Time machine won't backup my external ssd.

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totochan143 Author

Level 1

8 points

Time machine won't backup my external ssd.

I Have a Mac running Big sur with Seagate 4TB backup hub as a Time machine drive.

I recently connected Sandisk extreme SSD to the mac but Time machine won't backup the SSD.

The list of the SSD (shown as WORK in the screenshot) were greyed out.

I have tried unmount and format the Time machine and start over but it still not work.

The content of the WORK is all my work so it's very important to backup them. What should I do?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions and sorry for my bad English.

MacBook Pro 13″, 11.5

Posted on Jul 26, 2021 11:12 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,938 points

Jul 27, 2021 12:02 AM in response to totochan143

What is the format of WORK?

Time Machine can only back up Mac OS Extended or APFS volumes.

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Answer 2

totochan143 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 27, 2021 1:38 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you Barney, I just use it right out of the box so i guess it's not the compatible format for Time machine to be able to backup. I'll try to format it to APFS and see if it works. Thanks again!!

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,938 points

Jul 27, 2021 8:18 PM in response to totochan143

If it was formatted NTFS, make sure you uninstall whatever software you installed from the drive to allow you to write to it.

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Answer 4

totochan143 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 27, 2021 11:50 PM in response to Barney-15E

I just formatted to APFS (the drive was exFAT from factory) and it works perfectly. Thank you for the advise.

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Time machine won't backup my external ssd.

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