Time Machine not working with Big Sur

I posted this question when I bought my new iMac in December 2020 with Big Sur already loaded. I understand Time Machine does not work for e-mails with Big Sur as it once did. I kept El Capitan on my old iMac and TM works with MAIL; but with Big Sur and apparently some earlier OS, the easy functionality of MAIL and TM was lost.

E-Mails can still be retrieved from external back-up drive with Big Sur but it is a comparatively messy business, not the easy mail retrieval of El Capitan. I have been through all the hoops with Apple Support and the answer is that we have lost a valuable tool.

FWIW - I have been using Macs for over 3 decades- currently running/using minimacs, one 2018 version for current everyday and one 2014 version for Time Machine backup ( which does not run big sur but latest system 10 ) Changed to big sur in Feb. 2021 Email works but all new email comes in as trash, and until you move it to archive or actual email, reading it is a mess, since if you try to read email A by clicking on it, email B,c, or d comes up instead. As to time machine backups via other mini, or solid state external drive - all seems to be ok.

However- about 10 years ago, I used a free program called SymbolicLinker, which allowed me to assign a partitioned volume other than system volume to contain emails and certain other documents. Required making a change in email application library as it was before system 10. Still works thru all later changes- as long as one keeps the NAME of the partitioned volume the same between and during all upgrades and newer macs.

Might be worth checking out

Yes, it took me a long weekend and interaction with numerous Apple Support people to discover Mail and TM did not work as of old. It does not appear to be an Apple priority to make it work again.

MailBackupX is news to me. I now save anything I might want to keep on the iMac and hope I don't delete anything I will want in future. So far, so good but one day, I will want to retrieve and e-mail long gone. I use my iMac just for personal use so it is unlikely to be crucial. If I were in business, it would be a bigger issue.

Please read the following user tip and restate your question/problem in detail: 

Writing an Effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community  

How is the drive formatted and connected to your Mac?

Have you tried running Disk First Aid on it (Note: will take a very long time due to the complex ecosystem of permissions and hard links).

tbirdvet wrote:

time machine not working with big sur

Why not? Did you review the applicable Apple Support documents?

tbirdvet wrote:

time machine not working with big sur

It's working for me.

guixiu wrote:

Apparently with Big Sur it has to be APFS format.

No it doesn't. I have three different Macs running Big Sur and all the Time Machine drives are formatted as HFS+.

guixiu wrote:

It may have something to do with the way my external hard drive is formatted. Apparently with Big Sur it has to be APFS format.

Not required.

+1.

i just did a fresh one in HFS+ (thanks due to the person whose answer i'm making this reply to)

I've heard many people are having problems with Big Sur. Good luck!

jeffreythefrog wrote:

+1.

i just did a fresh one in HFS+ (thanks due to the person whose answer i'm making this reply to)

You're welcome.

I had the same issue. Catalina backing up to a Synology NAS using Time Machine, all fine. Big Sur would fail every time. I removed Sophos Home AV and all is now working again.