Continue TimeMachine with Catalina or Erase?

Question

Continue TimeMachine with Catalina or Erase?

I have an external TimeMachine drive, which is a RAID 1 drive. I've been using it with Sierra, 10.12.6, until yesterday, when I went up to Catalina, 10.15.6. So, now what should I do?

Is it OK to leave it as a RAID 1 drive? I couldn't reboot with it anyway.

Shall I reformat it as an APFS disk? Do I NEED to do that?

Is it OK to just leave it as it is? Can I just continue to backup to it in TimeMachine format?

I'm guessing I should at least erase and reformat as an APFS disk, and then backup in TimeMachine format.

But I'm going to wait to find out what my options are.

Screen shot included.

Posted on Sep 16, 2020 11:33 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,120 points

Sep 16, 2020 11:57 AM in response to Stephen Souza1

I have an external TimeMachine drive, which is a RAID 1 drive. I've been using it with Sierra, 10.12.6, until yesterday, when I went up to Catalina, 10.15.6. So, now what should I do?

Nothing different.

Shall I reformat it as an APFS disk? Do I NEED to do that?

No. No.

I'm guessing I should at least erase and reformat as an APFS disk, and then backup in TimeMachine format.

What gave you that idea? Time Machine can't back up to an APFS drive.

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Answer 2

Sep 16, 2020 12:13 PM in response to Barney-15E

OH, all right! Thank you for responding. So, I've got it backing up right now.

Dah! I don't know how I got that idea. I just assumed, I guess, that APFS is the new file format and every drive has to use it.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,120 points

Sep 16, 2020 12:21 PM in response to Stephen Souza1

I guess, that APFS is the new file format and every drive has to use it.

Time Machine heavily relies on hard links to folders which is not supported on APFS (yet?).

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Continue TimeMachine with Catalina or Erase?

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