Can i use a My Passport drive to do my backups on an apple mac

Hi jonwmoon,

Yes, you should be able to use a My Passport drive to store backups for your Mac. If you plan to use it with Time Machine, I recommend doing the following (for your Mac running macOS Monterey):

1. Connect the external drive to your Mac. You might need a USB to USB-C adapter.
2. If there is any factory data that you wish to preserve from the drive, locate the drive in the Finder and move that data to another place, such as the Desktop.
3. Open Disk Utility, located in Applications -> Utilities.
4. In Disk Utility, select View -> Show All Devices.
5. Select the top level of the external drive and click Erase. Choose these options, then click Erase:
   1. Name: Whatever you want
   2. Format: APFS
   3. Scheme: GUID Partition Map
6. When the erase is complete, quit Disk Utility.
7. In the top left corner, select the Apple logo, and then choose System Preferences.
8. In System Preferences, select Time Machine.
9. If a padlock appears in the bottom left corner, click it and enter your admin password when prompted.
10. Click Select Backup Disk, then choose your My Passport drive.
11. If you wish to encrypt or password-protect the backups, which I recommend for security, check the Encrypt Backups checkbox. Then, complete the rest of the setup process.
12. When the main Time Machine preferences window returns, check the boxes for "Back Up Automatically" and "Show Time Machine in menu bar". The latter option allows you to monitor the backup progress when one happens.