Bogged down with how to format Lacie USB-C Drive for CCC

Software
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Team, I am running 10.14.2 on my 2017 MBP so obviously I am using the APFS file system. I am looking to upgrade my backup strategy from just using Time Machine to a strategy using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner each to an individual, external hard drive. I purchased another Lacie USB-C drive and realized that the resident backup assistant has an HFS+ formatting option but not an APFS option. I’ve read documents on both CCC’s site and Lacie’s but haven’t come up with solid advice. If anyone has tackled this, I’m very open to suggestions.

Thank you in advance!

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Time Machine should still use HFS+, but for a straight clone, I would opt for APFS.

You can do either in Disk Utility:

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My CCC backups are onto an external USB-C SSD drive. The drive is formatted with APFS and absolutely no issues observed.

And you are correct that Time Machine requires HFS at this time.

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4

Bombich (makers of CCC) recommend HFS+ for spinning drives, and APFS for SSD drives.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/preparing-your-backup-disk-backup-os-x

5

Thank you all for your input. I had previously formatted my spinning drive APFS and learned that it is not simple to get away from that. I was able to change to MAC OS Extended (Journaled) by using Terminal. Intuitively, it feels like the clone should be on the same formatting platform as my MBP SSD but I will stick with this unless CCC produces a different instruction.

Again thank you all for your insight, pointing me in the right direction and finding what i missed!

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