Best way to copy a Time Machine drive?

[bollweevil]

I have a Time Machine drive with 1.13 TB of data on it. The backups go all the way back to 2008. I want to move all this backup data to another drive and keep all that history.

Should I use:

Carbon Copy Cloner

Super Duper

Something else?

I have done this successfully 3 times in the past. Each of those times, I followed the instructions from Apple. The Apple instructions can be summarized as follows: In the Finder, drag-and-drop Backups.backupdb from the old external hard drive to the new external hard drive. That worked for me 3 times in the past, but it absolutely will not work now.

I made a total of 5 attempts to do the Apple-style drag-and-drop. On the fifth attempt, I was fairly hopeful. It spent about 30 hours "Preparing to copy" and then about 27 hours "Copying", but then it just stopped, having only copied 1.00 TB of stuff.

So now I think I will try a third-party application. Has anyone successfully used Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to clone a Time Machine drive?

Alternatively, does anyone know how to fix the Apple problem where it copies 1.00 TB of stuff instead of all 1.13 TB? I don't really want to go the Apple route, I have spent a long time trying, and the fact that it takes 57 hours to do 90% of the job is fairly intolerable. Both drives are USB 3.0 and my laptop has USB 3.0, copying 1.13 GB of stuff can be done in about 1 hour, I have seen it.

 

[Garsun]

Sounds like you have more experience with Time Machine than I do.
However I think the carbon copy cloner does a very good job of making disk images.
I have also used superduper when CCC have not been updated for a while several years ago and had no problem with it either.
The largest issue I've had with CCC has been the speed of Copying.
After I received drive capable of over 150 MB per second transfer speeds CCC seemed to bog down.
For my off-site backups I ended up creating large sparse disk images and using OSX to the copy them between drives using thunderbolt for a full replacement and CCC for appending small amounts of additional data when needed.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've never done this, but if I had to, I'd try CarbonCopyCloner first, and use the "block copy" option...

 

[GGJstudios]

I've never done this, but if I had to, I'd try CarbonCopyCloner first, and use the "block copy" option...

I agree. That should work perfectly.

 

[bollweevil]

Does anyone have direct experience using either tool for this purpose?

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ Does anyone have direct experience using either tool for this purpose? ]]

My suggestion:
- Get CarbonCopyCloner
- Use the "block copy option" to clone the TM drive
- See what happens next

If it doesn't work, just re-initialize the target drive and start over...

 

[pastrychef]

You can make an exact clone using the dd command in Terminal. Below are two links that tell you how to do it with more in-depth explanations. It's not as complicated as it may seem and produces bit for bit, block for block exact clones.

http://johnatilano.com/2011/05/21/53270156/

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46253/what-is-the-best-way-to-clone-a-disk-between-two-macs

 

[bollweevil]

I will try Carbon Copy Cloner

I am about to try Carbon Copy Cloner, I hope to report back with my status.

 

[Melodeath]

FWIW, I tried the Apple way of copying Time Machine to a new drive and it also got stuck in "preparing to copy" like you, but then the original TM drive died.