Even if you’re using SSD as a Time Machine drive, it’s not compatible with APFS.

For Time Machine backups, use MacOS Extended (Journaled) if it’s a mechanical hard drive or if you’re using macOS Catalina or earlier.

If you have older Macs (pre–2016), particularly those too old to update to a recent version of macOS, choosing HFS+ will enable you to use your external drive with those machines.

Here are some of the best apps that read-write APFS on Windows.

You can only access drives formatted with APFS on Windows through third-party apps.

If you connect that disk to Catalina, Time Machine won’t recognize it.

Time Machine volumes formatted as APFS will only work with Macs running Big Sur or later.

It’s fast, consumes less space, which means more room for backups, has greater resistance to data corruption, and copies cloned or sparse files efficiently.

Time Machine backups to APFS are impressive when compared to HFS+.

However, you won’t be asked for this option for the already formatted HFS+ disk.

Apple lets you format an external drive and choose APFS for Time Machine on macOS Big Sur.

An external SSD gives you the best performance over APFS, provided you don’t need to use the drive with other pre-Sierra Macs.

If speed and convenience are your top priorities and cost is not an issue.

You can also manage free space on the drives efficiently copy-on-write metadata scheme to improve performance, thereby reducing chances of data corruption and increasing focus on encryption.

It makes common operations such as copying files and folders instantaneous.

The current Apple File System documentation highlights many improvements over HFS+. As of macOS Mojave, fusion drives and HDDs were also upgraded to APFS. In High Sierra, SSD boot drives were converted to APFS upon installation. The experimental support of APFS was first seen in macOS Sierra. APFS is Apple’s modern file system, first launched in early 2017 for iOS devices.

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