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Time Machine says the back up drive does not have enough space

"Time machine could not complete the backup"

"The backup disk did not have enough space to complete the backup"


I have a 500gb internal ssd in my Macbook with 80gb of data to back up to a 500gb external hard drive, yet Time Machine says there is not enough space on the external drive to perform the first backup.

It is a brand new external drive, with no other data. Can anybody help here please? Mike

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 10, 2020 1:07 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 10, 2020 3:04 AM

How exactly is this external drive formatted?


It needs to be formatted as MacOS Extended, with a GUID Partition Table.

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Time Machine says the back up drive does not have enough space

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