Nothing is safe in a beta, particularly an early one. Don't do anything that might make your 'production' backups unusable. So if you have Catalina backups on the Time Capsule don't change them in any way! But if the Time Capsule is part of your beta experimentation then experiment to your hearts content.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Big Sur finally uses APFS snapshots for Time Machine backups!
- Thread starter zorinlynx
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Nothing is safe in a beta, particularly an early one. Don't do anything that might make your 'production' backups unusable. So if you have Catalina backups on the Time Capsule don't change them in any way! But if the Time Capsule is part of your beta experimentation then experiment to your hearts content.
unless you have a second backup! I mean do you really need to do that? if it aint broke etc.....
On an unrelated note, make sure the Time Capsule isn't your only backup plan, specially given they're particularly old now and yours (just like mine) could very well be full of bad blocks... and Airport Utility doesn't report them. You could end up discovering this the hard way (e.g. when a full system restore won't complete).
i share with you this found good-read on apfs-time machine backup mechanism
eclecticlight.co
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more
APFS adds 6 volume roles, including one which supports Time Machine backups. And per-file encryption is coming.
eclecticlight.co
i share with you this found good-read on apfs-time machine backup mechanism
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more
APFS adds 6 volume roles, including one which supports Time Machine backups. And per-file encryption is coming.
I delibertely partitioned my 6tb backup drive and it has formatted the new partition APFS
I’m considering that obviously. But if APFS would considerably speed up backups that would be very helpful, every time my computer grinds to a halt it’s because of a running backup. (And yes, I’m using Time Machine editor to schedule backups when I’m least likely to use it).
well you don't need to worry! I did a backup last night with APFS and it took a while! I partitioned my backup drive and it offered to reformat it into APFS and then performed the backup. I do think encrypting the drive slowed things down as well. But not sure.
I’m not so worried about the initial backup as I am subsequent updates, which is where I feel APFS snapshots would cut down on time spent backing up. Correct me if I’m wrong
I’m not so worried about the initial backup as I am subsequent updates, which is where I feel APFS snapshots would cut down on time spent backing up. Correct me if I’m wrong
it was slow! But this will improve I guess with new betas as they come out.
Did I hallucinate this? TimeCapsule does not appear in Disk Utility, nor should it.
Anyway, APFS is officially supported for TimeMachine in beta 3, but there seems no way to format a Time Capsule disk as APFS short of removing the disk and putting it in a new enclosure?
Could you please elaborate on this? Time Capsule hasn't been updated for a long time aside from maybe the occasional security fix. Certainly nothing that gives it the ability to recognise APFS drives.
Are you actually just talking about an external drive that you've named TimeCapsule and are using the TM backups?
Since TM backups to Time Capsule reside in sparsebundles anyway, I imagine creating a new backup to a Time Capsule will created an APFS sparsebundle to take advantage of snapshots, despite living on an HFS+ drive.
No I am talking about the actual Time Capsule. I must have been looking at something else when I saw that option.
You can't do that. Time Capsule wouldn't recognize the APFS partition unless Apple updates Time Capsule firmware to support APFS
Good news: macOS 11 beta 3 does indeed make backup snapshots using blocks instead of full files. Check out the comments of starchaser01 at:
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more
Last edited:
The disk in the Time Capsule will always be formatted HFS+. That has not and will never change (especially now that the Time Capsule is long discontinued)
What did change is the filesystem inside the sprasebundle that MacOS created to do backups to. THAT filesystem is now APFS with Big Sur. However, the sparsebundle itself is still sitting on an HFS+ formatted disk in the Time Capsule.
Think of it as a hierarchy:
- Time capsule
-- HFS+ disk shared over the network
----- sparsebundle on that HFS+ disk
------ APFS filesystem inside the sparsebundle
---------Snapshot of your Mac date A
---------Snapshot of your Mac date B
etc...
The first two lines in that hierarchy have not changed.
Hell, right now I'm doing Time Machine backups (from Catalina) to an SMB share on my Linux server, to a ZFS dataset! It doesn't really matter what the underlying filesystem is that a sparsebundle is on. A sparsebundle is basically just a disk image that's split into hundreds of small segments (bands) to make it more friendly to backup systems.
I already tested Time Machine from my Big Sur laptop to that same server and it works great. The irony is that it's using a copy on write filesystem (APFS) inside a disk image that's stored on another copy on write filesystem (ZFS).
Last edited:
Because Time Machine uses disk images when backing up to network disks, there’s no reason, in theory, that an APFS backup wouldn’t work. I doubt, however, that Apple will put in the engineering to make it happen.
A late edit to this post: new Time Machine backups to network destinations will indeed be APFS. Existing backups will continue to use HFS+.
Last edited:
You shouldn't have to do anything; Big Sur will continue to back up to your existing backup.
The only change is that when you choose to start a new backup, it will now be an APFS filesystem.
In general I recommend starting a new backup once in a while anyway, and post-Big Sur is a great time to do so. You should have at least two backups, by the way.
Based on behaviour with the betas, it will continue to use the existing HFS+ destination, but not in a fully compatible way. My advice: start a new backup to an empty partition and carefully preserve your old backup just in case you want to go back.
It will create an APFS filesystem if you give TM a new empty destination.
You can hope, but don't expect anything. Just start a new backup to an empty partition/disk. Preserve your old backup in case you need to go back.
Got it. I guess I'm still unsure if APFS Big Sur backup to a local USB drive and Time Machine will behave the same way to end user.
Specifically I would love to have delta copies (ie snapshots) working on Time Machine. Because it seems its wrapped in HFS+ would that feature still work?
I'm hoping for some help here. I have a few questions that should be easy to answer for the backup experts:
- Does Big Sur still back up my files to my Time Machine Capsule that is currently my Catalina Backup? Or does a fresh one using APFS get created? See 2 below.
- Should I create a fresh new backup with Big Sur on Time Machine Capsule with a new name like Macbook Pro 16 APFS? If so, that means I will have a Macbook Pro 15 (Mojave), Macbook Pro 16 (Catalina) and the new one Macbook Pro 16 (Big Sur) on the same drive.
- Will the new backup be created if I rename my old backup to allow me to start a new one?