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Time Machine won't work with my backup

I purchased a Western Digital MyBook 4TB drive. I split it into two volumes, with the one for Time Machine is reformatted for APFS. But when I open Time Machine Preferences, it doesn't "see" the drive. Did I buy the wrong drive?

Mac Pro, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 1, 2021 5:14 PM

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Posted on Sep 1, 2021 9:04 PM

Catalina requires that the target for Time Machine be HFS+. Starting with Big Sur the target backup drive is APFS.


https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/10.15/mac/10.15

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3 replies

Sep 9, 2021 4:14 PM in response to steve626

Thanks Steve for your quick response. Ironically I was planning on upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur; so I wanted to get a full backup with Time Machine before I upgraded. Oh well. So I backed up to Time Machine with another drive formatted for HFS; that took about 4 days. Last night I upgraded to Big Sur, and today I was able to start Time Machine backups with the APFS drive. So the problem is fixed.

Time Machine won't work with my backup

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