Time Machine: No FAT or exFAT drives, only HFS+ and APFS<article>
<section class="page">
<p>To judge by a recent spate of email, Mac users are using Windows and Unix/Linux compatible drives more than ever. Many people have asked why their external drive appears and is grayed-out in the Time Machine preference pane’s excluded list. (Open the Time Machine preference pane and click Options to see that list.)</p><p>That’s because the drive isn’t formatted in a way that Time Machine can back up files from. While I’ve covered this in previous columns, it’s worth a quick refresher, given how many people are apparently currently dealing with this.</p><ul>
<li>
<p>Time Machine volumes must be HFS+ formatted, listed in Disk Utility as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/3436937/time-machine-no-fat-or-exfat-drives-only-hfs-and-apfs.html#jump">To read this article in full, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
Source:
Time Machine: No FAT or exFAT drives, only HFS+ and APFS
