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Has Monteray changed the way Time Machine backups are stored?

So I have a 5TB drive for Time Machine backups on different Macs. When I ask Time Machine to make a backup, instead of backing up directly to that 5TB drive, it creates a new volume on that 5TB drive and backs up to that instead. So now I have two Time Machine volumes on my desktop.


It never used to work that way; it always used to create a backup.backupd folder on the Time Machine drive and then created a separate folder for each Mac being backed up inside that backup.backupd folder.


What now happens seems to be a backward step as backups are no longer directly on that Time Machine drive.


Furthermore, I now have to mount both volumes on the desktop before Time Machine will backup.


Is this a new 'feature' (or bug) in Monterey?

Posted on May 4, 2022 11:07 AM

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Posted on May 4, 2022 1:53 PM

Big Sur and Monterey format the drive as APFS. You can continue an HFS+ backup drive, but you cannot create a new one.


It doesn't create a backups.backupd folder as the Volume can only be used for a single Mac's backup. It will create a folder for each backup named with a timestamp.

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5 replies

May 4, 2022 1:16 PM in response to lllaass

lllaass wrote:

Starting with Big Sur, Time Machine files are different if /when you use an APFS formatted disk.


[Ever so slightly off topic]:


Something tells me I should revert to formatting Time Machine drives as Mac OS Extended instead of APFS so that it can continue to backup Mac OS Extended or APFS formatted drives.


Am I right?


Is there any benefit to formatting a Time Machine drive as APFS?

Has Monteray changed the way Time Machine backups are stored?

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