I am using a WD My Book to backup my MacBook Air formatted with APFS. I am also trying to add a folder so I can clone my photos which are kept on Seagate external but I can't add a folder - the add folder icon on My Book is greyed out. What can I do?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.7
A Time Machine volume is read-only to prevent the backups from being modified.
Normally you should not use a TM backup drive for anything other than backups. If you are trying to backup another drive to this TM drive, then you would need to first create a new APFS volume. Just make sure that TM still has 2x-3x the size on the external drive so TM can function properly.
All APFS volumes within a single Container will share the storage pool so you can easily break your TM backups if the manual backup/cloning of your external photos drive becomes too large. You can set a Quota on the new APFS volume so that you prevent this from happening (assuming you select a proper Quota value so that TM has 3x the storage needed).
Unfortunately setting a Reserve for the TM volume itself is a bit tricky and cannot be done after TM is using it. I don't recall the proper procedure.
By sharing the TM backup drive you are putting your TM backups at a higher risk of problems. You may want to purchase another external drive to backup your other media.
A Time Machine volume is read-only to prevent the backups from being modified.
Normally you should not use a TM backup drive for anything other than backups. If you are trying to backup another drive to this TM drive, then you would need to first create a new APFS volume. Just make sure that TM still has 2x-3x the size on the external drive so TM can function properly.
All APFS volumes within a single Container will share the storage pool so you can easily break your TM backups if the manual backup/cloning of your external photos drive becomes too large. You can set a Quota on the new APFS volume so that you prevent this from happening (assuming you select a proper Quota value so that TM has 3x the storage needed).
Unfortunately setting a Reserve for the TM volume itself is a bit tricky and cannot be done after TM is using it. I don't recall the proper procedure.
By sharing the TM backup drive you are putting your TM backups at a higher risk of problems. You may want to purchase another external drive to backup your other media.
WD My Book: Add Folder icon greyed out
