Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Encryption can help protect your information if the drive ever falls into malicious hands. Click “Use Disk” if you don’t plan to encrypt the drive, and if you do - click the “Encrypt” option in the lower left and enter a password of your choice when it asks. It should be named whatever you named the drive in Step 4. Select the drive you erased from the list of choices. Click Time Machine from the options - if you don’t see the option you can click the Back arrow in the upper left or the series of boxes in the upper left, then select Time Machine. Next click the Apple Menu in the upper left and select “System Preferences” After the drive erases you can close the Disk Utility window. Click the Erase option near the upper right of the window, give the drive a name like “Backup” and then choose APFS as the format, and GUID Partition Map as the Scheme.
Select the Drive you want to erase on the left side under the headline “External.” In the case of the Samsung T7 portable SSD drive you can choose the option that reads “Samsung PSSD T7 Media” at the top of the list of External. Click the View menu at the top of the screen and select “Show All Devices” or look in the screenshot below for this icon and click it, then select the same option. Once you’ve found it you can press the return key on your keyboard or double click on Disk Utility from the list of results.
Optionally for a traditional portable hard drive you can also select the format Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
If you already know how to use Disk Utility, the format information to choose is APFS or APFS (encrypted) and the scheme should be set to GUID Partition Map. Follow these directions to get your drive formatted for the Mac. So those are my main questions - can I enable Time Machine without wiping out files already copied to an external hard drive, and, once I've copied my entire internal hard drive to the external drive, can I boot up with the external drive and work on it? Thanks.Occasionally you may purchase a drive that comes pre-formatted for use on Windows and will need to erase it to use properly on the Mac. I'm just worried that Time Machine might erase the files on my external drive, then poop out before it's finished creating a virtual clone. However, I'm a little conerned because my hard drive is failing. Since it has 1 TB of space, that should be a breeze.īut can I use an external hard drive when it already contains files? In other words, will enabling Time Machine wipe out the files I've already copied to my external drive? Ordinarily, it wouldn't be a problem I'd simply be replacing some folders with ALL the contents of my internal hard drive, including those same folders. In other words, I need about 775 GB space on my external hard drive (570 GB for a virtual clone of my internal drive and 200 GB for the files I've already copied to it. My internal hard drive is 750 GB, of which about 180 GB is free.
One more question: I've backed up some files on my new external drive - about 200 GB in several folders.
I've done that with Carbon Copy Cloner before.Īnyway, that's my main question - can one boot up a MacBook Pro on a virtual clone created by Time Machine instead of using the internal hard drive? If so, how do you access it? I think I recall having to hold down a key (Option?) while the computer is booting up, which forces it to give you a choice of hard drives. I later realized that I might be able to boot up with my external drive and work with my cloned hard drive if my internal hard drive. It's one of the new models that don't need a power cord you just connect it to your computer.Īnyway, a guy at the Genius Bar told me that I can use Time Machine to create a virtual clone on an external drive.
I haven't backed up my data for a while, so I bought a new 1 Terabyte Seagate Drive for Mac. I just learned that my hard drive is failing.