# Dangers of case sensitive file system



## pedz (Apr 29, 2018)

I'm moving my data from one disk to another new disk.  I'm on Mac OS X.  I have the latest of everything --MacOS and LR.
I'm a computer geek and would greatly prefer to have case sensitive file systems.  This will be just a data disk and I probably will never share it with a Windows machine.
Would you say its safe / ok to format the disk with the case sensitive version of the file system?


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 29, 2018)

If it's just the data disk, you will probably be OK. But why take a risk? Being a computer geek is hardly a justification.


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## Jimmsp (Apr 29, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> But why take a risk? ..



I so agree. It is a risk that does not need to be taken.
I have been around computers a long time - and I have developed the operating philosophy of "if it can happen, plan for it to happen".


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## PhilBurton (Apr 29, 2018)

Jimmsp said:


> I so agree. It is a risk that does not need to be taken.
> I have been around computers a long time - and I have developed the operating philosophy of "if it can happen, plan for it to happen".


And especially for mechanical disk drives.  (Also CPU cooling fans.)  And the Windows OS.


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## pedz (Apr 29, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> But why take a risk?


Thanks.

This wrestling match between two parts of me comes up every few years...

On the one side, it is just a very deep seeded belief that file systems should be case sensitive and being case insensitive is just a throw back to DOS and classic Mac OS System 1 through 9.  BSD / Mac OS X gave us more modern file system so we no longer need to de-fragment.  Indeed,  modern file systems are much more than what HFS+ offers.  APFS is bringing us 10 year old technology finally but only on some types of disks.

On the other side... this disk is 99.99% for Adobe products so why not just give them what they want.  Indeed, the reason I stick with Mac instead of Linux is because of the Adobe wall garden -- not so much the Apple wall garden.

Who will win this time?!?


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 29, 2018)

Well, as Lightroom is case-sensitive...


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## Hoggy (Apr 29, 2018)

PhilBurton said:


> And especially for mechanical disk drives.  (Also CPU cooling fans.)  And the Windows OS.



And here I was so worried about write cycles that I only used the SSD for LR for a couple years.  Now as also being my boot drive for a few years or so, I'm only at 111 average block erase count (out of ~3,000 estimated).  Now my new computer will be sporting a 480GB Optane 900p NvMe boot drive, with estimated cycles somewhere around a couple thousand petabytes written, IIRC! 



pedz said:


> Thanks.
> Indeed, the reason I stick with Mac instead of Linux is because of the Adobe wall garden -- not so much the Apple wall garden.



Yeah, when I was using Linux I was having such a tough time going without Directory Opus on the PC..  Then I think LR became the death knell of Linux for me.


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