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Jetheat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2008
247
2
I bought a Toshiba External Drive yesterday for my Macbook Pro.

I connected it and it started to backup everything to this new time machine.

However, the mounted drive shows a spinning icon next to it on the finder window.

Is it supposed to be spinning continuously, or is it just for the initial backup phase?

Its been about 15-20 hours and still spinning.

My MacBook has 1TB HDD and the external drive has 2TB of space.

Any ideas?


JH

Screenshot 2022-08-30 at 11.47.36.png
 

0128672

Cancelled
Apr 16, 2020
5,962
4,783
Looks like it's still backing up. HDDs are slow. What does the Time Machine status show? I find it helpful to add Time Machine to the Finder menu bar to easily see the status.
 
Last edited:

Jetheat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2008
247
2
I have added it to the sidebar now.
How do I check the status?
 

0128672

Cancelled
Apr 16, 2020
5,962
4,783
I have added it to the sidebar now.
How do I check the status?
I had mentioned adding to the menu bar at the top of the finder. That's different than the sidebar. You can do that by going to Preferences > Time Machine and turning on Show Time Machine in menu bar. Once it's up there, tap on it and you'll see whether it's still in progress.
 

appltech

macrumors 6502a
Apr 23, 2020
688
167
And avoid using the APFS file system on HDD, it's slowing down HDD (and "health" as well)
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,175
13,223
OP:

In general, I agree with appltech's suggestion to use HFS+ on a platter-based backup drive instead of APFS.

APFS can overly fragment a platter-based drive, and it can sometimes make the drive "thrash" (heads jumping around over the platters).

HOWEVER...
You didn't tell us WHICH VERSION OF THE OS you're using.
That can make a difference.

I don't use time machine, but I understand that the latest versions of the OS (with OS 12 Monterey, not sure about earlier versions) REQUIRE that a time machine backup be formatted in APFS. Won't work with HFS+ any more.

So... what version of the OS are you using?
 
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Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,175
13,223
OP --

REFORMAT the drive.
This time, DO NOT use "Case sensitive".

Reformat it to [just] "APFS" -- and NOTHING more.
 

Jetheat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2008
247
2
From what I remember, I formatted it to Mac OS Journaled. I don't even remember seeing a APFS option there.
I only see it now.
 
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