Time Machine

[WinterWolf90]

One of my hard drives is starting to act funny so I got a new one and am moving some files over to it.

Its a WD 5TB external hard drive. I formatted it to MACOS journaled. On my prior time machine backup it would make backups and then I could also move individual files on the drives as well.

On my 2020 MacBook Air with Monterey, it is format at the drive then select to use it for time machine, it will not let me move files at all to the external hard drive. How do I do this? or is this something new on Monterey and if I use it for time machine I am out of luck?

 

[chscag]

The Time Machine app in Monterey requires that the external drive be formatted to APFS Case Sensitive in order to make backups and create snapshots.

 

[MBAir2010]

i think Monterey is not supposed to be mac journal formatted but the APFS format.

 

[Huey_Pilot]

Make partitions on the drive and use one partition for timemachine and one partition for files.

 

[chscag]

It's never a good idea to share a backup drive. The price of external drives are such that a separate drive for Time Machine, CCC, or SD! is affordable. Keep your drive for Time Machine just for TM backups.

 

[gilby101]

On my prior time machine backup it would make backups and then I could also move individual files on the drives as well.

Monterey has reformatted the backup disk with single partition formatted as an APFS container which contains a single volume used for TM backups. This is a special volume and you can't make changes to it except using tmutil. But you can add a new volume inside the container and use this for whatever you like (except that it not be backed up). Use disk Utility to do that.

Make partitions on the drive and use one partition for timemachine and one partition for files.

It is more flexible to add a new volume (for files) and not to create multiple partitions.

 

[WinterWolf90]

Monterey has reformatted the backup disk with single partition formatted as an APFS container which contains a single volume used for TM backups. This is a special volume and you can't make changes to it except using tmutil. But you can add a new volume inside the container and use this for whatever you like (except that it not be backed up). Use disk Utility to do that.


It is more flexible to add a new volume (for files) and not to create multiple partitions.

thank you for the reply. I assumed they changed it somehow. I might do the volume trick like you suggested.

 

[prefuse07]

Isn't APFS terrible for HDDs? I read in a few places that it's better suited to SSD/flash memory than with traditional spinning hard drives... (I was going to format my TM HDD to APFS, then I researched and decided against it). Why apple seems to be keen on forcing these things is beyond me.

 

[gilby101]

Isn't APFS terrible for HDDs?

It is likely that APFS is not so good for a highly active HDD - e.g. a system disk. But there are not many of those.

For external drives which are not highly active (a TM disk being a good example) there is no (or very tiny) performance degradation.

And for TM, the benefits of using APFS in terms of reliability are considerable. <<< Hence Apple want you to use APFS for Time Machine.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

It is likely that APFS is not so good for a highly active HDD - e.g. a system disk. But there are not many of those.

For external drives which are not highly active (a TM disk being a good example) there is no (or very tiny) performance degradation.

And for TM, the benefits of using APFS in terms of reliability are considerable. <<< Hence Apple want you to use APFS for Time Machine.

What about a drive that has multiple partitions used for storage and other backups? For example I have an external HDD with multiple partitions, one stores my Music library that I access often.

 

[gilby101]

What about a drive that has multiple partitions used for storage and other backups? For example I have an external HDD with multiple partitions, one stores my Music library that I access often.

I doubt that a music library would count as high access unless you are creating music. What I would do in your situation:
1) Format the disk with a single APFS partition/container.
2) If using it for backup, tell Time Machine to use the new container - TM will create a new volume.
3) Add additional volume(s) for data.
All the volumes will be sharing the same total space, so don't have to worry about getting partition sizes optimised - just need to watch total space consumed.

 

[mikes18]

You may need to change the format of a drive to APFS!

 

[me55]

For external drives which are not highly active (a TM disk being a good example) there is no (or very tiny) performance degradation.

I disagree. With APFS on a hard disk drive for Time Machine you will have a noticeable performance degradation after 2-3 months. There are so many changes it makes during each backup that after some time it'll take a minute or more for that drive just to mount when you plug it in. Making or retrieving backups also is very slow then.

I hate that Apple forces APFS for Time Machine, HFS+ worked just fine on the same drive. I bought a 1TB WD SSD when it was on sale, APFS & Time Machine work ok on that.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Some time ago I had a similar problem. Not sure what OS version it was but AFPS was available. I wanted to keep the old TM contents, rather than starting from scratch on the new drive. In other words, I wanted to copy the old TM contents to the new drive. Both drives were WD external hard disks. The way I found to do it was to make an image of the old drive using Disk Utility and then expand the image to the new drive.
By the way, I have two WD external drives for TM. I set up TM to backup alternately to one then the other. This way if one starts to get flakey, I'll have the other to copy from.
Hope this helps.

 

[gilby101]

With APFS on a hard disk drive for Time Machine you will have a noticeable performance degradation after 2-3 months.

That may be your experience (it is experience isn't it?), but I have not noticed any performance degradation over 15 months. This is to a WD CMR/PMR USB3 disk. Is your's shingled?

 

[Artiste212]

That may be your experience (it is experience isn't it?), but I have not noticed any performance degradation over 15 months. This is to a WD CMR/PMR USB3 disk. Is your's shingled?

A fairly comprehensive study of using APFS for Time Machine backups has been done by Howard Oakley at EclecticLight.co. To summarize, he found that using APFS is much faster and more reliable than using HFS. He also confirms that using APFS HDDs in random use can generate problems that do not occur using SSDs, presumably because of the high number of random read/write operations that slow down or introduce errors into a spinning HDD.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Howard's website, he has a trove of useful information about the technical aspects of using Macs that I've not found anywhere else on the web. He is also a consummate gentleman.

 

[me55]

That may be your experience (it is experience isn't it?), but I have not noticed any performance degradation over 15 months. This is to a WD CMR/PMR USB3 disk. Is your's shingled?

I tried with 2.5" 5400rpm drives and 3.5" 7200rpm drives, none of them using SMR/shingled recording. macOS mounted them with the driver that uses UASP.