Big sur external hard drive formatting

kprof wrote:

Hi friends,

I formatted a seagate external hard drive to use time machine on my 2019 macbook pro running Big Sur, and can no longer save other data to it. Permissions for the drive says 'you can only read', and has no option to be changed (no 'golden lock', no options to select). I tried erasing and starting over a couple of times, but the same problem arose. Any thoughts?

Thank you,

kprof

Time Machine works best and most reliable if it has its own dedicated drive.

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784

Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple ...

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh15139/mac

How to use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

If a Time Machine backup takes longer than you expect

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204412