Sd tm apfs sxs

[corby]

Hello,

Any recommendations on backing up using Time Machine and SuperDuper side by side (SXS) on the same disk and using APFS for the SuperDuper backup?

[I have two separate drives and rotate one offsite weekly, in addition to continuous cloud backup for important work]

In the past, I always used one HFS drive for both TM and SD and it worked out just fine.

I read Practice Makes Perfect (https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/comments/practices_make_perfect_backups/), but didn't really see an answer there, other than "don't be a Goofus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goofus_and_Gallant)".

From near as I can tell, the options are to stay with one giant HFS volume (ie, not use APFS) or split the drive into two partitions: one for TM on HFS and the other for SD on APFS.

Thoughts?

[dnanian]

You indeed have to partition the drive into two physical volumes, one for HFS+ (Time Machine requires HFS+) and then a second one for the container that has the APFS volumes. You do this with Disk Utility as you'd expect - you can't store an HFS+ volume in an APFS container, but they can exist side-by-side without trouble.

My general advice, as you know, is to

[corby]

My general advice, as you know, is to

Uh oh.....sentence not finished.

I think you were going to advise separate drives.

Many years ago, you had said using TM and SD can easily co-exist on the same drive.

I took that to mean it was a reasonable practice. Did I misunderstand or maybe that advice is out of date? (that was probably at least 5 years ago).

Thanks

[dnanian]

Don't know what happened there!

My general advice is to have hardware redundancy, so two separate drives. But you can do as I said, with partitions.