Now to the external hard drive - my machine will sometimes recognise the external hard drive, and sometimes it won't despite doing all the tricks mentioned, unplugging, replugging, switching off the drive, closing down the mac and then switching on, etc., etc. On macOS Big Sur, Apple is finally bringing the ability to use an APFS-formatted drive with Time Machine, 9to5Mac reports.With macOS Catalina and earlier releases, users were able to back up to an. Yes, you can use a single NTFS disk for both Windows and Mac backups. Time Machine can work on 'foreign' drives fine by using a sparsebundle disk image. This is how TM works with a networked drive; it creates a sparsebundle on the network drive, and then mounts it. There are a 3 main steps to using an NTFS or other non-HFS+ drive for Time Machine. Now External hard drive is ready to make Back up Image for the PC of my wife etc. Then in mac instructed time machine to use the partition, it tried to format ('erase') and now the whole.
Sometimes, you'll come across an external hard drive which doesn't actually say ‘compatible with Mac' on the box. But that doesn't necessarily mean its not supported, it just means it will not work out-of-the-box. You just need to spend a few minutes formatting it to a Mac-compatible format, set it up for Time Machine and you're good to go. I'll tell you exactly how to do that. You can watch the video below for a step-by-step guide or carry on reading.
Back up any files on the external hard drive before you format it
First, connect your external hard drive to your Mac. Then you need to go to Disk Utility; you can find that under the Utilities folder, within Applications. Double click to open it and you should see your external hard drive on the left hand side. Click on its name to enable the Erase button then click it. Make sure you've backed up any documents and media already on there if you've used it before you do this as this will wipe the drive! If it's brand new, you can go ahead and give the drive a name. We want the OS X External (Journaled) format to make it Mac-compatible. Hit Erase and after 15 seconds your drive is ready to be used with your Mac. Well, almost.
Safely eject the drive from your Mac and then re-connect it. You can confirm its format by going into it, right-clicking and selecting Get Info. This will also show you what permissions you have. Read and Write is what you want as Read Only will not allow you to add files to the drive.
Setting up your external hard drive for Time Machine
Open up Time Machine by selecting the icon on the top right (next to the Bluetooth icon). Alternatively, hit CMD + Space bar and type ‘Time Machine' in the search bar and hit enter to open it. Next, click on Enter Time Machine. You might get an error message pop up. That's absolutely fine.
Go ahead and click 'Set up Time Machine' and then choose your external hard drive as the back up disk. You can use multiple drives with Time Machine, so if you want to do that then click ‘Use Both'. If you only want to use the drive you just formatted then click ‘Replace'. You'll then notice a count down until the next backup, it'll start preparing and the back up will begin. Pretty simple eh? The next time you plug in your drive, Time Machine will work its magic or you can obviously choose to keep it plugged in but I prefer not to.
I hope this tutorial has helped and if you've got any questions please feel free to ask, either in the comments below, via the contact form or Instagram!
Thank you for reading.
Use Time Machine, the built-in backup feature of your Mac, to automatically back up your personal data, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents. Having a backup allows you to recover files that were deleted, or that were lost because the hard disk (or SSD) in your Mac needed to be erased or replaced. Learn how to restore your Mac from a backup.
Create a Time Machine backup
To create backups with Time Machine, all you need is an external storage device. After you connect the storage device and select it as your backup disk, Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full.
Connect an external storage device
Connect one of the following external storage devices, sold separately. Learn more about backup disks that you can use with Time Machine.
- External drive connected to your Mac, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive
- Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
- Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
- AirPort Time Capsule, or external drive connected to an AirPort Time capsule or AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac)
Select your storage device as the backup disk
- Open Time Machine preferences from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Or choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine.
- Click Select Backup Disk.
- Select your backup disk from the list of available disks. To make your backup accessible only to users who have the backup password, you can select 'Encrypt backups'. Then click Use Disk:
If the disk you selected isn't formatted as required by Time Machine, you're prompted to erase the disk first. Click Erase to proceed. This erases all information on the backup disk.
Enjoy the convenience of automatic backups
After you select a backup disk, Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you. The first backup may take a long time, but you can continue using your Mac while a backup is underway. Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups will be faster.
Best External Hard Drives For Mac
To start a backup manually, choose Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Use the same menu to check the status of a backup or skip a backup in progress.
External Hard Drive For Mac Time Machine Time
Learn more
Best Portable External Hard Drive For Mac
- Learn about other ways to back up and restore files
- If you back up to multiple disks, you can press and hold the Option key, then choose Browse Other Backup Disks from the Time Machine menu.
- To exclude items from your backup, open Time Machine preferences, click Options, then click the add (+) button to add an item to be excluded. To stop excluding an item, such as an external hard drive, select the item and click the remove (–) button.
- If using Time Machine to back up to a network disk, you can verify those backups to make sure they're in good condition. Press and hold Option, then choose Verify Backups from the Time Machine menu.
