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Formatting New External Hard Drive

E

emac82

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 17, 2007
461
25
Atlantic Canada
I just got the new MBA M1, to replace my 2011 MBP (which is Mac OS Journaled).

My current external drive I use for my Time Machine backup is the same, with a partition also for FAT 32 (in case I had to put files onto Windows).

I have a new 2 TB external drive. What's the best way to partition it? Should it be converted to APFS for the Time Machine backup?

I'd like to partition it 3 ways...1TB for Time Machine, 500GB Mac OS Journaled (sorry, I'm rusty so I don't know if APFS automatically means Mac OS Journaled nowadays)...then I'd like to do 500GB as exFAT - for files that might have to go on a windows computer (unlikely, but precaution).

Does this make sense? Is there any reason I shouldn't go to APFS?
 
For time machine, use HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

In fact, for ALL platter-based hard drives (no matter what you use them for), I still recommend HFS+.

I would advise AGAINST putting any PC compatible partition (exfat, etc.) onto a drive that is being used for a tm backup, or for any other "important" Mac file storage.

If you need a drive with which to share with PCs, get a standalone drive to be used ONLY for that purpose.

Don't "mix up" Mac/PC formats on a single drive.
Fewer potential for problems that way...
 
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Fishrrman said:
For time machine, use HFS+ (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

In fact, for ALL platter-based hard drives (no matter what you use them for), I still recommend HFS+.

I would advise AGAINST putting any PC compatible partition (exfat, etc.) onto a drive that is being used for a tm backup, or for any other "important" Mac file storage.

If you need a drive with which to share with PCs, get a standalone drive to be used ONLY for that purpose.

Don't "mix up" Mac/PC formats on a single drive.
Fewer potential for problems that way...
Click to expand...
Okay - So I should not convert to APFS? Is HFS+ the non-APFS format?

Edit to Add - all my external drives (including the internal on my 2011 MBP, are SSD. So they aren't platter.
 
Fishrrman said:
I would advise AGAINST putting any PC compatible partition (exfat, etc.) onto a drive that is being used for a tm backup, or for any other "important" Mac file storage.
Click to expand...

I agree, and would go one step farther not not partition or store ANYTHING else on your backup disk. A backup is useless if you can't be confident in its integrity and using it for something else increases the risk of problems. Get separate disks for all your needs, they are cheap. If your Windows needs are modest, maybe just use a flash drive?

If your data is important, also consider adding at least one other backup disk. Personally I use Time Machine, a bootable Carbon Copy Clone on an external SSD and BackBlaze backups to the cloud.
 
I would personally do a single HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) partition on that hard drive for Time Machine and use a separate disk for other activities.
 
Yes right now IMHO is APFS is still evolving and so for Time Machine external could still write to in HFS+! You could partition that drive in two form one for Time Machine backups and the other side for FAT32 for your Windows machines!


However you could just format it HFS+ and then get some shareware for your Windows Machine called HFS for Windows by Paragon Software so the Windows machine could still read/write to HFS volumes!
 
Okay so I ended up converting it to APFS and completed a TM backup. Hopefully no issues (none so far) - I still have a HFS+ drive I could perform a backup on if needed.

Thanks for all your help!
 
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emac82 said:
Okay so I ended up converting it to APFS and completed a TM backup. Hopefully no issues (none so far) - I still have a HFS+ drive I could perform a backup on if needed.

Thanks for all your help!
Click to expand...
Yeah... Big Sur now supports TM backups to APFS. I reformatted mine and started over, and find the new APFS backups under Big Sur are much faster.
 
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ght56 said:
Any experience performing a full system restore with an APFS TM backup?
Click to expand...
Nope... I have not tested that.

Recover all your files from a Time Machine backup

If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can recover your files if your system or startup disk is damaged.
support.apple.com

I did see this describing how it works now under Big Sur and it does look different than before. Previously you could option key boot to the TM disk and restore the OS and all from there. Now it looks like you have to first reinstall the OS from recovery, then import your data from the TM disk. So the old "restore" from TM seems to be gone.
 
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Weaselboy said:
Nope... I have not tested that.

Recover all your files from a Time Machine backup

If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can recover your files if your system or startup disk is damaged.
support.apple.com

I did see this describing how it works now under Big Sur and it does look different than before. Previously you could option key boot to the TM disk and restore the OS and all from there. Now it looks like you have to first reinstall the OS from recovery, then import your data from the TM disk. So the old "restore" from TM seems to be gone.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I may try setting up an APFS TM disk and doing a full restore with my Mini. I would guess that it works well and a lot faster, but I haven't seen many accounts of restores yet. About a month ago I did a complete restore with a HFS+ TM to a Catalina system (via Recovery Mode) and it was the first time I made a TM restore since macOS moved to APFS. It took even longer than I expected (but worked like a charm.) Perhaps not only the speed of creating the backups will be faster, but the speed of the restore as well?
 
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