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Backing up Mac and external hard drive to Time Machine via a 8TB desktop storage

Please advise on correct settings for backing up Mac desktop and an External hard drive (which is home to my 693.01 GB system photo library) to an 8TB desktop storage. I am currently running MacOS Mojave and would like to upgrade to MacOs Big Sur.


Thank you for your time,


iMac 27″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 3, 2021 8:26 AM

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Posted on Apr 3, 2021 9:20 AM

to keep your photos library and add TM backups to it, there would need to be a partition available to create the TM backup. and if the drive is formatted HFS+, it would need to be reformatted as APFS for big sur. in both of those cases the drive would have to be erased and set up for that. with how cheap EHDs have become, you should buy a separate external drive with double the capacity of the mac's internal drive and do your time machine on it.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 3, 2021 9:20 AM in response to Crycresmedz

to keep your photos library and add TM backups to it, there would need to be a partition available to create the TM backup. and if the drive is formatted HFS+, it would need to be reformatted as APFS for big sur. in both of those cases the drive would have to be erased and set up for that. with how cheap EHDs have become, you should buy a separate external drive with double the capacity of the mac's internal drive and do your time machine on it.

Apr 3, 2021 9:36 AM in response to Crycresmedz

you could buy another EHD with the same capacity of your photos library disk and manually move the library to it. but, i don't use iCloud so i have no idea how that would apply. someone else here will understand that. just wait for a reply from whoever that happens to be. :)


edit: i do think a physical disk along with the photos on iCloud would suffice, but i'm not positive.

Backing up Mac and external hard drive to Time Machine via a 8TB desktop storage

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