Which External Hard Drive for Backup and Which Backup Program is Best?

[darkprints]

A question regarding formatting the backup drive: I have OS Sierra on an OS Extended (Journaled) drive, and OS Mojave on a separate APFS formatted drive.
I want to Time Machine backup both drives to one external drive on separate volumes. My question is, does it matter how the backup drive is formatted, i.e. APFS vs OS Extended? I'm assuming the backup drive's volumes can't have different formats.

 

[CoastalOR]

A question regarding formatting the backup drive: I have OS Sierra on an OS Extended (Journaled) drive, and OS Mojave on a separate APFS formatted drive.
I want to Time Machine backup both drives to one external drive on separate volumes. My question is, does it matter how the backup drive is formatted, i.e. APFS vs OS Extended? I'm assuming the backup drive's volumes can't have different formats.

Apple Time Machine only supports Mac OS Extended (journaled) currently. APFS format will not work for Time Machine.

 

[darkprints]

Thanks.

 

[honestone33]

A question regarding formatting the backup drive: I have OS Sierra on an OS Extended (Journaled) drive, and OS Mojave on a separate APFS formatted drive.
I want to Time Machine backup both drives to one external drive on separate volumes. My question is, does it matter how the backup drive is formatted, i.e. APFS vs OS Extended? I'm assuming the backup drive's volumes can't have different formats.

Given what CoastalOR said above, maybe use a different backup program, like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[CoastalOR]

Just to clarify; Time Machine will work to read the Source drive if it is APFS as long as the Target (TM) is Mac OS Extended (journaled).
See the "Check your drives" section:

If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine - Apple Support

If Time Machine says that it can't use your backup disk to back up or restore your files, try these solutions.

support.apple.com