Apple's new file system: introducing APFS

[Belgarathian]

Looks like Apple is doubling down on security with their new file system (accessible if you have access to Sierra).

Quote

The new file system offers an improvement over Apple’s previous full-disk encryption File Vault application. For one, APFS supports encryption natively instead of through File Vault. There are three modes of operation: no encryption, single-key encryption, and multi-key encryption with per-key files and another key for sensitive metadata. Both AES-XTS and AES-CBC cypher variants are supported, "depending on hardware." This lets you apply an adaptable amount of encryption depending on what your security needs might be—from "I don’t care" to "I don’t want anyone swiping the disk out of my computer" up to "NO ONE ELSE MUST KNOW MY SECRETS."

 

While it's still in development, it looks to add a lot of support over HFS+ for additional features usually found in newer file systems such as ZFS.

 

What's new:

• Native encryption support (not Filevault) - single-key, multi-key, and per-key files and metadata. 
• Nano-second time stamps (improvement over 1 second in HFS+) - important for tracking order of operations
• copy-on-write for additional crash and power loss protection
• Fast directory sizing for near instant queries
• Snapshots and clones for better backup management with TimeMachine
• Space sharing - thin provisioning. 

 

In my personal opinion this is great. While a lot of users won't see a benefit from this, it's a huge improvement from HFS+ - I'm a little excited about the feature they're calling "space sharing" which sounds similar to thin provisioning for VMs. 

 

 

Source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/06/digging-into-the-dev-documentation-for-apfs-apples-new-file-system/

[flibberdipper]

Giggity. Giggity. Gimme.

[Kimmers]

Not sure how this will directly improve my experience but I am excited none the less.

[ThatsCanadaDry]

51 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

-snip-

Anyways, this looks like this is going to be completely useless and/or irrelevant for the majority of people using a Mac computer. Even though, good on Apple for stepping up their game. 

[BOT Edward]

It seems apple is taking a full-security approach with their new ideas/innovations.

I like the idea of adaptive encryption according to what hardware you are sporting as most people use devices that don't contain a TPM chip to use Bitlocker, it is handy to be able to do full-disk encryption at a partition format level as opposed to application level where the cipher key can be obtained (in a non-commercial environment, commercial typically use Keysign servers such as PGP).

 

Love the idea of quicker directory sizing also.

 

[Belgarathian]

23 minutes ago, ThatsCanadaDry said:

Anyways, this looks like this is going to be completely useless and/or irrelevant for the majority of people using a Mac computer. Even though, good on Apple for stepping up their game. 

Completely agree - the average user won't notice/benefit from these improvements. They'll likely benefit from software that's build on-top of these innovations though. 

[PlayStation 2]

People shit on Apple for a lot of things.

Shit like this is why I don't shit on them for the sake of shitting on them.

[TechGod]

2 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

People shit on Apple for a lot of things.

Shit like this is why I don't shit on them for the sake of shitting on them.

Thx for being smart fam.

[LAwLz]

Sounds neat. I wonder what the performance will be like once it is ready for prime time. 

[ShadowCaptain]

That sounds super awesome

[suicidalfranco]

meanwhile others are still sticking to a 20 year old file system 

[ChineseChef]

13 hours ago, Belgarathian said:

• Fast directory sizing for near instant queries

 

Oh man, I want this for my media server.  But for windows.  lol, like that would ever happen.

[vanished]

And where is Microsoft in all of this?  They're still using NTFS.  Clearly other companies don't have any issues making progress in this space.  And they didn't even need to!

[Trixanity]

13 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

And where is Microsoft in all of this?  They're still using NTFS.  Clearly other companies don't have any issues making progress in this space.  And they didn't even need to!

I'm guessing it's either "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or legacy support keeping NTFS alive. Maybe both.

 

Also, I want to note that the new file system apparently won't launch along side Sierra but will come later. And I can understand why. They want to test it thoroughly and probably want to avoid millions of corrupted drives if there are critical issues.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, Trixanity said:

I'm guessing it's either "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or legacy support keeping NTFS alive. Maybe both.

 

Also, I want to note that the new file system apparently won't launch along side Sierra but will come later. And I can understand why. They want to test it thoroughly and probably want to avoid millions of corrupted drives if there are critical issues.

This is definitely something that needs to be put through its paces before going out to the public!

[Master Disaster]

43 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

I'm guessing it's either "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or legacy support keeping NTFS alive. Maybe both.

 

Also, I want to note that the new file system apparently won't launch along side Sierra but will come later. And I can understand why. They want to test it thoroughly and probably want to avoid millions of corrupted drives if there are critical issues.

ABFS will ship with Sierra but with a caveat, it won't be bootable. You can use it on secondary drives but not your main drive. 

 

Wondering if it's worth the few hours it'll take to create a time machine then test out the preview on my hackintosh, I've got the DMG already.

[Trixanity]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

ABFS will ship with Sierra but with a caveat, it won't be bootable. You can use it on secondary drives but not your main drive. 

 

Wondering if it's worth the few hours it'll take to create a time machine then test out the preview on my hackintosh, I've got the DMG already.

I suppose that's reasonable. I mean you gotta test it somehow. Although I'm guessing there is a way (or will be) to test the new file system as a boot drive unless they intend to do that all internally.

 

But I think what people really want to know is when their main drive will be running the new file system.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Trixanity said:

I suppose that's reasonable. I mean you gotta test it somehow. Although I'm guessing there is a way (or will be) to test the new file system as a boot drive unless they intend to do that all internally.

 

But I think what people really want to know is when their main drive will be running the new file system.

Yeah, it's the same approach MS took with ReFS and it's a sensible approach. 

 

Apparently they're dropping support for 2009 Macs meaning the Mac Pro 3.1 system definition won't work, this will mean the large majority of Hackintosh users will be stuck on El Cap which will suck. Guess I'm spending the shit load of hours to create a custom DSDT for my board so I can use a Skylake definition

[deviant88]

unlike windows which has a dead filesystem

[Energycore]

Now if only Windows supported any half decent file system.

[Belgarathian]

4 hours ago, Trixanity said:

I'm guessing it's either "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or legacy support keeping NTFS alive. Maybe both.

 

Also, I want to note that the new file system apparently won't launch along side Sierra but will come later. And I can understand why. They want to test it thoroughly and probably want to avoid millions of corrupted drives if there are critical issues.

Can you imagine if this was launched before proper testing... Oh man, the Chaos. Apple would go back to 1996 overnight. It's one thing to have an app crash on you, but what if the file system fails do you have to format and reinstall, or can you recover and rebuild?

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Trixanity said:

I'm guessing it's either "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or legacy support keeping NTFS alive. Maybe both.

 

Also, I want to note that the new file system apparently won't launch along side Sierra but will come later. And I can understand why. They want to test it thoroughly and probably want to avoid millions of corrupted drives if there are critical issues.

It's definitely legacy support at this point. Windows is horribly non-modular. If you tried to swap out NTFS then everything would break. That's why even the new ReFS is very similar to NTFS.

 

Quote from the Building Windows 8 blog about ReFS:

Quote

When we look at the file system API, this is the area where compatibility is the most critical and technically, the most challenging. Rewriting the code that implements file system semantics would not lead to the right level of compatibility and the issues introduced would be highly dependent on application code, call timing, and hardware. Therefore in building ReFS, we reused the code responsible for implementing the Windows file system semantics. This code implements the file system interface (read, write, open, close, change notification, etc.), maintains in-memory file and volume state, enforces security, and maintains memory caching and synchronization for file data. This reuse ensures a high degree of compatibility with the features of NTFS that we’re carrying forward.

 

Underneath this reused portion, the NTFS version of the code-base uses a newly architected engine that implements on-disk structures such as the Master File Table (MFT) to represent files and directories. ReFS combines this reused code with a brand-new engine, where a significant portion of the innovation behind ReFS lies. Graphically, it looks like this:

 

[AlTech]

16 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

That sounds super awesome

If only I gave a shit about Macs.

 

On a more serious note, this kind of thing would be nice on IOS.

[PCgamer324]

OSX PowerUsers rejoice!  Finally a better filesystem 

 

 

I might actually upgrade from mavericks to Sierra

[Guest]

Is it safe to assume this is ZFS? lol