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I have a question about an external hard for time machine

I'm running Mac OS Catalina on a 13" Mid 2012 MBP and it's about to be replaced with the the 2020 13" MBP. I have two 1000 GB external hard drives. I need to know how to format them. I'd like to keep a time machine backup of the mid 2012 MBP just in case and I'd like to start out fresh to do time machine backups for the 2020 MBP. How do I format these two drives? One is a Seagate and one is a G Drive. Thanks in advance. Linda



MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 10, 2020 3:36 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 10, 2020 4:56 AM

With the drive connected, Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Select the drive in the sidebar, Choose Erase drive, format as GUID / APFS if you’ll use the drive only with the new Mac, or GUID / MacOS Extended Journaled if you’ll use it with the older Mac as well.

6 replies

Aug 10, 2020 5:39 AM in response to neuroanatomist

Yes, I will get rid of it. Do you recommend transferring data from my old to new Mac or creating a new account. I spoke with Apple Care and they said since I use iCloud for documents and photos all I need do is sign into my iCloud account. Since I do not use Apple Music and all of my music is on my iPhone and iPad I can just connect one of those devices and do a sync and my music will sync. I do have a couple of flash drives that I can connect via a C to USB and copy anything later I see is missing. This seemed like the shorter way, not sure if it’s the most efficient way. There’s less then 50 GB in my iCloud storage.

Aug 14, 2020 6:30 AM in response to lkpolovchik

After dealing with a legacy MacBook Pro for 8 years, I upgraded to the 2020 13” MacBook Pro. It setup in minutes. I spent a few hours downloading apps, etc. Thanks to iCloud my genealogy data was in my documents, all I did was download the software and switch my Malewarebytes license to the new machine. My photos, documents and music were there. All I did was transfer movies via the flash drive. It’s all good and for now, I feel like I made a good decision. I’ll give it a week then format my external hard drives and wipe the old Mac for trade in. Many thanks.

I have a question about an external hard for time machine

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