External Backup for OS Big Sur recommendations

Nearly all external drives do work. You probly need to reformat it. You can do that in Disk utility. It is recommended to format a new drive in APFS (in earlier times TimeMachine didn’t work with this format, now it does) Don’t use any software that accompanies your new drive.

Also, try first Aid on your old drive. It.s probably formatted in MacOs Journaled (extended) and that’s ok. If it works again after First Aid, you can keep using it as a second backup drive

As far as I know, Lacie doesn’t need to be formatted. (have a look at apple.com).

on this forum, OWC drives get very positive reviews, but they are more expensive

The reviews of e.g. cheap drives like WD elements are really not good onthis forum, but I never had any problem. It needs to be reformatted, but that really is a piece of cake.

I also have 3 Lacie drives, each of them work fine with big sur

Your backup drives that are formatted in MacOs Journaled (extended) will keep working with Big Sur. Don’t reformat them if not necessary because reformatting deletes all old backups.

Only if you buy a new external drive to use it as a TM backup drive, format it in APFS.

I suppose you know it’s a bad idea to use a TM backup drive for other purposes than just TM back-ups: don’t use it to store other files on it.

About APFS and Windows, I can’t give you an answer

FWIW, your backup system must be the most

reliable part of your setup and generally

should be more reliable than the device that is

being backed up. Therefore, it is not a place to

go cheap. I would not consider any of the typical

consumer drives as reliable enough unless you

actually two of them and are duplicated.

Also, personally, I believe one backup is no backup at all

since the backup can fail.

No, you can try if you can re-use it if First Aid works, but I wouldn’t trust it anymore as the only backup disk.

I have this question too. I just upgraded from Mojave to Big Sur and I was having issues with my Seagate externals stopping/hanging/getting stuck at different stops, when using it as a time machine. I know it was formatted as MacOS Journaled (extended). Now for Big Sur do I need to reformat it to APFS? Will my past externals that have time machine still work under the MacOS Journaled (extended). I have externals that I setup for time machine and some I setup to back up manually. The ones I backed up manually (currently using one) is formatted MacOS Journaled (extended). I'm just more curious on the time machine format ones? Both for ones I haven't used and past ones.

Also, do you know if the ones I backed up manually if I put them as APFS I can still load it to my windows computer and see it?

I do have another question, one of my externals I'm going to be later hooking up is my Seagate Backup Plus (which tends to automatically link to TM. Never had to deal with reformatting it or anything). If the new one automatically links again but isn't in APFS, should I reformat it prior to letting it start a new TM?

Not really. It’s up to you. Something to think about: you Mac has to run on Big Sur. If you want to use that disk ona Mac that’s running on an older OS, that won’t work. Here is some more information

https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/mac-help/mh15139/11.0/mac/11.0

https://www.macworld.com/article/3600278/macos-big-sur-supports-time-machine-on-apfs-formatted-drives-but-there-are-a-few-catches.html

Haylie Wiggins wrote:

Also, do you know if the ones I backed up manually if I put them as APFS I can still load it to my windows computer and see it?

Windows cannot read or write to APFS formatted drives.

Just as information if you have a new drive that has nothing on it and use it with Big Sur as a TM it will automatically be formatted APFS even if it was formatted Mac(os) Journaled. Big Sur gives you no choice and reformats at setup.

How do you know that your old Toshiba external drive doesn’t work anymore? Which message do you get?

Thank you so much. Yeah I don't use one external for TM another files. I have multiples externals, some are just TM and others I manually put the files on.

Thank you for your reply