I have an external drive that I am able to successfully backup files to but I cannot copy and paste a folder to this same external drive. Is it not possible to use a drive for both backup and for storing files? Below are two screen shots showing the drive.
AFAIK that isn’t possible. I’m not familiar with sandisk’s unlocker, but if your TM drive is apfs you can create an additional volume and use that for regular files.
Thanks @WayneG and @r2d2. I’ve never created a separate partition on a drive before but the instructions given in the link above are straightforward. I’ll give that a try. I also may have found, courtesy of @r2d2, a new website for learning a few new geek tips and tricks.
Be careful when you resize partitions that already have data because the operation could cause data loss. Also, I believe if you’re using SSD, then APFS is good. If you were using an external HDD, then you might not want to format as APFS. There was a notice at some point about Time Machine and using HFS+ (but that info may be dated). Here’s a link from 2019 https://www.howtogeek.com/331042/whats-the-difference-between-apfs-macos-extended-hfs-and-exfat/
All I want to do is create a space on this drive so I can copy/paste a large folder/subfolders to it. Based on this drive and if I don’t resize the current partition, am I safe in creating another volume/partition (is there a difference?) on the drive?
The SanDisk Extreme is solid. So you’ll want to use APFS with the SSD. Be sure to understand the difference between a volume and container. Looks like you’ll be ok with using either method for time machine and the second space
Here’s a blog post he wrote in 2019 about an APFS volume vs container.