Apple introduced this month to its developers a new file system that will be released in 2017.
On Monday, June 13, Tim Cook and his executive team presented the latest updates to their core operating systems in the keynote address at the 2016 Apple WWDC event. However, an important development was not presented in the keynote.
A new file system for storage was released in developer preview, as part of the updates with macOS Sierra. According to Tech Republic, the new Apple file system for storage is called the Apple File System (APFS). This is the next-generation versatile file system designed to scale from a Mac Pro to an Apple Watch.
APFS is engineered with encryption and optimized for Flash/SSD storage. The new Apple file system was created to replace the aging HFS and HFS+ systems and will be able to handle millions of large size files.
APFS supports 64-bit inode numbers and sparse files. Timestamp granularity is another big improvement over the old HFS+. APFS supports a 1 nanosecond timestamp granularity, while HFS+ offers a 1 second timestamp granularity. This is a massive improvement in terms of file detail and it would likely be used more for core OS files.
APFS utilizes a copy-on-write metadata scheme to protect against crashes and to ensure that in the event of a crash the file systems updates remain safe. The new file system also supports encryption natively and adds support for both snapshots and clones.
According to ZDNet, cloning is a way to create a copy of a directory or file without using more drive capacity. Only modified blocks are written to new locations when the clone is modified. This allows creating multiple versions of a file with little overhead.
On the other hand, snapshots are read only instances of the file system. The old blocks are kept when blocks in the file system are modified, same as with clones. This way it becomes possible to restore the file system to an earlier point in time.
