MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 129Mac 911
Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems.
BY GLENN FLEISHMANHELPDESK
Answering your questions and sharing your
tips about getting the most from your MacIMAGE: APPLETIME MACHINE: NO FAT OR
EXFAT DRIVES, ONLY HFS+
AND APFS
To judge by a recent spate of email, Mac
users are using Windows and Unix/Linux
compatible drives more than ever. Many
people have asked why their external
drive appears and is grayed-out in the
Time Machine preference pane’s excluded
list. (Open the Time Machine preference
pane and click Options to see that list.)That’s because the drive isn’t formatted
in a way that Time Machine can back up
files from. While I’ve covered this in
previous columns, it’s worth a quick
refresher, given how many people are
apparently currently dealing with this.
> Time Machine volumes must be
HFS+ formatted, listed in Disk Utility as
“Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
> Time Machine can only back up
volumes formatted either as HFS+ or the