Will I still be able to use time machine and super duper with a non ssd external drive if I upgrade

[Rb_stern]

I have a 2016 Macbook Pro retina with a 500Gb SSD drive, with Sierra, and I have been successfully using s G-tech 4Tb external hard drive to do Time machine and Super Duper backups. It's a non-SSD drive that spins at 7200 rpm.

If I upgrade to High Sierra, with its new file system, can I still use this? Will present and future backups work, and will I still be able to restore from them if I need to?

Someone on the Apple help forum said yes, and some info on the web suggests no. Which is correct?

Thank you,. Richard.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

When I upgraded to High Sierra, All my external drives continued to work as before, both SSD and non-SSD drives no problems at all.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Yes, it will continue to work. The file system is only converted on the macOS drive if it is supported. It will not automatically convert external drives, you would have to do that manually.

C

 

[honestone]

Hello and welcome.

Yes, it will continue to work. The file system is only converted on the macOS drive if it is supported. It will not automatically convert external drives, you would have to do that manually.

C

Cory is correct. Myself, I have two external enclosures, and each of them contains a Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig SSD. Both of them have 3 partitions. Two of the partitions are for my SuperDuper! backups for each of my Macs. For my Mac Mini and its backup partitions, I did reformat both of them as APFS via Disk Utility in High Sierra, but not the Mac Book Air backup partition. It is still formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Regarding what Cory stated, "The file system is only converted on the macOS drive if it is supported", the SSD inside my mid 2017 Mac Book Air was installed by Apple, and as expected, High Sierra did convert it to APFS. For my late 2012 Mac Mini, though, I had previously installed a Samsung 840 Pro 256 gig SSD inside it, and apparently it is supported for the conversion, as High Sierra also formatted it as APFS. Not sure which SSDs are not supported, though.