Formatting MacOS APFS Drive Made Easy

With the storage technology moving towards more efficient means like Solid State Drives (SSDs), you might require a few upgrades with the software to keep up. That is a massive concern for macOS users. Apple File System (APFS) is the new generation of file formats explicitly designed for SSDs. It allows easy management of files, enables multi-key encryption, and supports up to 9 quintillion files on each volume. If you want to learn how to format a Drive to APFS on Mac, this is just the guide.

Does Your Mac Device Support APFS?

Still, it is best to determine that you are running the appropriate macOS version on your device. If you have an older variant, APFS can be less effective and more resource-draining than your current file system. You can check the precise macOS version on your system by clicking the Apple icon > About This Mac.

It should display all the relevant information regarding your device. Ensure that the macOS version you have installed belongs to any of the ones mentioned above or later.

Considerations When Formatting to APFS

It would help to consider several factors before formatting your drives to APFS. In addition to your macOS version, you also need to determine the following:

How to Format APFS Drive on macOS Sierra

If you have implemented the APFS drive on macOS Sierra, you might face a few unwanted setbacks. The new APFS gives exceptional results for macOS High Sierra or later versions, but it isn't the same as its predecessor. We recommend taking the assistance of Terminal instead of Disk Utility to format the APFS drive. It is a safer alternative and won't produce any unexpected results.

On macOS Sierra, use Terminal rather than Disk Utility — it is the safer alternative and avoids unexpected results. Follow these steps:

1. Launch Terminal from Utilities on your Mac.

2. Run diskutil list to display every internal and external disk attached to your Mac.

3. Find the identifier of the APFS disk you want to format and note it exactly (for example, disk2s3).
4. Create the new container by running diskutil apfs createContainer /dev/disk2s3, replacing the identifier with your own.

5. Wait for confirmation — the Terminal lists the number assigned to the new APFS container.
6. Add the volume with diskutil apfs addVolume disk3 APFS newAPFS, replacing disk3 and newAPFS with your container number and preferred volume name.

Your disk is now fully calibrated for APFS. You can use it directly or create partitions as needed.

How to Format APFS Drive on macOS High Sierra to Ventura

Ever since High Sierra, Apple has made APFS formatting much more straightforward. You can do it directly from the Utility tab in the Applications menu. Follow the below-mentioned steps to format the APFS drive on macOS High Sierra, Movaje, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura.

Follow these steps on High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura:

1. Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility on your Mac.
2. In the upper-left corner click View, then select Show All Devices from the drop-down menu.

3. Choose the non-indented entry whose name contains the word Media.

4. Click Erase. In the dialog, enter a Name for the volume, set Format to APFS, and set Scheme to GUID Partition Map.

5. Confirm the scheme is GUID Partition Map, not Master Boot Record (MBR). If APFS is unavailable in the Format list, the drive is using MBR.
6. Click Erase and wait while Disk Utility formats the drive to APFS.
7. Click Done once the formatting completes.

Confirm success by selecting the indented entry — you should see the APFS volume under the name you provided. You can now enable Time Machine or other functions for the new drive.

Bonus Tips: Why Format APFS Drive?

There could be plenty of reasons to format the APFS drive. From wrong partitioning to a malware attack, your macOS drive can experience some unwanted setbacks. Since APFS supports full-drive multi-key encryption, users often choose to format the disk and get rid of their sensitive content as well. Additionally, all files on the system have separate encryption keys, so infestation or deletion from an external malware or virus is made more challenging.

You can also format an external hard disk, not just the internal drive. It is mainly done to make the external storage unit work for other file systems (like FAT or HFS). With APFS, recovery of data is made more convenient. You get timestamps for files down to nanoseconds, and the TRIM command allows you to use obsolete drive areas.

APFS supports the Server Message Block (SMB) technology natively. It is a system that allows you to read/write files while communicating with Apple servers. That makes it easier to sync necessary files with the cloud for recovery.