In order to access an external hard drive via USB, does it have to be independently powered?  I'm finding that a USB connected Crucial X9 4TB is not found by the BE65 when scanning for devices.

[EDIT] It seems that the SSD does NOT need to be independently powered but must be formatted as ExFAT in order for it to be recognised as a USB device by the BE65.  This seems odd as the BE65 boasts native support for Apple Time Machine, which is recommended to use APFS (or APFS Encrypted) format disks.

Can anyone confirm that that BE65 really cannot connect to APFS formatted external disks?