formatting external hard drive to imac

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Level 1

4 points

formatting external hard drive to imac

I recently bought a new iMac and am trying to use a Seagate Ultra Touch 2T external hard drive to use with Time Machine. After spending more than an hour on the phone with Apple Care, it was determined that the Seagate external hard drive was read only; therefore, I was unable to save any of my documents or photos to it. The only information that was being saved to this Seagate HDD through Time Machine were the iMac backups. There were no options to change the drive from read only to read/write. We did erase the HDD and try to re-format, with no luck. Any suggestions?

iMac 24″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 4, 2022 7:38 AM

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Answer 1

GGx8 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 4, 2022 7:52 AM in response to dialabrain

Just need some clarification: on my old (2015) iMac I used an external hard drive with Time Machine for both backups and my documents/photos. So are you saying that I am not able to do the same with this new iMac--I need to have two HDD, one for backups and one for documents/photos? I assume that's what you mean by "time machine drive"?

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

126,719 points

Feb 4, 2022 7:56 AM in response to GGx8

Correct. It is possible to partition the drive, assign one partition to Time Machine, and one for your documents/photos. However, that's never recommended because when the drive fails (they always will eventually), you lose both. But it's possible.

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Answer 3

GGx8 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 4, 2022 8:00 AM in response to dialabrain

OK that is helpful. One more question: since you mentioned drives failing, would it be a good idea to keep both drives plugged in and designate one as just for Time Machine backups only, and designate the other to use just for my documents or photos or anything else?

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