Moving Time Machine Data to another drive, not possible with Sonoma

[Jay Tee]

I recently purchased an OWC Elektron Pro (1TB) to replace my Sandisk (500GB) for Time Machine backups. However, AppleCare+ informed me that migrating the TM data from the old drive to the new one is no longer supported. They recommend using the new drive to extend TM backups further, in conjunction to the original drive.

While manually transferring the backups is possible, it may cause issues with Time Machine's integrity and could fail silently. It's a recent change that occured in one of the Sonoma releases, apparently.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Yes - moving backups is no longer supported... I thought since Ventura, but definitely not with Sonoma. Start over - save the old backup disk if you need the history, or erase it if you don't.

Also - I personally recommend a backup drive at a minimum 3x the size of the data being backed up. More is fine. 1TB would only be useful on a 256GB computer with no external disks.

 

[VitoBotta]

Why is it not possible? Is it because TM uses hardlinks?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Why is it not possible? Is it because TM uses hardlinks?

Not sure - I think is when Time Machine disks went to APFS.

APFS Time Machine disks are essentially read-only by the user; only the system can write to them.

 

[Shirasaki]

Moving TM backup was never supported long before sonoma came along. How I know this? Well, I tried to move my old TM backup to a new drive but simply couldn’t make it work. I resort to use third party disk backup software to help preserving old backup but the portability of TM backup does not exist.

And that’s why I then have my eyes on CCC. Sadly it only supports backing up to the latest state by default and only APFS supports snapshots for version control purpose. But at least if the original drive is broken, the backup can be transferred to a new drive.

Time Machine giving zero regards to drive failure is why I stop using it altogether. Otherwise the version control and cool interface was amazing.

 

[gilby101]

Is it because TM uses hardlinks?

TM no longer uses hard links. Moving TM has never been supported.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

TM no longer uses hard links. Moving TM has never been supported.

Moving TM was supported, there was an official Apple KBase article about it. I followed the steps a few years ago, with good results. But that was when the disk was “Mac OS Journaled” format.

 

[platinumaqua]

have you tried cloning the disk to the new drive?

 

[gilby101]

have you tried cloning the disk to the new drive?

Exactly what cloning are you referring too? Cloning with APFS refers to either cloning a volume (e.g. a single TM snapshot), or cloning a file within an APFS volume.

 

[platinumaqua]

Exactly what cloning are you referring too? Cloning with APFS refers to either cloning a volume (e.g. a single TM snapshot), or cloning a file within an APFS volume.

block to block level of copying via dd, CloneZilla (requires another x86 computer), or Disk Utility > Restore