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How do I change to a new external HD with Time Machine without losing anything?

T

TortoiseAvenger

macrumors newbie
Original poster
😕 Ok, maybe I'm an idiot... but this isn't obvious to me and it seems like a simple matter. I started using time machine on a given drive. I want to upgrade the drive I'm using. How do I start using a larger, new hard drive without losing information on the old HD? I have read that if you keep both connected, time machine will leave the old files alone on the old HD, but I would rather move everything over to the new, larger HD so that I could remove the old HD from the machine completely, as if I had used the larger HD all along. How do I do this?

Thanks,

Tortoise
 
Sorry I couldn't find this out either. I replaced my 250 Gb drive with a 500 Gb drive but couldn't figure out how to save what was on the 250 .. 😡
 
connect them both to your mac and drag the backup folder from the old one to the new one? Any reason that wouldn't work?
 
I did this, I think with some help from some posts here.

Make sure both drives are connected & then launch Disk Utility. Click on one of the drive names in the left column (the main drive icon, not a sub-icon) & click the Restore tab across the top (far right). Then drag the icon of the older/smaller drive to the Source field & the icon of the new drive to the Destination field & click Restore. I found it worked best with Erase Destination checked, which is not a problem with a brand-new drive. When this is done copying & verifying (at least 2-3 hours!), the new drive will have the same name as the old drive.

Then rename the old drive & then open the Time Machine preferences & make sure it knows to use the new drive.
 
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