Here are some of the best apps that read-write APFS on Windows. You can only access drives formatted with APFS on Windows through third-party apps. If you connect that disk to Catalina, Time Machine won’t recognize it. Time Machine volumes formatted as APFS will only work with Macs running Big Sur or later. It’s fast, consumes less space, which means more room for backups, has greater resistance to data corruption, and copies cloned or sparse files efficiently. Time Machine backups to APFS are impressive when compared to HFS+. However, you won’t be asked this option for the already formatted HFS+ disk. On macOS Big Sur, Apple lets you format an external drive and choose APFS for Time Machine. An external SSD gives you the best performance over APFS, provided you don’t need to use the drive with other pre-Sierra Macs. If speed and convenience are your top priorities and cost is not an issue. Note: You’ll lose all the data in the external drive, make sure to back it up. Type in the disk name you want, then select your preferred option for both Format and Partition Scheme. Be sure to choose the device, not the volume or volumes it contains.

In the sidebar, select the external storage device. Now choose View > Show All Devices to see the storage device at the top level, then the container, and finally any volumes that are in the container. In the left panel, you’ll see the listing of internal and external drives separately. For a Mac user, neither of these file systems is desirable. It’ll likely be already formatted, either for Windows (using NTFS) or for maximum compatibility (using FAT32). Once you’ve bought a new external storage drive, connect it to your Mac. How to Format Your Drive With Disk Utility Let’s look at the best file system formats to use for your Mac's external drive. With the Disk Utility app, you can easily format the drive, give it a label, or even partition it and create multiple volumes. Once you have it, your first task is to pick a suitable file system for that drive depending on your intended usage. The easiest way to add storage to your Mac is to buy an external hard drive.

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