Jan 26, 2018 - Here's how to format a drive using a Mac - including how to format a drive for. So the contents can be read on both platforms, and what format to use for Time Machine. And it currently only works on SSDs or Flash storage.

When I've plugged in my USB HDD (WD Passort Elite) for the first time, the system had asked me whether I want to use this HDD as time machine drive. I've chosen smth like 'decide later' and continued my work.

When later I tried to setup time machine preferences I couldn't find the way to set my USB HDD as time machine drive. When I press 'Select drive for backup' i see empty list, nevertheless my drive is plugged in and works well. Btw, it is ntfs-formatted, could it be a problem? Thanks in advance. You can't backup to an NTFS formatted disk as stated below: Note: Every available disk that can be used to store backups is listed. If you’ve partitioned a disk, the available partitions are listed. Connect xbox controller to mac.

Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk that's connected to an AirPort Extreme, or to an iPod, iDisk, or a disk formatted for Microsoft Windows (NTFS or FAT format). If you select an NTFS or FAT-formatted disk, Time Machine prompts you to reformat the disk.

Choose a different disk or reformat the disk in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Because reformatting erases any files on the disk, only do this if you no longer need the files or if you have copies of them on a different disk. This quote is from the You could always reformat the disk in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format which would allow you to use it. Copied to to Equivalent for Time Machine that writes to NTFS disks: Backup to NTFS If you wish to use Time Machine in Lion or greater with an NTFS volume – and if you have a write-enabled driver for NTFS: • with you can configure Time Machine to back up to a sparse bundle disk image, the.sparsebundle stored on NTFS. In some situations you may find that Time Machine simply offers to use an NTFS volume. This may occur if, say, a write-enabled driver for NTFS is installed before a physical disk with NTFS is introduced to OS X.

Restore from NTFS OS X can read NTFS, and so should be able to restore from a.sparsebundle in this environment. Whether Recovery OS is similarly prepared to read from NTFS and restore, I don't know.

I can back up Yosemite with Time Machine as per Graham's answer here (), but I had to use a.sparseimage as a.sparsebundle image failed to be created on the NTFS volume (for more details on the difference between the two: ). In terms of restoring that image for recovery purposes, I tested by restarting and holding Cmd-R to boot into Mac OSX Recovery () and Time Machine could not find the disk. I had to start Disk Utility and mount the image manually, then go back to Time Machine and it could see the disk and all the available backups. I didn't actually go ahead and start the restore but I assume if it can see the backups, it should be able to restore them: ).

If you have a Mac and use storage devices like a USB drive of a different format than that recognized by Mac, you pretty much know that it is difficult to format it. The reason behind this is that most USB drives are designed to work on Windows OS, which runs on the FAT32 system. The Mac devices run on either APFS or Mac OS Extended. So, if you have a drive that is Mac OS extended or APFS format, you can easily reformat your drive, but if the drive has a FAT32 file format, then you might be in problem. Mac can read and write on the FAT32 file format, but it will definitely give you some quality issues. But not worry if you have bought a flash drive that runs on a different format than what is preferred by Mac. Below are some easy steps that will guide you to format these drives to Mac OS and APFS.