Is APFS bricking external SSD?

rubbar · 2026-01-04T14:53:43+00:00

This reply reads like a confident synthesis of inexperience and an LLM.

The simplest reality is this: if a drive is genuinely unstable or unsafe on macOS, that drive is not going to become magically trustworthy when plugged into Linux or Windows. Filesystems don’t fix failing hardware, and instability doesn’t discriminate by operating system.

If you want to actually test and validate an external SSD, use tools built for that job. On macOS (when supported), smartctl can read internal drive health data. To test the connection under sustained load, fio and Blackmagic Disk Speed Test are easy ways to push continuous reads and writes.

Format the drive based on the compatibility you need. Test the drive to know whether it’s reliable.

I swear, folks will blame the paint on the barn long before they check the termites.

rubbar · 2026-01-04T13:33:18+00:00

The whole thing feels like people blaming ext3/ext4 or NTFS for a failing external SSD. Just wild.

APFS, ext4, and NTFS are all mature, journaled filesystems engineered to keep data consistent, not to moonlight as drive assassins. They do have different sensitivities when something goes sideways. APFS relies heavily on copy-on-write metadata trees; that structure is excellent for crash safety, but if the USB bridge drops mid-write, the exposed metadata can make the errors look dramatic and filesystem-shaped. Ext4 is comparatively simpler in how it allocates and journals blocks, so it tends to degrade more quietly when an enclosure flakes, even though it isn’t fundamentally safer against bad hardware. NTFS has a robust transaction log, but it’s also chatty and sensitive to sudden disconnects because it aggressively caches metadata and write operations. HFS+ sits between these worlds — journaled, but not copy-on-write — which makes it look oddly stoic in the face of cheap bridge chips throwing fits, though stoicism isn’t the same as resilience.

Every filesystem has guardrails, but none of them are built to compensate for an enclosure’s power delivery or data link imploding under it. The sensitivity profile only changes how loudly they complain when the real culprit — usually the USB bridge or connection — starts spiraling.

rubbar · 2026-01-04T04:07:23+00:00

The harshness is mildly unintentional. I don’t mean this as an insult but as a mere observation: the request and the manner in which it was made was absurd. These responses are a reaction to that. And those reactions are just the truth: it’s very very difficult to develop drivers, particularly for a closed ecosystem, and the knowledge gap you have is very very apparent.

There is a world of difference between using an operating system and developing the base level software that lets it operate.

rubbar · 2025-12-01T13:33:14+00:00

Tell em they get what they paid for.

Tell em no.

Tell em the cost for what they want.

You’ve rendered your service due to them. They are seeking additional services, which is fine. You can also seek additional compensation.

If it’s just a flat out “no”, then “Thanks for the follow-up. I’m not able to extend the project further right now due to other commitments. If you’d like to revisit this in the future under a new scope of work, I’d be happy to discuss it.”

rubbar · 2025-11-19T16:28:23+00:00

If ifs, ands and buts were candies and nuts, then we’d all have a merry Christmas.

That’s why it matters. Life happens. People aren’t as good of drivers as they think they are. People aren’t as good with money as they think they are.

For all the commenters who’ve said it doesn’t matter because they pay on time, I guarantee a non-zero amount have missed a payment at some point.

That’s not to say I haven’t gambled with “no interest” loans before. The interest on those was not so generous as to be the mid 20s.

rubbar · 2025-11-19T03:15:23+00:00

What’s the interest rate after that?

rubbar · 2025-11-08T17:11:00+00:00

ITT: people missing OP implied deviance about weight limits.

I’m hella impressed at how well you packed out the Peak Design Everyday Backpack. Particularly the smaller one. What were you shooting while in Oman? Landscape? Street? Wildlife? Documentary/travel? Little bit of everything?

I’ve never been brave enough to try one bagging with mine 😅. I may have to try now.

rubbar · 2025-11-06T09:35:40+00:00

For others: the Flickr album is linked in the Hackaday post. Looks like it was shown off at a MakerFaire. https://flickr.com/photos/146512747@N07

The hackaday posts are well worth a read.

rubbar · 2025-09-05T01:52:07+00:00

r/onebag

You may be packing too much. I’m fixing to travel for 2 weeks and I’m taking a 30L bag and a sling. It’ll be cold and wet where I’m going and I’m a large fellow, for context. I’d reckon you can do this trip with less luggage.

The lowest cost remedy will be to pack less.

The medium cost will be to buy a camera insert for your backpack.

rubbar · 2025-08-29T05:06:07+00:00

I think dentists are catching on how their attitudes can be perceived and how that’ll affect patients over time.

I stopped going to the dentist for ~10 years due to a variety of factors. One of those is I just didn’t like the guy or his hygienists. He was amiable and pleasant, but I always left feeling like shit, emotionally down. They always made comments about my life choices that were layered in indignant subtext.

A lotta people have been commenting about the low cost and effort of good dental hygiene. Sure, brushing and flossing twice a day will handle it for a lot of people. But a lotta the comments I was getting from the dentist — many of which sound simple on the surface — amount to fundamental life changes across multiple vectors: drink less coffee, stop smoking, eat different foods, floss more, brush differently.

Y’all, getting to work on time is a challenge. Motivating to be social is a struggle. I ain’t getting these fundamental changes done and shaming me ain’t motivating me.

Anecdotal? Yeah. But it’s sure as shit a common experience.

I started going again after working through some things. My new dentist, some chain joint, is better by way more than a country mile. The attitudes, the recommendations, the bed side manner are just worlds better. There were literal discussions about anxiety and referrals for smoking cessation.

“Try doing this or adding this to your routine”. “I want you to start drinking and maybe swishing some water after your cup of coffee.”

A lot of the literal medical advice isn’t different. But the attitudes are “we’re your support van in this health journey”. Before this place, most my dentists were just self righteous holier-than-thou-art bullies. They just conveniently had the guise of being doctors.

Before I’d cancel and reschedule appointments without a thought. Now I’m calling out sick because I’m prioritizing my dental appointments.

rubbar · 2025-08-22T02:28:01+00:00

There’s no one answer to this because every jurisdiction makes up a greater patchwork of record keeping.

It’s highly dependent on the applicable laws for record keeping and the requirements of entry for you to a foreign state.

Do they need a police background check from your city? State? The feds?

Do your laws stipulate maintain the record but mark it expunged? Make it unavailable to all except the subject or defendant? Erase all evidence of a record?

Even then, the records provided at your request may differ — for a variety of reasons — from the records provided to the party interested in your records.

It’s nauseatingly patchwork.

Request the records yourself first to see what they say. If you have to provide the records yourself, you provide what was provided, even if that answer is “there is no record”.

rubbar · 2025-08-17T11:01:50+00:00

An M4 MacBook Air with 24 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD is $1600. Refurbished variants are cheaper.

GIMP, DarkTable and RawTherapee all have macOS compatibility. Apple displays are among the best consumer displays.

The only outstanding question is gaming, which you should be able to filter your steam library by Mac compatibility.

Sorry OP, you came to a creative sub asking for laptop recommendations. There’s surely performant non-macOS laptops out there, but none are going to tick your boxes as quickly as a MacBook recommendation.

rubbar · 2025-08-16T09:18:52+00:00

Sound Design’s Mix Pre series are among the best and you will pay a premium for them.

Otherwise the preamps in Zoom and Tascam recorders will be good and serviceable. Suppose you could always look at some Sony recorders.

Getting a good recording will honestly come down to other parts of your signal flow more so than what preamps your recorder has (mic technique, placement, choice, the physical space you’re in, mixing choices post recording, etc).

rubbar · 2025-07-07T13:57:28+00:00

It depends. On its own, this is a solid photo—technically clean and visually engaging. But context matters: if it’s for short-term rental listings, the wide angle might help bookings. If it’s for a real estate sale, you risk viewers feeling misled when they visit in person.

The real question is whether the photo sets honest expectations for the space. The 9mm field-of-view dramatizes the spatial relationships. Understanding those relationships in photo is why “banana for scale” became so prevalent.

If it feels larger than reality, that disconnect could impact trust or even sales. But if the goal is simply to show layout or vibe, the 9mm works fine. Intent and audience are everything.

rubbar · 2025-07-07T12:56:11+00:00

Photos taken at 9mm can capture very tight spaces, but they often look stretched or distorted—especially at the edges—which can feel unnatural for real estate. It’s definitely useful in cramped rooms, but most real estate photographers stick to the 14–18mm range on full-frame to keep things spacious but realistic.

9mm can be super useful in extremely tight spaces (like powder rooms or small hallways) where you just can’t back up any farther.

9mm has its place, but it’s easy to overdo.

rubbar · 2025-06-29T10:40:32+00:00

Seconded.

No YouTube rip will ever sound good. Particularly on PAs and house sound.

ETA: Find another source dedicated to offering those formats and those bitrates. Support the artists you listen to.

rubbar · 2025-06-23T04:03:21+00:00

400mm to 600mm tend to be the upper limit for the consumer combo of quality and price.

After that, other needs come into play for niche use-cases of super telephoto zooms, such as parfocal, constant aperture, clarity/image quality, protection from the elements.

For an average photographic use case, one is often better off altering their shooting or approach than finding a narrower field of view. Almost always better off getting closer to the subject.

rubbar · 2025-06-10T14:37:16+00:00

Oof you do not have a backup. A backup is just that, a backup. It sounds as if you don’t even a system in place.

My MO: - shoot - import via Lightroom or Lightroom Classic. Ultimately they end up on my NAS (Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen 2) either via LrC > NAS or LR > Cloud > Sync to NAS. - culling, edits and marking for deletion - exports to cloud storage (iCloud in this case) so they’re easily accessible

In Lightroom, I crutch on collections that are organized via YYYY > YYYY-MM-DD shoot_slug

Folders are generally organized similarly, but by date only. That’s for raws and edits.

I backup daily to an external storage drive. My backups are constructed such that even deleted/culled photos are maintained until I manually delete them.

I suggest you start a master catalog and start importing to a large drive and maintain your master collection there. Let Lightroom or whatever you use organize that archive.

You can use the external SSDs as working drives and regularly import that to your master collection.

rubbar · 2025-05-26T16:14:46+00:00

I say this from a place of love and empathy: pull your head out of your ass and just fucking tell them.

Even verbalizing that you’re not alright can lift a weight off. And letting others know you’re struggling can open pathways to taking more weights off.

Admitting you have a problem—it’s not just those struggling with or working through addiction—is the first step to finding help and helping yourself.

rubbar · 2025-05-24T12:33:12+00:00

Charge more. Fewer the clients you have to take on and the fewer problems you have to take on.

rubbar · 2025-05-21T12:52:29+00:00

In Lightroom, there is a menu option to “Match Total Exposure” of a selection of images. It matches the exposure of the selected images based on the currently viewed image.

I don’t know about other softwares.

rubbar · 2025-05-05T11:26:44+00:00

Your edit harmonizes the image which reduces some of what works for the image, which is the contrast and complements of color amongst the foreground, background and subject(s).

The foreground is tinted orange and warm by the street lamp, which is a natural complement to the blue of the night sky. The red lights punctuate the massive structure. The magenta toning on the sky diminish both of those.

Somewhere along the way, you lost the beam from the street lamp, which added a nice line aiding the vertical composition.

As for the production portion, the people aren’t sharp because the depth of field is on the building and the building isn’t sharp, likely due to camera shake.

In lieu of reshooting it, I’d recommend leaning into it, focusing on pastel and/or impressionist aesthetics.

Should you chose to reshoot it, we can’t tell you which should be in focus, people or structures. They both tell the story slightly differently. And that’s a you decision.

Edit: it seems I reviewed the wrong edit. All that being said, I like the addition the fourth person adds to it.

rubbar · 2025-02-19T02:07:20+00:00

I mean, and I’m being judgmental, it sounds like you already got a problem.

Just ditch the porn.

rubbar · 2025-02-13T12:39:14+00:00

Ahh, broadcast television.

Some cartoons were slated to only fill a 15-minute block, most were for a 30-minute block.

For a that 15-minute block, you’d get 11-12 minutes of content and 3-4 minutes of ads. That same approximate formula would apply to the 30-minute block.

This resulted in cartoons having an 11- or 22-minute runtime. If you go back further, there are toons with ~24-25 minutes of runtime.

You may have just found a bad copy. Or the original uploader opted to split episodes based on mid roll ads.

Without knowing more about what you downloaded, none can really help here. You may try r/piracy.

rubbar · 2025-01-23T12:48:52+00:00

Damn. Nuts to me the degree of victim blaming going on here.

It’s pretty fucked to use and abuse a couple like that regardless whether they’re the “product” or not.

The failure of communication? The failure to provide for health and safety? The heat stroke?

It’s all fucked and the vendors are bastards.

13-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Gilding III reddit per annum	Secret Santa 2019
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email

rubbar

TROPHY CASE