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What's the right way to set up a new backup or replacement drive?
Note: Apple has produced an article that goes into detail about how to do this with recent OS versions. You'll find the article here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496 A lot of people have been confused about how to format their backup drive as APFS (YES, you can format regular drives as APFS), and are confused about how to get an HFS+ volume on the same drive as an APFS volume. The new Disk Utility has some nice features, but they've buried a bunch of stuff in the UI. Here's how to do both. Format the Whole Drive as APFS
Add an APFS partition to an existing drive
Add a new APFS volume to an existing APFS container
For older OS versions (pre-10.11), the following should help beyond what Apple has provided. It's very important to properly initialize a drive if you want to be able to use it as a startup drive - whether it's a new backup drive or a new internal drive. Most drives come set up for Windows, and while they'll generally work with the Mac, they won't work properly as startup drives. A "partition scheme" is the low-level on-drive stricture that is used by the OS to find the "volumes" (the "drives" that appear in Finder*a physical disk can have one or more) on a physical disk. There are three different "partition schemes" that can be used on the Mac:
So, here's what you should do with a new drive. Note: partitioning normally erases a drive. If you have a drive that's using the wrong partition scheme, iPartition, from Coriolis Systems, can change the partition scheme without deleting the data, and can also repartition drives with data in place.
That's all there is to it! |
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