It took Apple a few geezerhood postdate its initial rollout of the Apple Filing System ( APFS ) in macOS 10.13 High Sierra to suppurate the format enough to allow Time Machine to back single file up to APFS - formatted campaign . Previously , only the now - Graeco-Roman HFS+ filesystem worked ; it still does .
Apple create a new sort of APFS division eccentric , or “ role ” in APFS parlance , called “ Backup , ” just enough . However , because a special partitioning is involved , you ca n’t just copy a Time Machine relief from one APFS drive to another as you could from one HFS+ mass to another . ( You definitely ca n’t replicate from HFS+ to APFS or APFS to HFS+ ! )
What do you do if you want to transmigrate off an older Time Machine drive that ’s initialise as APFS and has historic archives you need to keep onto a Modern effort ? You have some choice , none fantastic :
Will Apple ever make it possible to clone Time Machine backups from APFS drives or copy snapshot ? The odds seem poor so far , as Apple has had spate of clock time to update Disk Utility or command - contrast utilities and allow for item to third - company developer and has opted not to . However , Bombich Software ’s Carbon Copy Cloner , apps by developer and filesystem guruHoward Oakley , and package from other developers would be poised to add Time Machine fill-in copying capability if Apple released necessary documentation or creature .
This Mac 911 clause is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Praveen .
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