Word of caution to anyone using TimeMachine with WD Elements external HDD and running macOS Big Sur - I have lost two separate 2TB drives in the last 6 months due to Big Sur not ejecting HDDs properly, failing to spin down or power cycle them and causing sector read/write issues. Running TimeMachine with encryption enabled appears to makes this problem worse with this particular drive.
No issues with WD Passport HDD on another machine and would recommend that, if possible.
Luckily noticed each approaching failure immediately with a report from DriveDx and averted a bigger problem. I rotate Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) clones weekly to other drives and just keep TimeMachine for daily/hourly snapshots. May just switch to CCC for everything between multiple drives soon. TimeMachine has become an unreliable mess with past few OS releases.
No issues with WD Passport HDD on another machine and would recommend that, if possible.
Luckily noticed each approaching failure immediately with a report from DriveDx and averted a bigger problem. I rotate Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) clones weekly to other drives and just keep TimeMachine for daily/hourly snapshots. May just switch to CCC for everything between multiple drives soon. TimeMachine has become an unreliable mess with past few OS releases.