Back up to EHD

[Brian]

  

Part 3

• First select the EHD that you want to Format for use on the Mac in the left column:
   

• Then click the Erase Button at the top:
   

• Your Window should appear similar to this. At this point, give your new EHD its official name. Make it something Obvious, like WD 3TB or Client File EHD 3TB. Something recognizable and simple. You can only have so many characters for the name, so keep it short and simple: 

• Then click the UP/DOWN arrows on the right, in the Format Section. If this was originally a Windows EHD, it will more than likely say, Windows NT File System (NTFS):
  
  
   
• A list will appear as follows:
  
  
  
   
  • For a Traditional Spinning Hard Drive, ONLY SELECT THE MacOS Extended (Journaled.) DO NOT SELECT the "Encrypted / Case Sensitive" Options!
     
  • For a Flash Based Hard Drive (i.e. SSD, m.2) choose APFS. DO NOT use APFS for a Traditional Hard Drive! DO NOT SELECT the "Encrypted / Case Sensitive" Options!
     
  • Again, it's either the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" or the plain "APFS." Do not use any other option. For the people that do use those options, have reasons to do so. For the 99.9999% of us out there, including myself, we want to keep our Partition Types as simple as possible.
    
     
• For the majority of users doing this, your new External HD will most likely be the "Traditional / Spinning" type/kind, as SSD/m.2 Drives tend to be extremely expensive for capacities over 1TB. As time goes on, this will definitely change, but for now your Disk Utility Window should look something like this:
  
  
  
   
• Simply Click the Erase Button and let the MacOS do its thing:
  
  
   

• When finished, you might get a message from the MacOS asking if you want to use the EHD for Time Machine or not. If this is a Data Drive, tell it NO!
• Of course, if this EHD is meant for Time Machine, tell it Yes.
   

Quote

PLEASE NOTE!! You want to keep your Time Machine External Hard Drives separate from your normal day-to-day backups!

AGAIN, DO NOT USE YOUR TIME MACHINE EHDs as a normal Data Backup Drive, not matter how tempting it might be.  Trust me on this, your TM EHD should be used to back up the internal "Macintosh HD" only and not have it backup any externals.

Keep things simple when it comes to Time Machine Drives.

 

• If everything goes as expected, and followed all of my instructions, you should see your new EHD mounted on the Mac Desktop:
  
  
  
   
• You will also see it as follows in the Disk Utility Module of the MacOS:
  
  

That's it! That is all it takes to make your Windows Hard Drive and convert it for use on your Mac. Keep in mind that with the MacOS and the way its designed, is it treats both Internal and External Drives the same. So don't go over 75% - 80% capacity on either drive, Internal or External. The more full your hard drive is, the slower your Macintosh runs. 

[Sam165]

Hi Bryan.  I did as you said.  I have the new WD 1 on my desk top but I still have WD1_CCC and WD2_CCC on my desktop.  How do I get rid of them?  I will try to submit a screen shot to show you what I mean and also what things look like in disk utility.

[Brian]

You need to un-install that damn cloning program!

 

[Sam165]

Bryan!!   Yay!!!!!!!  All is good    Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!  Now my hair can stop going white!  You are the best!  Did I say thank you?!!

[Brian]

Yippee!!!

Now, if you are looking for an automated program to sync folders/hard drives from one to the other, I recommend Super Duper! Version 3.6.1. But before you get into that, let's just get you used to using a TM Drive and a Main Backup / Data Drive first. Keep things simple.

[Sam165]

I'm good for now   I am super disappointed to read that Apple has discontinued the 27" iMac though.  Hopefully by the time I need a new computer, they will have something else besides $5,000 USD for me.  I just don't have that sort of CAD lying around as a hobbyist.  Glad I have taken all my pics off of my computer and put on external hard drives.  Hoping this will buy me some time.  Take care and thanks so much for all your advice