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Big Sur Changes Time Machine External Hard Drive to APFS and Read Only

Can't find info on this anywhere, wondering what I could be doing wrong.

I have two external hard drives (one brand new) that I use for redundant back-ups via Time Machine, and also to store other files. Both Seagate 10TB drives.


With the upgrade to Big Sur, the older external drive formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is a-ok, and I can manually drop other files there.


I formatted the new drive to be the same, dropped files in, no problem.


BUT, when I set it as a backup for Time Machine, it changes it to APFS, and then after the back-up, becomes "read only" and I can't drop files in.




Posted on Dec 16, 2020 7:34 AM

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Posted on Dec 16, 2020 12:16 PM

As Barney says, TM will use the whole drive. However, open Disk Utility and select the Container. Click on the + sign to create a new volume. You can then drop the files to that volume. It will be APFS volume. If you would want Mac OS Extended Journaled, then you would have to partition the drive and format each partition as you want.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-erase-or-delete-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/partition-a-physical-disk-dskutl14027/mac

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 16, 2020 12:16 PM in response to Bill_Defective Mac Book

As Barney says, TM will use the whole drive. However, open Disk Utility and select the Container. Click on the + sign to create a new volume. You can then drop the files to that volume. It will be APFS volume. If you would want Mac OS Extended Journaled, then you would have to partition the drive and format each partition as you want.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-erase-or-delete-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/partition-a-physical-disk-dskutl14027/mac

Big Sur Changes Time Machine External Hard Drive to APFS and Read Only

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