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I have a Windows 11 machine and a Macbook. Each has a storage of 1TB. For backup purposes I plan to use a spare external 2TB drive which I have formatted to EXFAT. I'm assuming this will work? However just setting up Time Machine on the Mac and it's asking whether to encrypt Backup Disk. Does that mean the part of the drive where it backs up to, or the entire drive. Will doing this affect the Windows backup (File History).
Ta.
Never mind. I think I need to rethink this. Just read something about maximum file size for EXFAT being 4gb which will be a problem for big videos, archives etc. Probably best to have two backup drives, one for each. Unless it's possible to split the existing drive in two, NTFS and MacOS?
I wouldn’t try and mix them up on the same drive. Best get one for each system like you say.
Yep, if the back up drive dies then you lose both backups!
Common sense. Thanks.
I believe it would just mean the Time Machine part as OSX/Linux etc doesn't really have the concept of physical drives, it just sees everything as a partition.Does that mean the part of the drive where it backs up to, or the entire drive
But unless you work for GCHQ or something absolutely do not encrypt the backup, only pain lies that way 😃
Thanks.
So I can't get a definite answer to the 4gb size limit thing. Some internet sources saying that limitation only applies to FAT32 not EXFAT, others saying both?
exFAT does not have a 4GB file,size limit, it's up in the pebibytes.
Great, thanks. Pebibytes sounds large.
Unless it’s possible to split the existing drive in two, NTFS and MacOS?
With the caveat that I know nothing about Macs, I'd want to create two separate partitions. I'd create the Windows one first, Windows can be picky about partition order whereas a *nix based OS won't care.
Honestly though, this sounds like an application for a cheap NAS.
Aye, just gonna buy another SSD. this external is the old clockwork wax phonograph type anyway so pretty daft to put all my eggs in that shoddy basket.
You can use ExFAT for the drive, and both machines will see it for read & write access (and no file size limit). So manual backups could work just fine on a drive with a single 2Gb ExFAT partition. However, I think Time Machine insists on AFS and won't use ExFAT drives so that option won't work. The other problem is that Time Machine will be greedy and it'll allow itself to fill up all the space in a given partition, so it could ballon to over its 1Tb allowance (E.g. for backups of old versions of files).
So I would do as has been suggested - make the drive have two partitions and set Mac OS to use an AFS one for Time Machine and Windows can have the other half (NTFS) of the drive. That should work just fine.
However, I think Time Machine insists on AFS and won’t use ExFAT drives so that option won’t work.
Yes. Just found this out. No bother, going to have a dedicated backup drive for each machine going forward.
As a new Mac user I do find the backup solution much better. It just backs up everything, whereas the Windows version - File History, it's just your files, so one would still have to spend days reinstalling programs, adjusting settings, fonts etc etc ad nauseum...
Unless I've been doing it wrong.
Unless I’ve been doing it wrong.
Windows is syncing ever more settings with the cloud automatically, so long as you sign in with an MS account.
That's great if your machine goes online...