Well done Andrew. I've often used ExFAT before for drives where I want to be able to store files, imgs, etc from my Android Phone. Works great. Here I am going to choose ExFAT again, but this time because of your descriptions that it's the format to use when you possibly will be mixing files that originated from an earlier version of MacOS before APFS was created.
This is the ideal tutorial, thank you. "Is it not possible to have Time Machine use only part of an external drive?" is the question I'm left with at the end.
Hi Andrew, thank you for an excellent vid. I do have a question, on my mac's disk utility, I had the external hard drive showing, then something else and then a container. My friend's computer only shows the external drive's name which makes things nice and clean with no confusion of which drive I'm looking at. Can you explain this container stuff please. Looking forward to seeing more of your vids as I like how short and to the point you are.
Thanks Simone, and no problem! That might be the difference in using Disk Utility's "Show Only Volumes" (your setting) vs. "Show All Devices" (your friend's). It can be toggled from the View menu.
One question: when I plug in a new portable HDD drive, at which level should erase & format in ExFAT: Name of the drive model? example: WD Elements2621 Media, or at the name of the drive level? example: disk2s1 ... ??
Good question - I usually just do this at the volume/drive name level, and leave the drive model. I think Apple mostly leads folks in this direction, given Show Only Volumes is chosen by default in Disk Utility.
I have TM backups from other drives. when I try to populate them all to one single drive I get the circle and unable to move them all over to one single drive. I have always used TM to format the drives I had so I am confused why I can't all them all to one location?
Are any of the backups encrypted, or the drives/Macs they're backing up from encrypted? You may have to start from scratch and partition the one drive/location to handle all of them.
Hi, my max is 2015, I was just given the hornettek enterprise 4x quad bay hardtive with 2T drives in but the format says windows NT file system (NTSF) I’ve tried to right click the drive and format but it won’t do it and I can’t drag and drop stuff the store 🤷🏼♀️ please help.
If you're formatting it on a Mac, you'll need to go into Disk Utility and reformat the drives - possibly each drive 1 by 1. I do also offer consultations for more direct 1-on-1 help.
What's the issue you're having with it? What version of macOS are you running? Other utilities exist, but Disk Utility not working is likely a bigger problem...
