External Drive Spinning in Finder

[Jetheat]

I bought a Toshiba External Drive yesterday for my Macbook Pro.

I connected it and it started to backup everything to this new time machine.

However, the mounted drive shows a spinning icon next to it on the finder window.

Is it supposed to be spinning continuously, or is it just for the initial backup phase?

Its been about 15-20 hours and still spinning.

My MacBook has 1TB HDD and the external drive has 2TB of space.

Any ideas?


JH

 

[0128672]

Looks like it's still backing up. HDDs are slow. What does the Time Machine status show? I find it helpful to add Time Machine to the Finder menu bar to easily see the status.

 

[Jetheat]

I have added it to the sidebar now.
How do I check the status?

 

[0128672]

I have added it to the sidebar now.
How do I check the status?

I had mentioned adding to the menu bar at the top of the finder. That's different than the sidebar. You can do that by going to Preferences > Time Machine and turning on Show Time Machine in menu bar. Once it's up there, tap on it and you'll see whether it's still in progress.

 

[Jetheat]

Ah thanks. Done that now. Its still backing up. About 85% done.
Thanks.

 

[appltech]

And avoid using the APFS file system on HDD, it's slowing down HDD (and "health" as well)

 

[Jetheat]

what would be the alternative, and how do i change it?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

In general, I agree with appltech's suggestion to use HFS+ on a platter-based backup drive instead of APFS.

APFS can overly fragment a platter-based drive, and it can sometimes make the drive "thrash" (heads jumping around over the platters).

HOWEVER...
You didn't tell us WHICH VERSION OF THE OS you're using.
That can make a difference.

I don't use time machine, but I understand that the latest versions of the OS (with OS 12 Monterey, not sure about earlier versions) REQUIRE that a time machine backup be formatted in APFS. Won't work with HFS+ any more.

So... what version of the OS are you using?

 

[Jetheat]

I have Big Sur 11.6.8

 

[Fishrrman]

OP --

REFORMAT the drive.
This time, DO NOT use "Case sensitive".

Reformat it to [just] "APFS" -- and NOTHING more.

 

[Jetheat]

From what I remember, I formatted it to Mac OS Journaled. I don't even remember seeing a APFS option there.
I only see it now.