Help on Time Machine Backup HDD not Recgonised

[lauwesley]

Hi all, help needed please.

I've been using my mid 2015 MBP and using an external HDD for timemachine until some time ago that it said my disk was full, and I just didn't care to deal with at that moment. The disk I used is a 1TB HD with 500GB as TM drive and the rest partitioned as a FAT32 drive.

As I'll be receiving the 14" MBP soon, I came back to TM and wanted to prepare for a full backup. I removed the disk from TM and formatted it to MacOS Extended (Journaled) hoping to have the 500GB cleaned for the full backup.

Then comes the problem. TM could not recognise the "new" external HDD that I put and the only option I have for "select backup disk" is "other airport time capsule" which is not what I wanted (and don't have).

Was there anything I've done wrong or I just can't reuse the HDD that was once the TM drive (i.e. need a fresh HDD)?
Any advise would be greatly appreciated as I'm been scratching my head for days already.

Cheers all.

 

[chscag]

If you're running Big Sur or Monterey, Time Machine external drives must be formatted to APFS.

 

[lauwesley]

If you're running Big Sur or Monterey, Time Machine external drives must be formatted to APFS.

Thanks matey, I first thought MacOS Extended is “one of the APFS” format because I couldn’t find an APFS option when trying to erase / format the HDD. Then realised that the format has to be done with the whole volume instead of partition, so now I’m transferring the data in the FAT32 drive to elsewhere first and fingers crossed I can do a proper APFS format afterwards, and then back to the TM.

 

[HDFan]

If you're running Big Sur or Monterey, Time Machine external drives must be formatted to APFS.

? I have a number of TM HFS disks that work just fine on Big Sur.

using an external HDD for timemachine

Make sure you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy in place as TM backups tend to fail. Only one backup should be TM.

 

[lauwesley]

? I have a number of TM HFS disks that work just fine on Big Sur.



Make sure you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy in place as TM backups tend to fail. Only one backup should be TM.

After all the hassle I eventually got TM back to work, thanks all for the advises.

@HDFan would you please let me know what’s the 3-2-1 backup strategy? Thanks.

 

[chscag]

? I have a number of TM HFS disks that work just fine on Big Sur.

Refers to newly formatted drives. It will default to APFS case sensitive. OP was trying to format a new external drive for TM use.