We have an iMac still running Mojave that is formatted in Mac OS Extended Journal. In order to update Mac OS we'll obviously have to reformat the drive in APFS. Our HD's contents are backed up in Time Machine on a working Time Capsule. Will we be able to restore the drive's data onto the updated and reformatted hard drive?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14
Yes, but unlike previous operating systems, you will not be able to restore a Big Sur Mac completely using a Time Machine backup.
To restore the Big Sur Mac, you must first erase the Mac's hard drive and then reinstall the Big Sur operating system. Then, use Migration Assistant to bring over the data from a Time Machine backup to the "new" Mac.
The Time Capsule hard drive cannot be formatted in APFS, it will remain Mac OS Extended (Journaled). But....the actual sparsebundle file on the Time Capsule containing all the backups will be formatted in APFS (Case Sensitive). So, in order to back up the Big Sur Mac to a Time Capsule, there must be a format "switch" on the data making things a lot more complicated. Gosh, I wonder what could possibly go wrong.
My recommendation.......if you want to back up using Time Machine.......would be to connect a USB drive directly to a Big Sur Mac and back up that way. In this type of setup, the backup drive will be formatted the same way as the Mac, so a lot less to go wrong.
And.....chances are, your Time Capsule is 5+ years old. At 5-6 on average, they tend to start acting up. If the Time Capsule is 7+ years old, I would not store any data on the Time Capsule hard drive that I could not afford to lose, because the hard drive is really "suspect" at this point in time.
Ah. Great. So High Sierra was the last Mac OS that supported Mac OS Extended (Journaled), officially anyway, and Time Capsule does not natively support APFS.
If we were running High Sierra I'd be inclined to stay on that version of the OS, however, it is trickier than that. We are actually running Mojave and the drive was NOT converted to APFS during the upgrade somehow. We've been running this version of the OS for a few years, so even though it a 'mutant'' it works just fine.
We actually have multiple Time Capsules and use them as our wifi routers and backup devices, both wired and wireless. Since Apple has discontinued them, what do you recommend replacing them with in the near future?
We are actually running Mojave and the drive was NOT converted to APFS during the upgrade somehow.
Mojave will run on a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) disk or APFS. In general, the Mac format was used with spinning disks and the APFS format was used with SSD type disks. Mojave was one of the last of the 10.x operating systems.
Big Sur switched to 11.x operating systems, signifying a major change.
It won't be hard to replace the WiFi capability of the Time Capsule with other WiFi routers or a new WiFi mesh system. But, the Time Capsule was discontinued over 3 years ago and no other manufacturer offers a WiFi router with a built in hard drive.
The closest that you will come is the Synology router or one of the upper end Asus routers that have a USB port on the back that will support Time Machine backups to an attached USB hard drive. But, you still won't be able to use APFS on the USB drives attached to the routers and a format conversion must occur for backups to work.
Synology also offers NAS products that will support traditional Time Machine backups, but here again, the Apple world changed with the introduction of Big Sur.
I still use a Time Capsule here......mainly to help answer questions on this forum......but I would never trust it as my primary backup device. I also connect a USB drive directly to the Macs here and back up that way as well. So for now, I use a dual back up system. I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up each Mac to the attached USB drives.
Thanks for all the help. Too bad Apple stopped making wireless routers and backup devices. Really liked the simplicity of an all Apple ecosystem and felt a lot safer using all Apple hardware too, rather than trusting other brands. Oh well.
Restoring Time Machine from Mac OS Extended Journal to APFS
