HFS and HFS+


Created: 18.10.2020

HFS

HFS+

Since 1998, since macOS 8.1. Was replaced by APFS.

Didn’t natively support full disk encryption (FV2 was added later). Timestamps were only to-the-second. Support up to 4 billion files.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn/tn1150.html

  • Supports large files
  • Efficient disk space usage
  • unicode for filenames
  • name forks
  • file compression
  • journaling. Journaling is a mechanism in which changes to a disk are first committed to a journal file, which acts as a buffer to ensure that all disk update transactions are fully completed. 1
  • dynamic resizing, defragmentation
  • not only for MacOS

References

1

Sheward, Mike. Hands-on Incident Response and Digital Forensics (p. 138). BCS Learning & Development Limited. Kindle Edition.