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Moving TimeMachine Data to New Hard Drive

lugesm

lugesm

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 7, 2007
572
9
If this question has already been answered, I hope someone can point me to the right string.

I have been trying to move my old TimeMachine data to a new, larger hard drive. A very helpful member of another forum suggested I use the Disk Utility "Restore" utility, restoring my TimeMachine data from the old disk to a new disk. For some reason this will not work for me.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
L
 
A few months ago I did exactly the same thing, but unfortunately I can't remember exactly how I did it. It is definitely possible though, but it was a lot more complicated than it should have been. I think I used Carbon Copy Cloner in the end.
 
I've posted this several times, most recently on February 28 in this thread.

Make sure both drives are connected & then launch Disk Utility. Click on one of the drive names in the left column (the main drive icon, not a sub-icon) & click the Restore tab across the top (far right). Then drag the icon of the older/smaller drive to the Source field & the icon of the new drive to the Destination field & click Restore. I found it worked best with Erase Destination checked, which is not a problem with a brand-new drive. When this is done copying & verifying (at least 2-3 hours!), the new drive will have the same name as the old drive.

Then rename the old drive & then open the Time Machine preferences & make sure it knows to use the new drive.
 
PeggyD said:
I've posted this several times, most recently on February 28 in this thread.

Make sure both drives are connected & then launch Disk Utility. Click on one of the drive names in the left column (the main drive icon, not a sub-icon) & click the Restore tab across the top (far right). Then drag the icon of the older/smaller drive to the Source field & the icon of the new drive to the Destination field & click Restore. I found it worked best with Erase Destination checked, which is not a problem with a brand-new drive. When this is done copying & verifying (at least 2-3 hours!), the new drive will have the same name as the old drive.

Then rename the old drive & then open the Time Machine preferences & make sure it knows to use the new drive.
Click to expand...

Peggy -

I did exactly that. Tried it several times. It appears to start correctly; then after a few seconds I get a dialog box that states this operation "not permitted" . . . no explanation.
Just frustrates me.

I must be leaving out some step that no one has bothered to mention, possibly because it was too obvious to document.
 

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Check the partitioning scheme

I had this same problem when I tried to use an external hard drive that was formatted with an MBR partitioning scheme (standard). What I had to do was go to the options of the drive and select GUID Partition Table. The erase and restore method should work after that.
 
jahala said:
I had this same problem when I tried to use an external hard drive that was formatted with an MBR partitioning scheme (standard). What I had to do was go to the options of the drive and select GUID Partition Table. The erase and restore method should work after that.
Click to expand...

Could you provide more detail? Where do you find the MBR and GUID options? I see nothing like that in Disk Utility.

Thanks !
 
I don't have a mac anymore so I will have to answer this from memory. When you are in the partitioning screen of Disk Utility, there is an options button at the bottom of the dialog box. If you click that button, you will get the partition scheme options. I think it says options. If not, it may be something like advanced.
 
Use SuperDuper! to do a complete copy of the Time Machine disk from its initial drive to a second drive. I did this and it worked perfectly, and easily. It's just slow -- it took about four hours to copy a 30 GB Time Machine folder.
 
jahala said:
I don't have a mac anymore so I will have to answer this from memory. When you are in the partitioning screen of Disk Utility, there is an options button at the bottom of the dialog box. If you click that button, you will get the partition scheme options. I think it says options. If not, it may be something like advanced.
Click to expand...

I found it based on your instructions. Thanks.

Unfortunately, it still does not work for me. I continue to get the persistent "not permitted" box. I give up on this one.

I might try SuperDuper as an experiment.
 
DaveF said:
Use SuperDuper! to do a complete copy of the Time Machine disk from its initial drive to a second drive. I did this and it worked perfectly, and easily. It's just slow -- it took about four hours to copy a 30 GB Time Machine folder.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Dave.

I'll download SuperDuper and give it a try.
 
Well, I tried SuperDuper as a tool to move the TimeMachine data from a small drive to a larger one. It, too, failed during the process; so I give up.

By the way, SuperDuper does an excellent job of creating a bootable backup on a clean external hard drive. It even preserves all of the functionality of Fusion/WinXP running under Leopard 10.5.2.
 
Unmount the volume before trying to image it.

lugesm said:
Just tried it again. Same result.

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=106677&stc=1&d=1204845065

This is such an obvious thing that users will need. I wonder if Apple has ever published anything on the subject.
Click to expand...

You have to unmount the volume otherwise it will always show as busy. I got the same issues and I solved it by un-mounting the volume. Disk Utility's error message should probably suggest that but anyways, that is the answer.

A
 
I just moved my Time Machine info from an external drive (500GB) to a partition on a Drobo (1TB) using SuperDuper. It worked just fine ... but it took 14 hours to complete. My Time Machine info was about 400GB in size.
 
Unless you really, REALLY need to have multiple versions of how your system was back several months into the past I would say just start your new backup on your fresh, new HD. If you truly do see a need for year-old files...then just hang on to the current TM external and plug it in whenever you might need some files from it (which I'm guessing will almost never happen.)

In my methodology, I see no need to go back in time to recover something I had months ago...I just use TM as my back up for my current HD state in case of internal HD failure.

I do however, see that some people may wish to have this ability, but I am guessing the need arises very infrequently for most standard users.
 
Adam0306 said:
What would be wrong with just dragging the folder from the old drive to the next and then just point TM to the new drive? Or would this do a new full backup?
Click to expand...

The next backup would be a full 'original' one as TM wouldn't recognize the old data. Yet, this is an option I suppose, if the OP wants to keep the data available on the drive...although that old info will not be accesible through TM, just Finder.
 
In order to move your Time Machine database to another disk drive you need to make a block copy (an exact copy of the data on the original drive). In order to do this, the target disk drive needs to have larger capacity than the original.

If, like me (and I suspect others here), you want to rationalise your drive use and transfer your Time Machine database to a smaller drive (or to one with exactly the same capacity), then none of the solutions given here will work. You'll be presented with any of a number of error messages which don't explain what's going wrong.
 
So just use CCC or SD to make a clone...

But for most they probably will never need files from years ago so this might be the easiest option, just make sure the new BU is working before you reformat the old one, if you plan to use it for something else.
 
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