Terminal - Move Backupsdb to another disk

[MrCheeto]

I have several TM backups on different disks. I'll call my backups MB1 and MB2.

I want to be able to consolidate MB1 and MB2 onto the same PARTITION. MB1 has enough space for MB2 to fit, but they have their own Backupsdb folders. I've learned that if you copy a TM folder, it copies linked files instead of just copying the links. That means that my 20GB backup became about 210GB while copying before I got a disk space error!

Is there any way to get my MB2 backupsdb dragged over to the same partition as MB1 backupsdb while preserving file links, rather than it copying all of the linked files for every link that exists?

 

[mfram]

I don't think you'll find a way to do it with dragging and dropping. That would require using Terminal (Unix shell) to do that. Unless someone has written an app that could do it. How familiar are you with the Unix shell?

Assuming both partitions are mounted, I would use rsync which has the capability to move hard linked files. It's going to take some experimenting, but I think the command needed should be something like:

rsync -avEH /Volumes/MB2/backupsdb/ /Volumes/MB1/backupsdb/

I'm assuming the directory names under the backupsdb directories on the two different partitions are different. Do not do this if the directory names under backupsdb are the same between the partitions. If they are, then what were you envisioning to the final setup?

 

[MrCheeto]

the final setup would be two db folders in the same directory. I don't plan to use them any further, but I want them backed up. I'll try rsync exactly the way you have it!