More Issues with Time Machine

[honestone]

I saw this yesterday:

https://www.macworld.com/article/32...g-time-machine-adoption-for-a-drive-swap.html

Was rather surprised to read that APFS-formatted drives/partitions do not support Time Machine backups. One would think Apple would have got that resolved once they released High Sierra, especially with the way they have been talking about APFS. I know that Shirt Pocket Software (they make SuperDuper!) and Bombich Software (they make Carbon Copy Cloner) needed to put a good amount of effort into insuring that their software would work with High Sierra and APFS.

Even beyond this APFS shortcoming, it's hard for me to understand why one needs to be careful with Time Machine backups and another Mac. I myself recently purchased a new mid 2017 13" MacBook Air with a 252 gig SSD, and I had no issues at all with "migrating"/copying all my needed stuff from the prior SuperDuper! backup I had completed with my prior 13" MacBook Air (I'm also aware of another individual that had a similar situation, and he was able to "migrate"/copy stuff from his prior Carbon Copy Cloner backup without a hitch).

 

[bladerunner714]

Golly Gee, honestone! I feel an instinctive, non-specific desire to stay current with my OS s/w but … the more of this kind of stuff I see, the less ambition I have to sate that desire. In fact it seems the wiser choice to stay with Sierra.

 

[honestone]

I understand your concerns, bladerunner714. But it is so, so perplexing that this issue is with Apple's own product, Time Machine, along with their APFS design. As I mentioned, SuperDuper! (and I assume Carbon Copy Cloner) work fine with APFS formatted drives/partitions. Ironic that Shirt Pocket Software and Bombich Software were able to figure out how to get their products to work with APFS-formatted devices, but Apple can't! Same is true for Micromat, the developers of Tech Tool Pro. Both of my external devices are Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig SSDs, and I have both of them partitioned with 3 partitions. Two of those partitions, formatted a APFS, are for the SuperDuper! backups of each of my Macs. The third partition, formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), is used for storing various files. folders, etc. Each of those bootable backups work flawlessly, although it does take more time than with Sierra to restart either of my Macs from either of them.

If I relied on Time Machine, I would just format those backup partitions as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but things work fine as is. While Shirt Pocket Software was working on the version of SuperDuper! that would work with High Sierra, I did query their main developer as to whether or not there was any speed advantage to having an external device/partition formatted as APFS. He said there was none. So, I'm still uncertain about the "advantages" of APFS.

One final thing, as I have mentioned before, is that except for a minor glitch with Quicken 2007, all my other software (and I have quite a lot of third party products) work fine with High Sierra. In actuality, Quicken 2007 is a 32 bit app, and when Appel comes out with the next OS, it will not work with that new OS. But I also have Quicken 2017, and it is a 64 bit app that works fine.