For a HDD which will have both HFS+ and APFS volumes, is it better to format the disk itself in Disk Utility (on High Sierra) as APFS or HFS+?
Disk format for HDD with both APFS and HFS+ volumes
apfshddhfs+partition
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Best Answer
I have done this by starting with a whole disk APFS partition, I believe. I gave the whole disk to APFS, and then I followed the directions in this article to shrink the APFS partition:
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/deep-dive/resize-your-apfs-container/
This freed up unused space on the disk, which I think I was able to assign to a new partition in HFS+ format using Disk Utility. I needed to do this because I wanted to have a ZFS partition on the same disk with an APFS boot partition, and ZFS doesn't really interface with APFS (ZFS can replace an HFS+ partition, though).