{"id":98684,"date":"2026-07-09T15:26:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=98684"},"modified":"2026-07-09T15:26:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:26:28","slug":"macos-28-will-end-support-for-encrypted-hfs-drives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/98684-macos-28-will-end-support-for-encrypted-hfs-drives\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS 28 Will End Support for Encrypted HFS+ Drives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Apple quietly published a support document <\/a>this week warning users that macOS 28<\/strong> will drop support for encrypted Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volumes entirely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the vast majority of Mac users, this is a non-event. But those who rely on traditional spinning hard drives, or HDDs, for storage or backup will want to listen up, because some commonly accepted sage advice is in need of updating as a result of this change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HFS+ vs. APFS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, Apple isn’t ending support for the HFS+ file format outright. According to the\u00a0support document<\/a>, macOS 28 and later will continue to mount and read\u00a0unencrypted\u00a0Mac OS Extended volumes without issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This change targets a much narrower case: any HFS+ volume that’s also encrypted. Once macOS 28 arrives, those drives simply won’t mount until you decrypt or reformat them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple hasn’t given an official reason for the change but it seems like another step in the company\u2019s transition away from HFS+ to its current file system format APFS. You can read more about APFS and HFS+ in our file format explainer here<\/a>, but the short version of the history of these two formats is that APFS replaced HFS+ as the default Mac file system back in 2017 with the release of macOS High Sierra. APFS was built with modern computing in mind, prioritizing SSDs, native encryption, snapshots, and dynamic space sharing between volumes. Released in 1998 alongside Mac OS 8.1, HFS+ was simply a file system from a bygone era and was never designed to handle these features. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, FileVault encryption on HFS+ has always been something of a workaround, relying on an older Core Storage layer rather than native file-system-level encryption. Retiring it removes one of the last dependencies on that legacy layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple says Macs running macOS 26 Tahoe may already start warning users when an incompatible drive is connected, naming the affected volume directly. You can also check manually: open Disk Utility, select a volume, and look at the description beneath its name. If it reads something like “Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted),” that drive won\u2019t mount when macOS 28 ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Prepare an Affected Drive for macOS 28<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before touching anything, back up whatever’s on the drive. From there, you have two paths, both outlined in Apple’s support document:<\/p>\n\n\n\n