Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Time Machine

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matthui1995 Author

Level 1

4 points

Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Time Machine

Hey guys, having a bit of trouble with Time Machine. I have a 2TB external Seagate HDD in which there are two partitions (1 ExFAT and 1 Mac OS Extended Journaled as per Disk Utility). The drive connects fine and I see it mounted in my Finder sidebar and on my desktop, and I'm able to drag and drop files into it or out of it.

However, I'm looking to use the Mac OS Extended partition for Time Machine backups as well but although I can see the drive showing in the above mentioned locations however when I try to select a disk for time machine to be set up, the drive/partition is not showing up at all. I checked the advanced settings and it is not an excluded drive. I've also ensured that there is more than enough space on the partition for the backup. What is wrong here, and how can I fix this? I am on Mac OS Monterey 12.1, running on my old Early 2015 13" MBP.

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Feb 14, 2022 10:35 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tesserax

Level 10

149,147 points

Feb 14, 2022 10:48 PM in response to matthui1995

As you know, macOS Monterey, uses the APFS format for its drives. In turn, under Monterey, Time Machine can now backup to APFS-formatted destination drives. HFS+ (aka, Mac OS Extended) is no longer required. One of the advantages of APFS is more efficient backups. On the other hand, APFS was designed especially for SSDs, but still works with HDDs.

Regardless, you may find the following article enlightening. Note that even though it was written around macOS Big Sur, it equally applies to Monterey.

APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS, and more - The Eclectic Light Company

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Answer 2

lllaass

Level 10

210,423 points

Feb 15, 2022 12:30 AM in response to matthui1995

Although Monterey can continue to use (inherit) an existing Time Machine volume with an HFS+ formatted disk, Monterey requires that a new Time machine disk be formatted in APFS format.

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