Time Machine Nirvana

It has only taken me forever to find my Time Machine nirvana, but today I finally seem to have found how to make Time Machine race like a cheetah.

Typically, when drives are formatted they’re it is as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), however when you use this on more recent releases of macOS which support Apple File System (APFS) and Time Machine it just doesn’t seem to work as well. In fact, I have found it just sits there in some cases backing up at a glacial pace. Then, I read recently that formatting your Time Machine drive in APFS or APFS (Encrypted) makes a big difference, my Google weren’t they on the money.

I now have a MacBook Pro and a 2018 model Mac Mini that require backing up. The MacBook Pro is using a 2TB standard hard drive, whilst the Mini has a faster 512GB SSD that I recovered from a previous MacBook Pro before selling it. In the past, when backing up to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system backups on the MacBook Pro would take hours to complete, however upon erasing the 2GB and re-formatting to APFS (Encrypted), a 254GB backup this morning only took about 40 minutes I think (rough guess). The Mac Mini, a relatively new purchase, has far less on it at this stage and only required 64GB to back up, completing in roughly 10 minutes.

Bless the APFS, Time Machine is finally usable.