Lacie Hard drive Time Machine set up and now it won't let me save anything else to it

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Lacie Hard drive Time Machine set up and now it won't let me save anything else to it

I reformatted a brand new Lacie hard drive in APFS format to be a backup for both an iMac and MacBook Pro with Time Machine.

Now that its set up it split the hard drive into 2, and it won't let me save other files to it

I try to drag and drop another file to it and it blocks it

would I have to partition it in Disk Utility and split it into 3 for my other files ? and is that a bad idea?

I wanted this hard drive to have the back ups of both my computers and also to save other files to it

I'm new to this and I'm just looking for advice on what's best when setting up hard drives for back ups and having things organized

MacBook Pro (M3 Pro, 2023)

Posted on Mar 21, 2024 6:16 PM

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Answer 1

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jeffreythefrog

Level 6

13,986 points

Mar 22, 2024 5:51 AM in response to 23FAK

first, whenever you assign a drive to Time Machine, it becomes "read only". the only thing that can write to that drive is Time Machine itself. that is why you cannot add anything else to it.

second, IMHO. it is an extremely bad idea to partition a drive to use it for two separate Macs with Time Machine. when the drive dies, and they all will eventually, you lose both backups.

and finally, as affordable as external drives have become, there's no reason not to use more than one external drive.

In your case I would get two separate drives and use each of them for their own TM on each of your Macs. and I would get a third external drive to store any extra data you want to save.

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