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Which one between APFS and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) performs better as partition store type for Time Machine backup in an external HDD (Magnetic Storage over USB connectivity)?

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Note this answer now depends on the version of OSX/macOS you have.

This answer is for macOS Catalina and earlier versions - Big Sur now can use APFS - see Apple's Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac You can also use HFS+ as before.

You can't use APFS as a Time Machine target:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784#format

Time Machine drives must be HFS+. That will likely change in the future but currently it is HFS+ only.

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Now it can be done:

macOS 11.0 Big Sur: The Ars Technica review …in Big Sur, Time Machine does make the leap from using HFS+ to using APFS… https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/9/

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  • better to quote Apple documentation rather than a third party
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Jan 22, 2021 at 23:23
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    Given the incredibly poor job that Apple does of maintaining documentation on the web, and considering that Ars has macOS reviews going back 20 years, I think I'd actually prefer Ars. Here's a Wayback Machine link just in case: web.archive.org/web/20210105104812/https://arstechnica.com/…
    – TJ Luoma
    Commented Jan 22, 2021 at 23:30
  • Yes I have learned on Apple's document slide - I made an internet archive copy too when I linked to the page in my edit of the other answer
    – mmmmmm
    Commented Jan 23, 2021 at 1:40
  • I have read that APFS is designed for SSDs and is not so good for spinners. apple.stackexchange.com/questions/398901/… I think I read something similar in an Apple support document.
    – WGroleau
    Commented Feb 18, 2022 at 7:06

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