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When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
i did everything perfect, but when i try to install it says that my external drive is not apfs formatted? but it shouldn't be? should it? eveything in the instructions says format drive as macOS extended journaled.
Hi nancycamb,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities! We'd love to help with installing Big Sur. Let's go over all options together.
As macOS Big Sur requires APFS, you'll want to format the external drive before attempting the install. The following guide has more information:
If you can’t install macOS on an external disk - Apple Support
We'd also like to share the following guide with further details:
File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
We're here for you if you've got any questions.
Have a great day!
Hi nancycamb,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities! We'd love to help with installing Big Sur. Let's go over all options together.
As macOS Big Sur requires APFS, you'll want to format the external drive before attempting the install. The following guide has more information:
If you can’t install macOS on an external disk - Apple Support
We'd also like to share the following guide with further details:
File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support
We're here for you if you've got any questions.
Have a great day!
i would recommend reading this well written user tip from another member to these forums:
How to Setup and Use an External SSD as your Startup Disk - User Tip
making an external bootable drive for big sur
