The filesystem

To better understand the forensic process of an iOS device, it is good to know about the filesystem that is used. The filesystem used in the iPhone and other Apple iOS devices is HFSX, a variation of HFS Plus with one major difference. HFSX is case-sensitive whereas HFS Plus is case-insensitive. Other differences will be discussed later in this chapter. OS X uses HFS Plus by default and iOS uses HFSX. Apple File System (APFS) was introduced in June 2016 as a replacement for HFS+, and released for iOS devices with the release of iOS 10.3, and for macOS devices with the release of macOS 10.13.