You should see it mounted in the Finder window sidebar below your Time Machine volume.įrom there you can simply drag files to that new volume. The new volume will be created within seconds, and you can close Disk Utility. You'll be presented with format and size options. On the right side of Disk Utility above the graphs, you'll see a Volume +. Select your external drive in the list.Ĥ.

Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.ģ. Connect your external drive connected so that you can see it in a Finder window sidebar.Ģ. However, they’re more prone to fail and also more susceptible to damage from bumps and drops. Because they rely on cheaper, mechanical hard disk drives, they also offer high capacities. Here's the steps I did to create the new volume:ġ. External Hard Disk Drives (HDD) The cheapest option is to purchase a standard USB external hard disk drive. This volume will contain regular data, and can be used independently of the volume assigned the Backup role.' You can’t access the Time Machine volume directly through the Finder and store other kinds of data on it, but Apple states you can add a volume in the same container. The Time Machine backup, however, takes place to a single volume in that container. MAC OS natively support HFS+ format which is not supported by Windows OS. Apple notes in its Big Sur guide on a page describing the kinds of disk formats supported with Time Machine that the backup requires the whole “disk.” This appears to be an error: Apple really means that the disk can only have a single container, which occupies the entire disk. Answer (1 of 4): Macbooks do support External Hard disks,the problem is that MAC OS only support NTFS file format in Read-only mode and most of the External Hard Disks are formatted in NTFS format. 'You can share the Time Machine container with volumes that aren’t being used for backups.

What's needed is to add a volume via Disk Utility to your external drive so that you can use it for non-Time Machine files too.

External hard disk macbook air