I recently purchased a new iMac and want to use the same external hard drive for Time Machine as I used with my old iMac. Unfortunately, there is not enough room due to all the old Time Machine files on that hard drive. Do I need to wipe the external hard drive to make room?
iMac 24″, macOS 11.4
if you want to keep the catalina TM, then you should buy a new EHD to use with big sur TM. the drives are readily available, and their price seems to get lower every month. and, i second rkaufmann87's advice on redundant backups. and also on replacing EHDs every 5 or 6 years.
if you want to keep the catalina TM, then you should buy a new EHD to use with big sur TM. the drives are readily available, and their price seems to get lower every month. and, i second rkaufmann87's advice on redundant backups. and also on replacing EHDs every 5 or 6 years.
Norway 4 wrote:
Do I need to wipe the external hard drive to make room?
when i installed big sur, that's exactly what i did. i ran big sur for a few days to first make sure i didn't want to revert to catalina. once i was comfortable, i completely wiped the EHD and ran a big sur time machine on the "fresh" drive. but, as a footnote, i only do a backup once per week. i know that's not ideal, but my mac is for entertainment, not work. and also i use a bunch of external storage drives so losing data on my internal drive, in my application, is not really something i fear.
You can do that however it is VERY wise to replace EHD HD's every 5-6 years as they will fail. The trick is to replace before a failure occurs, with HD;s it is not a mater of If a HD will fail, it is a matter of when. The trick is they are not predicatable. Believe me, you dont want to learn a HD has failed when you need it most. This why redundant backups are smart!!!!!
Thanks for the quick reply. Is there any way to keep the most recent Time Machine backup from my old iMac, or is this an "all or nothing" proposition?
How do I re-use external hard drive from old iMac Time Machine backup to backup new iMac
