Best way to transfer from hard drive to MacBook?

[rsherid]

I've been backing up my iMac with Time Machine to an external hard drive. To make a backup of that backup, I want to copy the backup folders on external HD to to my MacBook. But when I've done it in the past and tried to open old files, they have a lock on them, or permissions, that prevented me from accessing the file.

My question is is there a setting I need to look at so in two years, for example, I can access these backup files on my MacBook and open them no problem? Thanks.

 

[Fishrrman]

A suggestion:

Since you already have a TM backup, make your "second backup" a bootable cloned backup using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Both are FREE to download and use for 30 days, doing this will COST YOU NOTHING.

Both CCC and SD will create a backup that is "an exact copy" of your internal drive.
That means you can mount it in the finder (just like any other drive), and view and copy files from it, as you would with any other regular drive.

Give it a try.
Once you try it, you'll understand IMMEDIATELY what it's all about.
If you don't like it, just erase the drive and try something else...

 

[rsherid]

Ok, so I got my drive cloned using SuperDuper. Thanks for the recommendation.

To do so, I had to erase that drive with its Time Machine backup and format as "APFS" to get a clone on it. Now I want Time Machine back to also backup to the same drive, but it's no longer an option in the "Select Backup Disk" menu. How can I have Time Machine + SuperDuper backup to the same drive? Is that possible or do I need a separate drive entirely for Time Machine? Did I not partition it correctly? Thanks.

 

[Fishrrman]

You probably don't want tm and a cloned backup on the same drive.
It's possible to partition a drive and do that, but again, I'd suggest not doing it.

Have one drive as a tm backup.
Have ANOTHER drive as a bootable cloned backup.

Things will just go better that way.