Resolved What qualifies an external drive as "Time Machine Ready"?

[Mr.Bullitt]

Hi guys.

When I browser misc. external drive manufacturers websites, I notice that only some of them are labelled "Time Machine Ready"

- when I plug in any external drive, even big USB drives, I get a pop-up if I want to use it for Time Machine.


So - what is the small print that I am missing in regards to "Time Machine Ready" vs. "not ready"? - any external USB drive should work, right?

 

[chabig]

Any external drive will work. It must be formatted as HFS+ though. Time Machine won’t work on an APFS drive.

 

[Mr.Bullitt]

So being formatted or not formatted from the manufacturers is what determines whatever it is "ready"??

 

[Weaselboy]

So being formatted or not formatted from the manufacturers is what determines whatever it is "ready"??

Yep... those "Mac drives" are just preformatted for you to HFS+. You can just take any drive and format it yourself to HFS+.

 

[chabig]

So being formatted or not formatted from the manufacturers is what determines whatever it is "ready"??

To be clear, it doesn't matter what the manufacturer did. The drive just needs to be formatted as HFS+, and you can do that yourself.

 

[Mr.Bullitt]

thanks!