Questions about Samsung T5 an format

[iTurbo]

I have a Samsung T5 500GB external SSD that I use with my '12 27" iMac. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the stock 1TB Fusion drive as a backup.

I have a couple questions though....

1. Why is it that even though I 'clone' the stock Fusion drive (APFS/Mojave 10.14.4) it still formats the T5 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? Do I need to reformat this manually in APFS first? When I bought it came as EX-FAT.

2. Why can't I get the Samsung T5 to show up as an option in the Startup Disk control panel? It starts up great off of it, but I have to hold down the 'option' key and manually select it.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you want APFS, you'll need to erase the t5 using Disk Utility.
Then run CCC again.

Does the t5 ship with any "proprietary software" from Samsung on it? Some drives come like this, best option is to REMOVE any factory-installed software and "start clean".

Not sure what's going on with the startup disk panel...

 

[CoastalOR]

1. Why is it that even though I 'clone' the stock Fusion drive (APFS/Mojave 10.14.4) it still formats the T5 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? Do I need to reformat this manually in APFS first? When I bought it came as EX-FAT.

CCC does not change the format of the target drive. Here are a couple of excerpts from the CCC documentation (page 24):
"If I first upgrade to High Sierra on an HDD, and then clone to an SSD, will the SSD be converted to APFS?
No, neither the HDD nor the SSD will be automatically converted to APFS. You can choose, however, to erase the SSD as APFS prior to cloning to it. Both APFS and HFS are valid destination formats when using Carbon Copy Cloner 5 on High Sierra (and later OSes).

If the OS upgrade converted my startup disk to APFS, what do I need to do to my backup disk? Do I have to erase it as APFS?
You don't need to do anything at all to your backup disk after upgrading to macOS High Sierra (or later). Having an HFS+ backup of an APFS-formatted startup volume is acceptable; that will function just fine for any future restores, even to an APFS-formatted volume. If your backup disk is an SSD, however, we do recommend that you erase it as APFS. If your backup disk is a rotational HDD, however, we still recommend HFS+ for macOS High Sierra, and we're almost ready to start recommending APFS for Mojave users."

2. Why can't I get the Samsung T5 to show up as an option in the Startup Disk control panel? It starts up great off of it, but I have to hold down the 'option' key and manually select it.

Have you tried to select the T5 in the Startup Disk preference while booted from the T5?

 

[volkwagen1300]

I'm having the same problem as the OP right now - iMac disk utility let me erase the T5 but I had to choose MacOs Journaled, no AFPS option was available.

 

[Fishrrman]

"disk utility let me erase the T5 but I had to choose MacOs Journaled, no AFPS option was available."

Try this (in order presented).
1. In disk utility, go to the partition pane and choose GUID (don't partition the drive).
2. Now click the erase button, and see if APFS is presented to you as an option.

 

[volkwagen1300]

I figured this out shortly after I wrote the post - in the "view" menu, choose "show all devices". The Samsung and Apple HDD items on the left will expand into their respective containers etc. When I choose the Samsung again, I could see all my options and was able to format it to APFS without a problem. But thanks for following up.

I was able to use CCC to copy my internal HD last night, took about 3 hours. Will try to boot from the Samsung later today. If it works OK, I still have to decide what to do with the internal HD - I like the idea of keeping it bootable and therefore essentially having my backup bootable disk be the internal HD, but exactly how to do this is requiring thought.

 

[Fishrrman]

volkwagen -

If you're going to make the external SSD your boot drive, just keep the internal drive as "your backup". You ALWAYS want to have a SECOND fully-bootable (to the finder) drive within easy reach. The internal drive is perfect for this mission.

 

[mikehalloran]

If you want APFS, you'll need to erase the t5 using Disk Utility.

Wrong. Converting to APFS via the dropdown menu in Disk Utility does not erase your drive.

Going from APFS back does require erasing the drive.

 

[volkwagen1300]

Regarding making the internal HD the backup - whether to just keep it as-is and sort of frozen in time, or partition it - make a bootable part and a backup part for my main (external SSD) drive - is the question I'm dealing with.