APFS and BTRFS

APFS and BTRFS

[Forrest Aldrich]

I have a really large (3+ TB) volume I am copying to a BTRFS volume 
(both over USB) which is painfully slow.  In fact, it will probably take 
days to complete.   My goal is to use BTRFS on that larger USB volume 
(it's an 18TB drive)....

I don't suppose there is a way to convert APFS to BTRFS :)   I know, but 
I thought I would ask as it seems like others may have a similar query.


Thx...

Re: APFS and BTRFS

[Michal Rostecki]

On 3/20/21 4:09 PM, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
> I have a really large (3+ TB) volume I am copying to a BTRFS volume 
> (both over USB) which is painfully slow.  In fact, it will probably take 
> days to complete.   My goal is to use BTRFS on that larger USB volume 
> (it's an 18TB drive)....
> 
> I don't suppose there is a way to convert APFS to BTRFS :)   I know, but 
> I thought I would ask as it seems like others may have a similar query.
> 
> 
> Thx...

Hi Forrest,

No, there is no other option than copying the data. Converting 
partitions automatically with btrfs-convert is supported only for 
ext2/3/4 and reiserfs, though it's still not recommended without backups 
and might fail.

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Manpage/btrfs-convert

Cheers,
Michal

APFS and BTRFS

[Forrest Aldrich]

I have a really large (3+ TB) volume I am copying to a BTRFS volume 
(both over USB) which is painfully slow.  In fact, it will probably take 
days to complete.   My goal is to use BTRFS on that larger USB volume 
(it's an 18TB drive)....

I don't suppose there is a way to convert APFS to BTRFS :)   I know, but 
I thought I would ask as it seems like others may have a similar query.


Thx...

Re: APFS and BTRFS

[David Sterba]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 11:22:18AM -0400, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
> I have a really large (3+ TB) volume I am copying to a BTRFS volume 
> (both over USB) which is painfully slow.  In fact, it will probably take 
> days to complete.   My goal is to use BTRFS on that larger USB volume 
> (it's an 18TB drive)....
> 
> I don't suppose there is a way to convert APFS to BTRFS :)   I know, but 
> I thought I would ask as it seems like others may have a similar query.

Convert relies on libraries providing the API to access the source
filesystems, I don't see anything like that for APFS so it would have to
be written from scratch. The linux-apfs project does not seem to be
active, last update 2 years ago. If it's just days of copying, I think
it's the better and safer option.

Re: APFS and BTRFS

[Forrest Aldrich]

I have apfs-fuse running, but it is read-only.

I wanted to avoid the pain of replicating a large disk from USB3 to USB3 
by converting the filesystem, which I expected wouldn't be possible.  So 
now I am just replicating it, which will take days to accomplish.


Thanks.



On 3/22/21 7:13 PM, Eu, acc wrote:
> Read-only;
> - linux-apfs read-only version, linux-apfs-oot 
> https://github.com/linux-apfs/linux-apfs-oot 
> <https://github.com/linux-apfs/linux-apfs-oot>
> - apfs-fuse https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse 
> <https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse>
> - Linux-Reader, from DiskInternals, a Windows(!) freeware
>
> ACC

Re: APFS and BTRFS

[Forza]

On 2021-03-23 00:19, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
> I have apfs-fuse running, but it is read-only.
> 
> I wanted to avoid the pain of replicating a large disk from USB3 to USB3 
> by converting the filesystem, which I expected wouldn't be possible.  So 
> now I am just replicating it, which will take days to accomplish.
> 
Have you considered taking the disks out of the USB enclosure and 
putting them directly on the SATA controller? It could be faster.


~Forza

Re: APFS and BTRFS

[Forrest Aldrich]

I'm taking data from the 18TB drive and placing it onto the USB-drive 
array I built (slower) -- it's on a USB 3.0 bus, off a raspberry pi, so 
very limited in terms of what I can do for that. It's a hackup job I'm 
building for longer term storage.  The real bottleneck is the USB3.x bus 
and the USB-based disks I have striped together -- yes, i know it's a 
hack :)



On 3/27/21 2:13 PM, Forza wrote:
>
> On 2021-03-23 00:19, Forrest Aldrich wrote:
>> I have apfs-fuse running, but it is read-only.
>>
>> I wanted to avoid the pain of replicating a large disk from USB3 to 
>> USB3 by converting the filesystem, which I expected wouldn't be 
>> possible.  So now I am just replicating it, which will take days to 
>> accomplish.
>>
> Have you considered taking the disks out of the USB enclosure and 
> putting them directly on the SATA controller? It could be faster.
>
>
> ~Forza