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Moving Time Machine to new drive.

J

jpn369

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 10, 2013
10
0
I have tried just copying the data with no luck .
I have tried doing a block transfer using restore in Disk Utility and I get the message "Restore Failure. Could not get volume geometry information - Permission denied"
I notice that when I look at the info for the Time Machine folder it says I only have permission to read.
I have tried to change permissions and apply to all contents but this doesn't seem to make any difference.
I am working on a 2008 Mac Pro, these are all internal drives and the drive I am trying to transfer to is a 2TB partition of a 4TB drive.
Any ideas very welcome.
Thanks.
 
jpn369 said:
I have tried just copying the data with no luck .
I have tried doing a block transfer using restore in Disk Utility and I get the message "Restore Failure. Could not get volume geometry information - Permission denied"
I notice that when I look at the info for the Time Machine folder it says I only have permission to read.
I have tried to change permissions and apply to all contents but this doesn't seem to make any difference.
I am working on a 2008 Mac Pro, these are all internal drives and the drive I am trying to transfer to is a 2TB partition of a 4TB drive.
Any ideas very welcome.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Do this to both drives. Select the drive then hit command-i for the get info window. Now check the box that says ignore ownership permissions on this drive.

Also make sure the target drive is formatted to Mac OS Extended.
 
I have tried get Info and I have no "ignore permissions" checkbox.
 
jpn369 said:
I have tried get Info and I have no "ignore permissions" checkbox.
Click to expand...

You don't see this at the bottom? Are both drives Mac OS Extended?

vCmYpan.png
 
Wait, why move you time machine data? Is your current back up so important? I would just start a fresh TM backup on the new drive. Wait a couple day or a week to make sure you don't need to go back to those dates and wipe the old drive.
 
No checkbox and Mac OS Extended. Can you see anything here that may be a clue?
 

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jpn369 said:
No checkbox and Mac OS Extended. Can you see anything here that may be a clue?
Click to expand...

I see the checkbox there, it is just greyed out. Click the little padlock there and enter your PW to unlock, then you can check the box to ignore permissions.
 
Of course it is there on the Destination drive, I have now checked that one and Disk Utility seems happy transferring now-Thanks!
 
Be interested to know why they say that, maybe I should uncheck it after the transfer.
 
jpn369 said:
I have tried just copying the data with no luck .
I have tried doing a block transfer using restore in Disk Utility and I get the message "Restore Failure. Could not get volume geometry information - Permission denied"
I notice that when I look at the info for the Time Machine folder it says I only have permission to read.
I have tried to change permissions and apply to all contents but this doesn't seem to make any difference.
I am working on a 2008 Mac Pro, these are all internal drives and the drive I am trying to transfer to is a 2TB partition of a 4TB drive.
Any ideas very welcome.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Right click the current/used Time Machine drive, click "Get Info", then the little lock icon in the bottom right of the window. Enter the administrator password. Change your status in the box to the left to "Read & Write". Close that window (Essential for later).

Go to the Time Machine pane in System Preferences, and click on the little lock icon again. Enter the password, and click on "Select Disk". Click on the disk you want to use with Time Machine. Do at least one back up (Very important!!!).

Now to transfer the old back ups.

Open the old TM disk in a Finder window. Open the folder called Backups.backupbd, and then go into the folder with the name of you computer. Open a new Finder window with the new backup disk open. Go into it, then Backups.backupbd. Go back to the other window (with the old back ups). Select all of the folders that you can see, (exclude any that end with .inProgress) and just drag them straight to the new disk. This will take ages, depending on how much data & files you have saved there.

I hope this helps you! If it doesn't work, let me know what's happened.
 
???

Why would you need to do all that ??

The only thing to do to move the Time Machine backup to a new drive is this :

"Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" on the current backup drive to the root level of the new backup drive."

Absolutely nothing more.

(done many times successfully)
 
jpn369 said:
Be interested to know why they say that, maybe I should uncheck it after the transfer.
Click to expand...

It has more to do with restricting access to your files to the owner (you) than how TM works. I suspect if you test it, it would work either way.

You may have trouble because of the other ownership changes you made though.
 
I had tried doing the drop box to change permissions to Read and Write and asked it to apply to all contents as well but it still wouldn't change from Read Only.
In the end I think I had truly screwed up the permissions on my Time Machine folder as after transferring it to the new destination it was saying it wasn't big enough.
I checked the stats and it was telling me the folder contained zero items with a size of around 33TB!
It was at this point that I bit the bullet and started a brand new back up.

Thanks for all the help though good to know there are some people out there happy to help and without condescension.
 
jpn369 said:
I had tried doing the drop box to change permissions to Read and Write and asked it to apply to all contents as well but it still wouldn't change from Read Only.
In the end I think I had truly screwed up the permissions on my Time Machine folder as after transferring it to the new destination it was saying it wasn't big enough.
I checked the stats and it was telling me the folder contained zero items with a size of around 33TB!
It was at this point that I bit the bullet and started a brand new back up.

Thanks for all the help though good to know there are some people out there happy to help and without condescension.
Click to expand...

Wait! Did you try moving everything from the first HD to the second using Terminal? Because maybe moving it in the finder won't move all the hidden files.
Anyway if I'm too late nevermind, I'm not even sure it's gonna work.... :)
 
At the end of the day I had to make a judgement call as to whether I really needed everything in the back up or whether I needed a stable back up going forward.
 
Bruno09 said:
???

Why would you need to do all that ??

The only thing to do to move the Time Machine backup to a new drive is this :

"Drag the folder "Backups.backupdb" on the current backup drive to the root level of the new backup drive."

Absolutely nothing more.

(done many times successfully)
Click to expand...

As the OP said, they don't have the permissions to do the move. It just keeps it all together.
 
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