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Time Machine "exclude these items..": external hfs+ hard disk greyed out

Hi there,


Big Sur, Time Machine is working fine backing up the internal Macintosh HD to a newly formatted APFS external hard drive.


But I have an additional external USB 'data' drive that I want to include in the Time Machine backup.


In System Preferences->Time Machine, when I click options to remove it from the "Exclude these items from backup" list, it is grey.


The external 'data' hard drive is HFS+ formatted.


I understand to an extent that there's big changes in how Time Machine backs up in Big Sur.


I suspect TM will no longer backup HFS+ volumes. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?


Many thanks in advance.

iMac 27″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 8, 2021 10:32 AM

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Posted on Apr 16, 2021 2:03 AM

The problem was, the drive had been formatted / partition mapped as Master Boot Record, instead of GUID Partition Map.


I copied the data to another hard drive, repartitioned / reformatted it as GUID / Mac OS Extended (Journaled), before moving the data back on the drive. Time Machine was then happy to back it up.


Sincere thanks for the replies.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 16, 2021 2:03 AM in response to MT2020

The problem was, the drive had been formatted / partition mapped as Master Boot Record, instead of GUID Partition Map.


I copied the data to another hard drive, repartitioned / reformatted it as GUID / Mac OS Extended (Journaled), before moving the data back on the drive. Time Machine was then happy to back it up.


Sincere thanks for the replies.

Apr 8, 2021 11:19 AM in response to MT2020

MT2020 wrote:

I suspect TM will no longer backup HFS+ volumes. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?

No. I have several external SSDs formatted as OS X Extended (journaled) that get backed up to my Time Machine. However, the TM drive is a standard rotational HD formatted OS X Extended (journaled). I don't know if the rules change if the TM drive is an SSD drive formatted APFS.


Apr 9, 2021 3:02 AM in response to Old Toad

I just ran a quick test:


I have an SSD that's formatted as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended, Journaled), GUID partition map. This allows me to remove it from the "Exclude these items..." list, and TM will back it up.


I suspect the problematic hard drive is using a different partition map, e.g., Master Book Record, which is why TM won't back it up.


The problematic hard drive is at a different location so, I'll check it in the coming days and report back.


Many thanks for your responses.

Time Machine "exclude these items..": external hfs+ hard disk greyed out

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