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Recently I heard about new apple file system. Of course I wanted to try it. So I moved all files to one external hard drive for safety... And accidentaly switched it to APFS... How to revert changes?

$ diskutil apfs createContainer /dev/disk1s2
Started APFS operation on disk1s2 Data
Creating a new empty APFS Container
Unmounting Volumes
Switching disk1s2 to APFS
Creating APFS Container
Created new APFS Container disk1s2
Finished APFS operation on disk1s2 Data

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD           239.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS                         999.9 GB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                499.8 GB   disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        +25.2 MB    disk3
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Data Rescue             25.1 MB    disk3s2

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  • 1
    Data Rescue recovered data using weird charset. Trying to recover data via EasyUS
    – Nikolay Bronskiy
    Jul 10, 2016 at 18:37
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    When you ran createContainer it wiped all your files, right? I think you should make that clear in your question, because it gives the impression that you "switched to" APFS and the files were still there.
    – hdiogenes
    Sep 23, 2016 at 19:51
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    Yes, you are right. I didn't know about it when I asked my question. I've lost all my files.
    – Nikolay Bronskiy
    Sep 24, 2016 at 2:14

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I'm afraid there's no non-destructive way to revert back to HFS once converted. You may use diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/disk(x)s(x) (where x is your correct APFS container). This will revert the APFS container back to HFS but will destroy all data. Best find another pool of storage to copy all data from that drive to, then revert, then copy back.

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  • Thank you for your answer. I'm restoring the data using Data Rescue to another media now. Then will experiment on converted media.
    – Nikolay Bronskiy
    Jul 10, 2016 at 12:31
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You can use diskutil afs deleteContainer to "Delete an APFS Container and reformat old disks to HFS"

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