I am trying to move previous Time Machine back ups off an external drive to my new Time Capsule. How do I do that?

I have my previous time machine back ups on an external drive and I want to move those to my new 2tb Time Capsule. How can I make this happen?

You probably cannot do it..
The backup is very different from a local drive to a network drive.
Look through the Pondini KB.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
You can move the backup from a local to another local disk or network to another network.. but there are issues even doing that.
IMHO.. don't... just start a new backup and keep what you already have saved up.. if you don't need it in 6months time.. or a year.. then you can wipe it.

Similar Messages

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    I have thousands of photos on my Mac.  If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos.  I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week.  Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?

    tgs6164 wrote:
    I have thousands of photos on my Mac.  If something happens to my Mac obviously, I don't want to lose the photos.  I do Time Machine back ups to an external hard drive once a week.  Is this good enough to make sure my pictures don't get lost?
    Purchase a couple of these when they go on sale.
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    At least you'll have all your photos if your computer, time machine or any other backup you use goes bonkers.

  • HT201250 Time Machine cannot find my external back-up drive when I click on the "select disk" button.  No drive is found. I have run a Time Machine back-up to this external drive in the past.  I'm on the latest version of Snow Leopard.  Thank you!

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  • Best way to transfer time machine back up files between external drives

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  • Time machine back up to shared external drive

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  • Merge 2 time machine back ups on 1 back up drive?

    I was running low on space on the USB drive I use to back up my Air, OS 10.6.5 with TIme Machine, and I had a new USB drive handy, so I just used the new drive.  Now I have 2 USB drives and each has a time machine back up file, "Backups.backupdb"
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    Funny you should mention... it was Pondini's TM FAQs that sent me here
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  • How do I delete Time-Machine back-ups on external HD

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    peiper1 wrote:
    ....... the suggestion to enter the TM "Star Wars" display only applies to back-ups residing on my internal SSD, right? ...
    No.
    peiper1 wrote:
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878
    peiper1 wrote:
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    Follow Pondinis Instructions for Deleting Backups on the TM external Drive.

  • By adding an external hd to time capsule does it increase the size of available space for time machine back-ups?

    By adding an external hd to time capsule does it increase the size of available space for time machine back-ups?

    No, each drive is treated separately. Sorry!!

  • Will existing Time Machine back ups build after 1 account migration

    I have one i-Mac happily backing up with Time Machine to an external hard drive.
    I have just bought a second i-mac (the old one's filling up) and propose to use migration assistant to move an admin account from the old to the new i-mac leaving two other accounts (and their files etc) on the old one. I see from some posts that it seems as if Time Machine will start a new back up series for the new i-mac's back ups (cos its a new MAC address). But what about the old i-mac? Will that continue to extend the existing (old) Time Machine back up files, albeit without my transferred account and its files? I'd like to end up with the old i-mac continuing to work with and build its Time Machine back ups (less my account and its new files) and have a new back up series from the new i-mac building to a separate partition on the external drive.
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    Sorry but I can't see an answer in the forum to what must be a reasonably common issue in this expanding mac world.

    I then tried to move it (TM back up files) off with Restore, whilst preserving the TM back ups but I couldn't seem to do it to the i-Macs hard drive nor to partition that to allow this to happen (assuming the lack of a discrete partition was the problem).
    That's likely correct. This only works if you restore one entire partition to another, and check the +Erase destination+ box.
    The problem was that I could not (maybe for the same contiguous reasons) create a new partition on the old i-Mac just to temporarily move the TM back up to. Without it I could not 'empty' the WDC firewire drive and partition it prior to returning the TM back ups to it albeit contiguously in a dedicated partition.
    Unfortunately for me to retain the TM back ups for the account I moved to the new i-Mac, I will have to leave that account on the old i-Mac as well. I can't see a way around that? If I delete the account on it then surely I will lose the ability to Log onto it and then to click TM and see back in time on that account?
    If I understand you correctly, that will be true eventually, but not immediately, as TM will, eventually, delete it's copies of anything that's no longer on your internal HD. That will depend, of course, on how long TM can keep it's backups. But while they're still there, if you log on with Admin privileges, you should be able to view the old backups.
    Not sure I explained myself clearly. Sorry. Having understood from your earlier help that 'migrate' actually means 'make a copy in another place', I have the migrated account in two places: one now dormant, on the old i-Mac and two, where it is migrated to (the new i-Mac). But TM continues to back up all accounts, indeed everything, on the old i-Mac by dint of its MAC address. So to see the migrated account's past history I assume I have to access the version on the old i-Mac. To put it another way, when logged into one account on the old i-Mac I believe it is not possible to see the TM history and files of another account on that i-Mac despite TM backing the entire HD. You have to be logged in to that account to see it. On the new i-Mac, with its different MAC address, TM is busy creating the first TM back up and I assumed that in the migrate it did not bring TM history as I had read that it is MAC address specific.
    The only issue (apart from having this account's history spread over two machines (pre-today on the old i-Mac's TM and today onwards on the new i-Mac) is that I have all the files on both machines. I am not worried about security only unnecessary usage of disk space. It isn't critical, there's lots of it, but it just seems wasteful and untidy. Unless you guys know otherwise?
    If I understand what you've done, you do have duplicates of the current contents, but only one copy of the old backups (on the old F/W drive).
    On the old i-Mac I have the two accounts I wanted to stay there plus the now dormant account I migrated. TM continues to work away at memorising ALL these although there will be no further changes to the dormant migrated account as I will not be running it on the old i-Mac. On the new i-Mac I have the migrated account of which TM is now creating its first (huge) back up but starting today. There is no history here. So I have copies of everything; its just that the old history of the migrated account remains on the old i-Mac and a new history (does that make sense?) is building from the new one. My point was that if I were to delete the dormant account from the old i-Mac, then I could not access it to use TM with it. I believe TM only shows the history of the account and screen you're in at the time?
    There is an option in TM that will allow you to selectively +Delete all backups of+ selected items. +Enter Time Machine,+ locate and select the item(s), click the "gear" icon in the Finder window's toolbar, and select the +Delete all backups of ..+ option.
    What you can't do is, keep the backups of only previous versions of things that were changed or deleted. It's all or nothing.
    Not sure I understand this. What would have been nice but I do not think is possible is to have moved the account to the new i-Mac together with the TM's back ups of that account and continue to build it up (whilst having access to its history) on the new i-Mac. If that were (is?) possible I could have totally deleted the old account and with it its files from the old i-Mac, freed up some HD space and had a full AND growing TM history all on the new i-Mac.
    Many thanks for staying the course and for your continuing help.

  • Time machine back ups missing

    My time machine back ups fail because it says the disc does not have enough room.
    It was working fine.
    My back ups are going to an external 1TB hard drive.
    When I open the backups.backupdb folder, there is only one file in the folder now instead of the multiple files I usually see. The single file is only 24K.
    I know the previous backups must be there because the hard drive is nearly full. It appears that it has lost track of the files. I tried removing the back up drive in the Time Machine preferences and reselecting the drive, but since it's nearly full, it will not use it for back ups.
    I have ran disc utility to repair permissions as well as Disc Warrior and TechTool Pro to try & repair the disc, but so far nothing has worked.
    I've also deleted the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file, but that didn't fix it either.

    This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.
    Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
    ls -@Oaen /V*/* | pbcopy
    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
    Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
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    ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
    ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
    Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear below what you entered.
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    If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

  • Can I use my time capsule for time machine back ups and as an external storage device?

    I have a time capsule and have set it up so that my time machine back ups are saved on it, but I would also like to use it as an external hard drive. Is this possible?
    I know nothing about computers so please tell me in very basic terms. thankyou!

    By external hard disk we usually mean one plugged into the computer by USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt.
    None of those works on the TC.. it is plugged in by ethernet or use wireless connection.. that means it is a network drive.. not an external drive. The difference might not mean much to you.. but it is totally different to the computer. In the former case the computer has full control of the disk. In the case of the network drive, the disk is controlled by the TC firmware and the files are stored and accessed by network. This has large implications.
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    Store files on the TC.
    This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
    The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
    Major issues.
    1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
    2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
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    The following are controls on the hard disk side.
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    4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
              Even apple btw say don’t do it.
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    5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
    6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
    7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
    Read pondini for some work arounds.
    Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

  • Can I make one iphoto library from two time machine back-ups?

    Hi
    I have recently purchased a new Mac Book. I previously had two MacBooks, which I backed up with time machine onto two separate external hard drives.
    I did a straight transfer of all data from one of these time time machine back-ups to my new laptop. I'd like to migrate select data from the second time machine back-up to my new Mac Book, and I'd like to start by transferring photos.
    My laptop has an iphoto library, so I would like to know if I can import select photos from this second time machine back-up, and how do I do that?
    many thanks
    Linda 

    First you need to restore the second Library from the back up. You need to restore the whole library, you can't just gather bits of it, I'm afraid.
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    Other than that you'll need to export from one Library and import to the other.
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    TD

  • HT204057 Time machine back up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme.

    Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?  It worked very well.

    Why did Apple stop supporting time machine back-up via USB hard drive connected to Airport Extreme?
    Time Machine backups are supported via USB hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme"ac" version.
    Time Machine backups were not supported via USB hard drive connected to earlier versions of the AirPort Extreme.
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    See the topic about Time Machine support for USB disks in this Apple Support document:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5924?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

  • Can i resume a Time Machine backup of an attached external drive (no system, just data) on a different laptop?

    I am trying to find out if I can use a Time Machine (specifically on a 2013 Time Capsule) backup of an external drive (only data, no system) attached to a laptop, and then connect that same external drive to another laptop and resume the backup? Or is the Time Machine backup of an attached external drive a laptop "dependant" backup?
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    You are welcome.
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