Difference Between Mac OS Extended and Mac OS Extended(Journaled)

Mac OS Extended vs Mac OS Extended(Journaled)

The Mac OS Extended is a file system that is also known as HFS Plus. This operating system can either be journalled or not, each with its own pros and cons. Journalling is not exclusive to the Mac OS as other operating systems are also capable of having a journalling system.

Journalling is a failsafe method that prevents unwanted data abnormalities in the disk drive due to a system crash during the middle of a file operation. A file operation as simple as deleting a file could be composed of two or more steps in order to ensure that everything is done properly. If a crash occurs before all the steps are completed, the end result might be cross-linked files, unusable sectors, or any other problem. Tracing these problems later on might take a long time due to the increasingly larger drives that are available today, that is why prevention might be the best overall solution. Journalling creates a list of operations that it is about to perform and checks them as they are done. This way, if it is interrupted somewhere in the middle, it can look back at the list and continue where it was interrupted.

The bad side to journalling is that your operating system would usually take a hit due to the processing power that would need to be devoted to the journalling system itself. Saving and updating files that contain the list of operations take up some CPU cycles and some hard drive bandwidth. The amount of performance hit that you take is rather small, especially if you are a casual user who uses a Mac for browsing the internet or creating documents. Only power users would feel the impact of journalling on their system. CPU and hard drive intensive activities like encoding videos can take a little bit longer to finish with journalling.

Summary:
1. Mac OS Extended(Journaled) is just the same as the first but with journalling turned on
2. Journalling is not exclusive to the Mac OS as there are also journalling options in other operating systems
3. Journalling is a failsafe system that keeps a record of each operation before it is performed so that it can be traced back once a crash occurs
4. Journalling adds additional overhead that can result in slower overall performance
5. The performance hit is not that significant to most people but might affect power users

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