Time Machine carbon

[SkinnyMoose]

MacOS Sonoma.
Disk 1 256GB internal NVMe
Disk 2 256GB external GPT APFS Time Machine
Disk 3 256GB external GPT ExFat

How to copy the time machine file from Disk 2 to disk 3?
When I try to copy the backup file, it says I cannot.
Today I erased Disk 2, and created 1 new time machine backup.
I want to copy the 1 time machine file, not the individual files beneath it, I can already do that, and I don't want to copy individual files or folders.
The Mac and 2 disks are new and owned by me, they have not had any other owners or users.
I only want to use Exfat on destination disk 3, I do not want to use any other filesystem, thank you.

 

[gilby101]

How to copy the time machine file from Disk 2 to disk 3?

What do you mean by "the Time Machine file"?

You might mean everything on the volume (all the snapshots), one snapshot, or something within a snapshot.

You should be able, with Finder, to drag-n-drop top level folders within a snapshot to any disk. You will lose permissions and other stuff, of course, when copying to an exFAT disk.

We might be able to assist better if you were to say why you want to do this.

 

[SkinnyMoose]

Today I erased Disk 2, and created 1 new time machine backup.
"What do you mean by "the Time Machine file"?"
The disk root shows 1 green file, I was clear in my post I can already copy individual files, but I have no interest in doing that here. I want to copy the 1 green file in the root, thank you.

 

[gilby101]

I want to copy the 1 green file in the root, thank you.

If I understand you correctly, you mean the thing with the greenish disk icon with a TM symbol within it. Like this (pictures save many words):

In that case, you can't. Even if these is only 1 backup.

It is an APFS volume with potentially many snapshots (one for each backup you have made). You can only copy the contents of individual snapshots.

You don't need to copy individual files, but you can copy folders and all their contents (including subfolders) in one drag-n-drop.

I hope you do understand that a copied TM backup is only useful for accessing individual files and folders. It can't be used to recover a whole system.

Until you explain why you want to do this copy, I don't think I can help you further.

 

[meson]

Just because your Mac can read/write to both APFS and ExFat filesystems does not mean that every file produced by every application on a Mac is compatible with both file systems. As mentioned, Time Machine requires a journaled filesystem like APFS. It will not work with ExFat, even as an archive.

If what you want is to have a backup of critical files with revisions similar to what Time Machine does, but on an ExFat drive so that you can access them on a PC in the future, then maybe an application like Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) may work for you. While CCC won't make a full bootable Mac system on an ExFat drive, it will back up files, keep revisions, etc. Something like this or a similar third party app may be what you are after.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

And if #5 is not the goal (and ExFAT) is not important, the better option is to simply let TM reformat Disk 3 and then do a full backup to it too. TM will easily backup to MANY external TM discs if you had a reason to want many... and there is a very good reason to have AT LEAST TWO: so that one can be stored offsite to protect against fire/flood/theft scenarios that could take out both Mac and backup stored at the same location, which then also means regularly rotating #2 with #3 to keep the offsite one pretty up to date (for an effective worst-case recovery scenario).

In short, you can let TM do the proper job of backing everything up TWICE... just not on ExFAT.

Bonus: if you leave both connected for a while, TM will start alternating backups on the hour between 2 drives. I essentially use a 3-drive strategy: 2 HDDs like you plus a Synology NAS... and my TM backups are alternating between the Synology and the local HDD (the other HDD recently TM-backed up and stored offsite, ready to swap with the local HDD about every 30 days).

If the goal is getting Mac Files on ExFAT drive for access by a PC too, use other tools for that. A good one that I really like is Choronsync, which can make it easy to copy only what you would like to copy to that ExFAT drive.

Lastly, if the goal is to have backups exactly as you want- one on APFS and another on ExFAT, you probably need to choose an option other than TM.