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I don't have Locations in the finder side bar. What does it look like?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.1
Only Location items that Big Sur can detect, and match the Location categories will appear in the Finder sidebar. A damaged, failing, or improperly formatted Time Machine drive may not appear. That external Time Machine drive, on Big Sur, can be formatted differently:
I deliberately stated case-insensitive as this is not shown in the Disk Utility options, with Apple preferring to omit the implicit phrase. On my M1 Mac mini, I use an SSD using option 2 above, but on my Intel MacBook Air, I continue to use option 1 on a 2TB mechanical drive. I never enable Time Machine drive encryption, both from personal choice, and not wanting to deal with its overhead.
If a Time Machine drive has mounting irregularities, I would recommend that you run Disk Utility First Aid on it, and get a green successful run, or if not, run First Aid again until you do. Consistent red means replace the drive. Always observe proper drive removal through the Finder (or shutdown), before Time Machine drive removal.
You may have to dive into the Finder preferences to enable locations if they don't show up by default.
Open Finder, then select Finder -> Preferences from the menu bar on top. After that select the third menu option.
HFS or APFS not offered as formats. See screenshot.
First aid on external container gets a green light, first aid on the unmounted/unmountable volume (dsik2s1) beneath comes up as a fail in a red lozenge after a long list of errors. I've done many first aids/erases but not getting anywhere.
That works, but some checked additions (via finder preferences) to locations don't appear. Tried a restart, but that hasn't helped.
This learning curve started with trying to get the Time Machine external back up disk to mount. Looks like the disk is faulty suddenly. Container seems ok but volume is greyed out. Neither want to mount.
I think I now understand the content of VikingOSX's note. The Samsung drive does not mount. If I try to format it I get the formatting options above but scheme seems to have changed to Master Record Boot. For years past it was GUID. Why did bit change?
I checked again a Toshiba drive which works well, backs up nicely on Time Machine and if I was to reformat it offers the APFS and stays on the GUID. It never has been MRB.
If the Samsung changed from GUID to MRB by itself (seemingly) how did that happen? Evidently something wrong with the Samsung. Not bothered too much about losing earlier backups, just very curious about how these things happen.
No attachment. Use the "Image Insertion" icon under the reply window.
Not what I see. See attachment
In Big Sur, you may have to click on the Finder sidebar Location entry once, to get it to expand its contents.
I had added it then accidentally deleted it. Thanks for the feedback. I've since taught myself how to get to locations, as pointed out in another reply. All appreciated everyone. Best for 2021.
Where is Locations in finder sidebar
