APFS_HFS_CONVERT(8) System Manager's Manual APFS_HFS_CONVERT(8)

apfs_hfs_convert — convert an existing HFS file system to APFS file system

apfs_hfs_convert [-D] [-g] [-e] [-v] [-i] [-S path] [-n] [-f] [-F index] [-M mount_path] [-o nx-apfs-format] <device-path>

The apfs_hfs_convert command converts an existing HFS file system to a new APFS file system.

It is recommended not to run the apfs_hfs_convert directly, but to run `diskutil apfs convert`.

The device-path parameter should be the path to a disk device node, such as /dev/disk1s2, with an existing HFS file system, which needs to be converted. The device-path may be a path to a whole disk, such as /dev/disk0, which contains Lightweight Volume Manager (LwVM) structures; all HFS slices will be converted and LwVM replaced by a GPT partition map with a single partition containing the APFS container.

The options are as follows:

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Estimate the APFS metadata size after conversion.
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Increase verbosity of the output.
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Force the converted volume to be case-sensitive. By default, the converted volume will have the same case-sensitivity as the original HFS volume.
path | path
Print statistics about the conversion to the supplied path. If the path is - then the statistics are printed to standard output.
|
Do not finalize the conversion to APFS. Volume remains HFS.
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Force conversion if volume is dirty (journal is non-empty, volume had inconsistencies, or volume is not journaled and not unmounted cleanly).
index | index
Volume number index (0-based) should be formatted as fixed-size. Usually used when converting LwVM.
mount_path | mount_path
When converting LwVM systems, which require a special "conversion mount" of the underlying device, use the given mount_path as the mount point. If this option is not used, a temporary directory will be created and used.
nx-apfs-format
NX or APFS format options.
If conversion succeeds, modify the GPT UUID.
|
Convert all former and current directory hardlinks to files/aliases.
Allow for one-off specific formatting features to be toggled on or off during the conversion to APFS. Values must be specified in a CSV string. For example "feature=value,feature2=value2,..."

dirents=unhashed is a feature format flag that will specify to the converter that it should produce a volume with legacy (non-standard) directory entries. That is, the resulting volume will have file names that are both normalization-sensitive and case-sensitive. This is not recommended in most cases.

The apfs_hfs_convert utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

The following converts the HFS file system on the /dev/disk1s2 device:

apfs_hfs_convert -v /dev/disk1s2

mount_apfs(8) , newfs_apfs(8)

The apfs_hfs_convert utility first appeared in OS X 10.12.

September 15, 2015 Mac OS X