seen a report of any HDD-only Mac successfully converting to APFS. My iMac is a late 2009. There are more posts here by people with old Macs having the same issue.

According to the current release notes (B7), APFS is not supported on HDD-only Macs.

My understanding is that support will be available in the relase of 10.13

It's officially posted that APFS is *not* coming to HDD-only or Fusion drives yesterday:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018

Oh dear. Surprising that Fusion drives are not eligible for APFS. How many iMac Pros do Apple sell ? I can't believe that APFS would not be available for most iMacs including current models. The advice is ambiguous. Why not say outright whether APFS can be used on an HDD boot drive ?

Is there anything else in 10.13 to make it worth while to update from 10.12 ? Is it possible that APFS could be updated for HDD Macs later on ?

Are you sure?

That link only seems to 'officially' state that conversion won't be automatic for Fusion/HDD...it doesn't specifically state that they won't be supported outright.

-=-

When you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems with all flash storage configurations are converted automatically. Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won't be converted to APFS. You can't opt-out of the transition to APFS.

-=-

I converted my Fusion Drive to AFPS without problem.

I also have the possibility to convert my external HDD to AFPS using Disk Utility. It's in the Edit menu if you select the volume (not the physical drive).

I used the inline conversion checkbox presented when I did the install of PB1 against my DIY Fusion drive on my mid 2012 non-retina MBP. It worked perfectly! I later ran into some APFS issues and rolled everything back to HFS+ to let Apple sort out APFS a bit more. With Fusion NOW being the default storage arrangement on iMacs, you can take it to the bank that Fusion WILL be supported! I know that the check box was presented on PB2 and PB3 but did not even pay attention after that. I am still undecided if I will roll with APFS once HS is released, or hold out for it to mature a bit. I was really surprised that I ran into issues on PB1 as Apple had done such a superb rollout on iOS, watchOS, tvOS as well as how seamless core storage was rolled out not to mention that Fusion has been rock solid since the day it was introduced.

I have the latest iMac w/HDD. I have a external 3.5 drive that I installed HS on and it booted fine. I then converted it to APFS with no problems. So I installed HS on the internal drive and all was good so being the geek that I am I converted the internal HDD to APFS. Tried to boot and it goes into and endless reboot. My solution is to boot off the external drive and bless the internal drive and all is good, till the next upgrade, then I have to rebless the internal HDD again. This has been this way all the way through and including the GM.

Just an update. As of this date I'm running 10.3.4 17E190a. I'm wondering if reformating and going back to AFS would work better/faster. I'm starting to see a lot of beach balls.