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Level 1

48 points

Time Machine Backup on Big Sur 11.2.3 using external HDD (not SSD)

When I whant to use drive as a TM backup it formats it as APFS (Case sensitive) regardles is it old HDD or new SSD. Is it safe to use old HDD external drives for backup because a lot of pepole says that APFS is not suitable for old spinning drives?

I tryed to reformat it to MACos Extended Journail but as soon as I select it to use as a backup in TM it reformats it again to APFS.

Thank you.

Mac mini, macOS 11.2

Posted on Mar 19, 2021 4:46 AM

Top-ranking reply

PRP_53

Level 10

91,165 points

Posted on Mar 19, 2021 4:55 AM

Safe to use as APFS but better if the drive as SSD. The performance on Spinner HD is reduced when APFS is used.

APFS and snapshots on rotational HDD devices

CCC will only automatically enable snapshot support on an APFS volume backed by a Solid State Device, and only when CCC can determine that the device is a Solid State Device — that assessment is often not possible on external devices. If you are encountering poor performance on an APFS-formatted HDD device, we recommend that you disable snapshot support on that volume and delete any snapshots that are on that volume.

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Time Machine Backup on Big Sur 11.2.3 using external HDD (not SSD)

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