Problems creating folder and writing to external APFS drive

[Head_Unit]

HELP! and thanks in advance. Got a new 2TB Western Digital, reformatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Ran Big Sure installer to make it bootable-apparently this must have re-reformatted to APFS. Holy Crap APFS is fast, gotta give it that! BUT BUT BUT:

• Disk Utility shows 4 levels: WD My Passport 25E1 Media --> Container Disk 3 --> Yellowdrive 2TB, in parallel with Yellowdrive 2TB - Data
• I cannot rename this drive.
• Get Info --> Sharing & Permissions: You can only read and below: Plutonium (Me): Read and Write; staff: read only; everyone: read only. [Note: I checked and am logged in as Plutonium. I Googled quite a bit and cannot find how to change these permissions, if I try to change the read-only to read + write I get "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have the necessary permissions."
• I cannot create folders at any level on this drive, New Folder is always grayed out.
• Smart Folder was not grayed out, but when I made out I could not find it anywhere.
• I can "Make New Folder With [current folder selected]" which then does create a folder - AFTER asking system permission/password GRRRRR - and then I can try to move the [current folder selected] back but it actually copies, not move.
• I can copy files however troublesome and tricky. Seems reluctant to allow folders to be highlighted for copying into (I know sounds nuts).

I'm feeling like I have some fundamental missing understanding about APFS external boot drives-all I want to do is back up! Well, OK, actually I want to make MERGED backups of the same folder name with different contents on multiple machines...for now just making folders would be progress though!

 

[Honza1]

You cannot do what you want. Try Googling "APFS and Big Sur disk structure" or similar terms. There are extensive pages and Youtube videos dedicated to this, it is beyond short explanation here. It is complicated and terminology changed. This is good start: https://bombich.com/blog
But what you want more or less cannot be done.
In Big Sur you really need to backup only the data containers, but there is lots of linking involved. Which makes old type "copy" more or less impossible...

 

[Head_Unit]

what you want more or less cannot be done.

Thanks for the reply...I'm beginning to understand this is rather a mess, or perhaps it makes more sense if you get to Apple chip machines. I could actually copy folders eventually, though not in any simple typical backup kind of way. Backup seems such a basic thing-I would think there is a simple way to do it, or is Apple figuring "Time Machine or nothing!"? I got disenchanted with that when I ran out of space on a 1TB drive backing up a 0.5TB MacBook Air. Too many images.

 

[Honza1]

You can backup your data - simply copy your home folder. That is easy. Either using Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, or many other tools, including simply Finder.
Backing up system with system specific configuration (Applications, Library, etc.) requires special Big Sur-smart tools. Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, may be others. But Finder is tough to use if it is possible at all.
If you want to have bootable backup, that is now really tough. People are trying and I am not sure how well is that going. For various reasons, booting on bootable backup on external SSD, which saved me one time from SSD failure and let me finish my travel before repairs, is quite difficult to do. Really annoying, even when you go through the arguments for and against...
I do not understand why 1TB drive would not contain 0.5TB SSD, unless you have another 1TB of data in iCloud which were being back up also. In which case this is no reason to be disenchanted, it is time to think and apply basic logic... And get bigger drive, hard drives are really cheap today. And unlimited data connection if you plan to download your iCloud content for every backup ;-) And be impressed with how Apple manages to provide service to users with small drives...

 

[Head_Unit]

I do not understand why 1TB drive would not contain 0.5TB SSD,

It does sound odd ha ha. I think it is Time Machine backup images run amok. And to be fair there is other content on that external drive...therefore I am starting over. I don't really need time machine if I can just merge folders from a couple machines into the same folder on an external. CCC says I can do this, I just haven't had a chance to sit and work through it.

 

[SaguaroSeven]

It does sound odd ha ha. I think it is Time Machine backup images run amok. And to be fair there is other content on that external drive...therefore I am starting over. I don't really need time machine if I can just merge folders from a couple machines into the same folder on an external. CCC says I can do this, I just haven't had a chance to sit and work through it.

...
I do not understand why 1TB drive would not contain 0.5TB SSD, unless you have another 1TB of data in iCloud which were being back up also. In which case this is no reason to be disenchanted, it is time to think and apply basic logic... And get bigger drive, hard drives are really cheap today. And unlimited data connection if you plan to download your iCloud content for every backup ;-) And be impressed with how Apple manages to provide service to users with small drives...

This problem reminds me of a post at eclecticlight.co where Howard discusses bugs in macOS related to sparse bundles (which TM uses to hold the backup data) can cause them to have problems keeping track of free space.

However, after re-reading the initial post, that might not apply here. I would point out: Big Sur boot drives contain system folders that are immutable. This is supposed to keep malware from modifying the system and enable Apple's secure boot chain. Perhaps this entire APFS Container (with Big Sur installaiton) is only modifiable when booted from that drive?

If you want to use some of the 1TB drive for purposes other than the bootable Big Sur + user data partitions, you should be able to create a separate APFS Container to hold other data that would not be part of the bootable Big Sur.