Can I clone a Time Capsule drive and increase backup volume using external USB drive?

[Daber]

Hi All-

I've been scouring the net and cant seem to find an answer. Hopefully someone here can help.

I have a time Capsule that is nearly filled. It is giving me error messages each night it tries to backup saying that there is too much on my computer to backup.

So, I went out and bought a 4TB Western Digital external drive. I want to copy all the data from the time capsule onto the new hard drive (so I dont loose any of my older backups) and then have the time capsule use that same WD drive as my new backup.

I have seen there are ways to copy from time machine drives to new drives, but I was under the impression time machine uses a different kind of backup method than a time capsule. Is that true? Can someone point me to a place that explains how exactly I would copy the drive in the time capsule... (I understand I need to use Disk Util, but I cant get the TC drive to show up in that program)...

Also, is there a way to instruct time capsule to stop using its own internal drive and use the drive connected to its USB for the backups? I think Apple's answer is no, but I dont know if thats really the case or not...

Thanks much-

Daber

 

[JediMeister]

Here's how to archive the Time Machine backups to a drive hooked into the Time Capsule. You can tell Time Machine to backup to the AirPort Disk going forward; just access your Time Machine preferences on your Mac via System Preferences, click Select Disk, and point it at the name of your Airport Disk rather than the name of the drive on the Time Capsule. If you want to format/erase the Time Capsule's internal drive after the archive, access the Disks tab in AirPort Utility, and with the Time Capsule drive selected, click Erase.

 

[Daber]

Thanks for the reply, Jedi...

Although isnt that just for ARCHIVING the time capsule onto an attached USB drive?

I want to archive it and then continue using that new USB attached drive as the main backup source (in effect, increase the amount of space I have to do backups without losing my earlier data)...

Any idea how to achieve that?

 

[JediMeister]

Yeah, sorry I hadn't actually tried these steps before, but you're correct. Using the tools Apple provides, after you archive to the external hard drive, and set your backup location going forward as the external drive, Time Machine will do a full backup, not an incremental one.