This question has been posed many times and the answers are a combination of inaccurate and vague. So, I ask again: I have an APFS formatted SSD in my MacbookPro. I have formatted an external "G:Drive" as APFS for back ups. I have run the first back-up. It seems intact. Is it reliable and can I restore from it?
MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11)
Okay I called Apple Support and they DID confirm that Time Machine CAN be used with an APFS-formatted external drive (with a High Sierra-based computer) to reliably backup and restore the APFS formatted drive on the computer. I dont think the user community believes this but that is Apple's position.
Scott
Okay I called Apple Support and they DID confirm that Time Machine CAN be used with an APFS-formatted external drive (with a High Sierra-based computer) to reliably backup and restore the APFS formatted drive on the computer. I dont think the user community believes this but that is Apple's position.
Scott
There is no need to deliberately intervene and provide an APFS formatted drive to Time Machine for its backups. If left to its own devices, I believe it will create an HFS+ extended format drive.
It was reported to be NOT WORKING previously, and I have not seen any Grand Announcement that it is working.
YOU are the one who has chosen to wander off the beaten path and set out on your own.
This current article says you CAN'T:
Important: You can back up from an HFS+ or APFS-formatted disk to an HFS+ disk; however, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS-formatted disk. If you select a back up disk formatted as APFS, Time Machine offers to reformat it as HFS+.
from:
Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support
.
Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support
Important: You can back up from an HFS+ or APFS-formatted disk to an HFS+ disk; however, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS-formatted disk. If you select a back up disk formatted as APFS, Time Machine offers to reformat it as HFS+.
"waves hi at Grant" 😎
To the best of my knowledge, Time Machine has not been approved for storing its backups on an APFS drive at this writing.
The current version in 10.13.3 should use an HFS+ Extended Case-sensitive, (journaled) drive for the backup drive.
Will it work anyway? Probably -- but why would you want to be the one who finds the remaining bugs?
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Time Machine has long supported multiple backup drives. Every-other drive is used for every-other backup, and each drive is a completely stand-alone backup set, not dependent on the other drive. When looking at backups to restore, files are presented as one huge master set by date&time, regardless of which drive they are stored on.
greenblueyellow wrote:
Can you provide some evidence? I am on the latest beta of 10.13.4 (17E160e) and I cannot.
After formatting the external disk to APFS, High Sierra will reject the attempt and force you to reformat the disk to HFS+
FWIW, as has been mentioned and documented by Apple, Time Machine will not backup to a APFS drive. Despite what boulderskies@ck was told.
I expect that would blow its reliability completely out of the water -- that would be the last feature tested, in my opinion.
I recommend you start a new backup, or overlap by adding a backup on a different drive.
If that continues to work for you without issue, I would be happy to suggest that there are now Users who have tried APFS-format backup drives with some success.
I would be even happier to do so once you have done a Restore from a random backup (not the latest, not the oldest) and can report it worked for you without issue.
At this writing, the "Company Line" is that HFS+ is the recommended format, and that is what I will continue to say to a novice user if asked.
I thought of a litmus test to determine the preferred format for a Time Machine drive:
Rather than intervening and handing it an APFS drive, find a spare drive, (even one way too small) and format it for Ms-DOS ExFAT.
Then tell Time Machine to use it.
It will re-format the drive to its liking.
My bet is that it reformats to MacOS extended, not APFS.
I dont think the user community believes this but that is Apple's position.
That was not Apple's position in 10.13.0, and readers here are acutely aware of previous bugs and issues.
To their credit, Apple is VERY conservative around issues where you could lose data.
If Time Machine has been allowed to proceed to make its backups on APFS Volumes, it is likely working adequately well, with little risk of data loss, or they would have "patched out" its ability to do that, to protect Users against possible data loss.
greenblueyellow wrote:
Can you provide some evidence? I am on the latest beta of 10.13.4 (17E160e) and I cannot.
After formatting the external disk to APFS, High Sierra will reject the attempt and force you to reformat the disk to HFS+.
Discussion of Beta software is (per the NDA you agreed to) not allowed to be discussed here. So you are on your own.
Yes you can. I am doing it with latest version of High Sierra and APFS source and external drives.
Is it reliable and can I restore from it?
Maybe, I guess you will among the first to find out. It is not an approved (by Apple) method but the data is yours to lose, or more sensibly have a second known to be reliable backup on hand.
Thanks guys. Its curious that I've not seen anything from Apple to substantiate that Time Machine/APFS backups arent reliable. Nor were there any error messages along the way (except in trying to convert HFS to APFS). Not doubting you but dont you think there'd be something published by Apple about this?
Follow up question: Can I convert my backup drive back to HFS+?
The point is the responses to my question while well-intentioned were inaccurate and opinion-based, which sorta matches the rest of the user community and magazines. Which is why I sent a Feedback form to Apple Support suggesting they be MUCH clearer about this issue. An OS upgrade is a big deal and when there is ambiguity about back-up data, it gets even worse.
Can you provide some evidence? I am on the latest beta of 10.13.4 (17E160e) and I cannot.
After formatting the external disk to APFS, High Sierra will reject the attempt and force you to reformat the disk to HFS+.
Time Machine & APFS
