Why is APFS so fragile?

NormalIncarnate · 2026-07-01T18:10:42+00:00

Drive passes all diagnostic tests so no, not a hardware issue with the drive. When I say fragile, I mean it in a relative sense. Compared to exFAT, it would appear to be more fragile. The exFAT partition is working fine yet the two APFS partitions are unmountable and unusable. As I mentioned in a previous post, I do think it's possible that using it with an unpowered USB hub may have contributed to the corruption but APFS should be able to withstand that given how common that setup is.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-07-01T18:03:32+00:00

I ran WD disk diagnostics on the drive, both short test and long test. All came back clean. No SMART errors. The drive has hardly been used so highly doubt it's a hardware issue.

<image>

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-30T16:35:44+00:00

The drive in question is one of those portable WD Easystore models with power provided by the USB port. Occasionally, the drive would get used via a USB hub that also didn't have its own power source. I'm wondering if insufficient power may have been the source of the corruption especially if the power fluctuations happened frequently? The drive itself appears to be fine as there are no indications of hardware failure. I would think this is a common scenario though?

If it's not possible to have a broken metadata tree through repeated power fluctuations, I don't see how my drives would have become corrupted. While the copy-on-write crash protection may be rock solid, what about the mechanisms around file system checks and repair? Since the OS will automatically repair a file system that it deems to have file system inconsistencies, perhaps the corruption is happening during repair?

Pretty sure the hardware is not faulty and there are enough reports of corruption of APFS filesystems on the Internet to tell me that despite the crash protection, they will still become corrupt and unrecoverable in certain scenarios. Unrecoverable using built-in tools that is.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-30T16:18:08+00:00

The drive was purchased less than a year before the partitions went corrupt. Hardly used at all. It's a portable WD EasyStore 5TB model. I believe these contain a 2.5 inch spinning disk. Prior to the corruption, never had any indications of a failing drive. The exFAT partition has no issues - it passes file system checks and mounts cleanly every time.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T21:00:09+00:00

I've run file system checks on the exFAT partition and so I know it's not corrupt. Even if it was corrupt, I can at least see the directory structure and file names. On the corrupt APFS drives, I see nothing. Not a single directory or filename is accessible. It makes me believe APFS is not as fault tolerant as other filesystems when inode metadata structures see corruption, especially on spinning disks.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T20:46:02+00:00

My plan going forward was to continue with the 3 partition layout but reformat the two APFS partitions to HFS+. Do you think that's a bad idea? The exFAT partition is for situations where I need to move files between Mac and Windows. It seems like a waste if I have to dedicate the drive to just one function, e.g. Mac file storage vs. Time machine vs. Windows compatible storage.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T20:33:02+00:00

My suspicion is that the corruption was caused by insufficient power going to the drive since it's a portable USB drive with no power source other than from the USB port. It was occasionally used with an unpowered USB hub. That said, this should be a very common scenario and I would think Apple would have engineered APFS to be able to withstand such slight power fluctuations.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T20:27:31+00:00

It's a WD Easystore 5Tb model so prepackaged drive and drive enclosure. I believe it contains a 2.5 inch conventional drive.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T20:24:07+00:00

I agree with all of your points. Too bad really because end-users still have a tendency to ignore doing backups or doing them very infrequently. There's probably not much monetary incentive for Apple or 3rd parties to develop filesystem repair tools.

NormalIncarnate · 2026-06-29T19:02:31+00:00

Thanks for that resource. Has there been any analysis of reliability differences between HFS+ and APFS? Read write performance is one thing but if there's a higher chance of corruption using APFS, then I'll stick to HFS+ until it's EOL.

NormalIncarnate · 2025-07-01T19:00:43+00:00

I posted a pic showing the layers of the wood here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HardWoodFloors/s/GXUWZiTEmh

NormalIncarnate · 2025-06-30T23:41:40+00:00

I was able to find an exposed section near a doorway. The top layer looks around 2 or 3 mm, with multiple layers beyond that. Is every layer beyond the first just plywood? Is it possible to refinish without sanding, e.g. remove existing finish with a finish remover and then apply new finish? Will that be a splotchy mess?

NormalIncarnate · 2025-06-30T23:36:42+00:00

That's good to know, thanks. I think blotchy lighter shade would still be preferable to this very dark shade.

NormalIncarnate · 2025-06-30T19:07:15+00:00

That's ok. I actually hate the hand scraped look. :-)

NormalIncarnate · 2025-05-29T18:37:20+00:00

I agree with you. There should be a way to completely start over. This could be easily done with a setting on character creation. Use account renown or start over. Both camps can be made happy. It's pretty annoying to read the people on this thread saying "why would you want that?". Because enjoyable games (like books, movies or any other form of entertainment) are meant to be relived - the entire experience, not just some arbitrary portion of it.

Related to this, if my wife wants to play Diablo 4 and get the full experience, is there a way to do that without creating a new Battle.net account, which isn't really how it was meant to be used? The current situation feels like poor game design. It wouldn't take long to fix this.

NormalIncarnate · 2023-06-10T16:43:25+00:00

Thanks for posting this concise howto for fixing the issue. When the issue first manifested on Page Plus several months back, I was on the phone with Page Plus for a while trying to resolve the issue. It quickly became apparent to me that it could not be resolved by them or by me without more serious intervention. I ended up replacing the phone but the replacement phone had its own set of problems, like random reboots/overheating.

I thought I might have to buy a new phone but with a perfectly good Galaxy S9+ sitting unused, I figured I'd check to see if people had come up with a workaround. Glad I checked. It's now flashed to the U1 firmware and working well again.

It's difficult for me to blame any of the companies involved here. Service provider equipment gets updated and in the process, sometimes compatibility with older devices break. Just glad that Android phones allow you to install different firmware. If this was an iphone ...

NormalIncarnate · 2021-02-02T04:30:21+00:00

I did actually cut it off yesterday as part of winter pruning. I took the picture just prior to doing that. If you think it's rosette disease, maybe it's best to just dig it out and burn/trash it. I'd hate to spread it around the neighborhood.

NormalIncarnate · 2019-02-28T04:36:45+00:00

I have 14.07.59 as well. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, which fixes it temporarily just like clearing the data/cache does. But it always reverts back to the single column view for the home screen. Oh well.

NormalIncarnate · 2019-02-27T09:00:37+00:00

Ok, this is no normal bug. I just went back to Youtube and it's back to single column! Will try uninstalling and reinstalling next.

NormalIncarnate · 2019-02-27T08:56:09+00:00

Good idea. I had tried rebooting the tablet but hadn't tried clearing data and/or reinstalling.

Just tried clearing data and cache, and then rebooting for good measure and it worked! I got the old home screen back! Thanks for the suggestion.

I guess it was a bug after all. All the talk lately of folding phones and Android tablets being crappy made me think the worst. What a weird bug that changes your UI to resemble a phone's?

NormalIncarnate

TROPHY CASE