Time Machine backup stopped and now external HD cannot be mounted

While I was doing a backup on Time Machine, it cancelled itself and said there was a problem with backing up my Macbook Pro. Now, when I go to Finder, I see that my external hard drive isn't mounted. I checked Finder preferences and I already have the option checked to view external hard drives in Finder
I can view the external hard drive in Disk Utility, and I even tried mounting it from there, but it doesn't. I tried verifying and repairing, and Disk Utility says the external hard drive cannot be verified or repaired.
My external hard drive is a WD 1TB My Book Essentials.

chrisasu28 wrote:
I can view the external hard drive in Disk Utility, and I even tried mounting it from there, but it doesn't. I tried verifying and repairing, and Disk Utility says the external hard drive cannot be verified or repaired.
There's a chance a 3rd-party disk repair app, such as DiskWarrior, can fix it, but they're expensive (DW is about $100 US), and there's no guarantee.
You might be able to reformat it, with Disk Utility, and keep using it. Time Machine will have to start fresh, of course.
Or contact WD. The drive may be dead or dying.

Similar Messages

I am trying to do a full Time Machine Backup to a new external disk. The backup starts, and it says "Time remaining about 4 days." That seems like a very long time, but the real problem is that the computer "logs off" after a few hours, and the b.u. stops

I am trying to do a full Time Machine Backup to a new external disk. The backup starts, and it says "Time remaining about 4 days." That seems like a very long time, but the real problem is that the computer "logs off" after a few hours, and the backup stops. The system preferences are set to "Never" for Computer sleep and Display sleep. The computer does not ordinarily log off automatically, but it has done this twice since I started the Time Machine backup.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

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?
Additional info: The laptops in question are 15" MacBook Pro and a 17" MacBook Pro from 2011 running OSX 10.9 (Mavericks)

You are welcome.
I don't think there is a need to start a new discussion unless you want to.
You should have more than one backup of each computer. Hard drives do fail. Time Machine can alternate drives or have a Time Machine and a clone.
The concern arises because i was told that when a wireless Time Machine backup is interrupted the sparsebundle gets sort of "locked" or "damaged", and although the backups can be accessed, no further Time Machine backup is possible. One must that a brand new backup.
Apple support article. Don't let the title bother you. Look at Additional Information, which explains what happens when a backup gets interrupted. I also am including a link for troubleshooting. C3 explains what you can try if the backup is interrupted.
Time Machine First Backup Interrupted
Time Machine Troubleshooting

How Can I Migrate My Time Machine Backups To A New External Hard Drive?

I have a external hard drive that has 500 GBs left, but I want to buy a larger drive.

ivan wrote:
How Can I Migrate My Time Machine Backups To A New External Hard Drive?
I have a external hard drive that has 500 GBs left, but I want to buy a larger drive.
Hi iVain
Fire up *Disk Utility*, click the Restore tab, then drag your old and new TM drives into the Source and Destination fields. Click Restore, and a complete copy of your old TM files will be made on the new drive. Go to TM preferences and select the new drive, and it will continue backing up just as it left off.
Hope this answers your question. See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2595485&tstart=0

HT201250 Can I take my time machine backup drive and put in on another iMac

Can I take my time machine backup drive and put in on another iMac

Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC

Each Time Machine backup grows and grows. How do I stop this?

Hi everyone. In basic terms, let's say that my external LaCie 3TB hard drive has 2TB of data. This 2TB includes my Time Machine backup. That means that I have 1TB of free space. My last backup was one week ago (I don't keep my external HD hooked up because of travel and I don't care for so many frequent backups). Right now I am backing up, and the backup is 30GB larger than last week. THERE IS NO WAY I MADE 30GB OF CHANGES IN THIS PAST WEEK! At the most, I probably made 1GB of changes. This situation has happened before, so it seems that with each backup (every time I reconnect my external HD for the sole purpose of backing up... Again, I don't leave my HD connected so I back up manually whenever I feel like it, instead of automatic), my data seems to have grown by dozens of GB. Dozens! I'm gonna run outta space soon if this keeps up.
I've read a number of threads on this topic and checked out Pondini.org but my one question does not seem to be answered:
How do I stop my backups from growing so big when I know for a fact I did not make big changes?
This does not equate. If I made 1GB of changes (I'm guessing), then why does Time Machine back up an additional 29GB?
I'm considering ditching Time Machine and backing up totally manually, like, dragging/copying/pasting files and folders from my laptop into my external HD. At least that way I can control and understand that 2TB of data means 2TB, not: "Surprise! 2.03TB... 2.5TB... 2.75TB and mysteriously growing!"
Any help would be appreciated, please. Also, I don't know code and I can't do open-source stuff and I don't know jargon. I also don't do advanced stuff like Parallel (I don't know what that is). If you could please help a dummy like me with plain-speak, that would be beyond awesome. Thanks!
***MacBook Pro from late 2011, OSX 10.7.5, LaCie Porsche external HD 3TB***

Some good options are:
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Each provides a trial version before paying.

Can I clone and time machine backup on the same external drive?

I recently purchased a WD 2 TB external usb drive. I want to make sure that I have good backups in case my Macbook decides to give up on me. Should I clone a copy of HD or just time machine backup? Can i do both on one external hd?

RobCob wrote:
I'm honestly only concerned about my photos and music.
You can Manually Backup your iPhoto Library and your iTunes Library to an External Drive without addition Software.
How to correctly move your media:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
Early iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
iMovie: How to move the Library to an EHD
It is important that the External Hard Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Unable to complete Time Machine backup to Iomega 1TB external drive

I've read through all the posted topics related to Time Machine failing. I've run Disk Utility without errors; ensured that the external drive is formatted correctly GUID; 1 partition; Mac OS Extended (Journaled); downloaded TimeMachineBuddy; and still cannot get my new Iomega 1TB hard drive to complete a backup. My prior external drive, a LaCie, had no such difficulties but is now full.
Here is the TimeMachineBuddy error report. I am hoping one of you can help me understand what my next steps should be and thank you, in advance:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Iomega-BU-02/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
Backup content size: 82.2 GB excluded items size: 1.2 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 97.28 GB requested (including padding), 930.58 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Applications/Adobe Flash CS4/AIK1.1/runtimes/air/mac/Adobe AIR.framework/Versions/Current/Adobe AIR to /Volumes/Iomega-BU-02/Backups.backupdb/Lydia Mann’s iMac/2010-04-06-211444.inProgress/A0522F91-AE77-4536-BE6F-654DA7F2F4B5/Macintos h HD/Applications/Adobe Flash CS4/AIK1.1/runtimes/air/mac/Adobe AIR.framework/Versions/Current
Stopping backup.
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Applications/Adobe Flash CS4/AIK1.1/runtimes/air/mac/Adobe AIR.framework/Versions/Current/Adobe AIR to /Volumes/Iomega-BU-02/Backups.backupdb/Lydia Mann’s iMac/2010-04-06-211444.inProgress/A0522F91-AE77-4536-BE6F-654DA7F2F4B5/Macintos h HD/Applications/Adobe Flash CS4/AIK1.1/runtimes/air/mac/Adobe AIR.framework/Versions/Current
Copied 23.5 GB of 81.1 GB, 36103 of 932234 items

Thanks, Pondini.
I attached a new drive last night. Time Machine prompted me that it needed reformatting, which it did internally, without going to Disk Utility. It then started a backup but hung on "cleaning up" where I found it this morning.
Again, the finder was taken out with the TM hang and I had to hard reboot (on/off button - restart doesn't work nor does force quitting finder).
Here is the sad log from last night's attempt. Since it mentions an entirely new set of failures I am now ready to point to my computer as the faulty party. $180 worth of external drives into this, I am reticent about sinking anymore money into this until I rule out the computer itself. This line "NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error"
seems to be the essential problem.
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
Backup content size: 176.6 GB excluded items size: 90.1 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 103.69 GB requested (including padding), 930.58 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying / WORK/clientname/pdfs.zip to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/myname’s iMac/2010-06-29-220723.inProgress/EFF47981-66BF-4C86-BA7F-7F802EC954F2/Macintos h HD/ WORK/KeriGans
Stopping backup.
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying / WORK/clientname/pdfs.zip to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/myname's iMac/2010-06-29-220723.inProgress/EFF47981-66BF-4C86-BA7F-7F802EC954F2/Macintos h HD/ WORK/KeriGans
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Copied 12301 files (7.4 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Copy stage failed with error:11
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:* -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 2
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 3
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 4
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 5
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 6
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 7
Error: (-36) Creating directory myname’s iMac 8
Message was edited by: lkmweb

Time Machine backup behavior erratic, now not working at all

[ Using Lion 10.7.2 on a Macbook Pro 15" with 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM. ]
The Macbook is connected to our home LAN, and I have been using (since September) a Synology NAS drive on the network which is set up as the Time Machine backup drive. Most of the time for these past months it has been fine; some issues initially with connectivity which were finally solved by using a static IP address for the NAS.
Recently it did the first strange thing. It had been performing incremental backups as normal, when a message came up saying the backup was unreliable and it needed to carry out a complete new backup. Anyway - no drama - I took it up and plugged it into the router to speed up the transfer (around 200GB on the drive). It worked fine and thereafter it went back to doing incremental backups normally.
Yesterday morning I noticed it was apparently running and running without progress, clicking on the bar icon revealed that TM was "Preparing Backup"; this state continued for several hours. So I stopped the backup, restarted the machine, and then last night at 22h00 I restarted it - by 08h00 this morning, ten hours later, it was still "Preparing Backup", so clearly something is wrong.
The NAS drive is accessible, ie.
- The 'Time Machine Backups' icon for the drive has appeared on the desktop
' The 'Diskstation (Time Machine)' is available in Finder under 'shared'
So this seems to be something to with Lion and/or with Time Machine.
Considering the infrastructure environment has been stable for months, the IP address of the drive is static, there appear to be no network connectivity problems... I am at a loss as to why now this irritating behaviour and, more to the point, at the moment I cannot make the Mac backup. I would be happy to do another full backup but, really, should not be necessary since this only happened (due to the recently problem) a few weeks back - and anyway what's the point of automated incremental backup if (a) it doesn't work reliably and (b) every 2-3 weeks you have to manually perform a full backup anyway??!!
Thanks in advance
Alastair

Alastair Mac wrote:
thanks. unfortunately a locally attached drive isn't a option that will work well for me (too long to explain, but it just won't - personal logistics rather than technology issues).
Are you sure about that? I have a Time Capsule (2nd hand) but I've switched back to a locally attached disk with Lion. Lion's new mobile backups provide some measure of backups when not connected to the backup drive. It protects against accidental deletions, but not hardware failure. Plus, the new bootable recovery partition in Time Machine and encryption tip the balance back in favor of the local drive - for me at least.
1. does it make sense to you that, until yesterday, it was working fine and then quite suddenly it stopped working?
I will say that it isn't surprising. There are some changes in Lion that affect networked Time Machine devices. The early versions of Lion got pretty annoying. 10.7.2 seemed to be better. I had to erase my Time Machine drive a couple of times and do new backups when it decided it needed to keep rebuilding the Spotlight index. Unless you connect with Ethernet, the reindexing will never finish. In your case, I would expect a 3rd party, flaky open-source product to perform even worse.
2. in my specific situation (going around and around "preparing backup" without any progress even in 24hrs of preparing, what can i do to restart the backup process? even if it means doing a clean backup i.e. junking the old one, i would live with it as at present (touch wood) my hard drive is OK and i have no historical version recovery issues.
With Time Machine, the only quick and easy way to reset things is to erase the Time Machine volume.
3. did apple / synology reach a point in previous releases of OSX and DSM which was stable and DID work, despite the need to use Netatalk? in other words, if i soldier on patiently, is it likely this will eventually get solved? or will this be a perennial problem? in the end, if twice a year i have to intervene, it doesn't really matter PROVIDED the backup itself is intact should the HD finally die. of course, if i have to intervene every couple of days, i may as well do it all manually.
I can't really answer that. I used Netatalk briefly several years ago and it scrambled my files. It has certainly improved somewhat, but obviously isn't stable. The part that really annoys me is that the change that Apple introduced in Lion wasn't really new. Apple introduced a more secure version of the AFP protocol 9 years ago. In Lion, all they did was make that more secure protocol the default and disabled the older protocols. There are a number of hacks that have been posted (sometimes by me) about how to set a flag in Lion so that it will continue to use the older protocol.
Synology seems to have better Mac support that some NAS vendors. Still, there was no reason they had to wait so long to update their software. Developers have had access to Lion for almost a whole year.
I would expect that companies would be always trying to improve their products, but the evidence doesn't support that assumption. I don't like Netatalk's shady open source extortion practices, but then no one else has stepped up to fund a stable open-source implementation of AppleTalk. People tend to blame Apple but they published the new specifications a decade ago and no one bothered to read them. Why should they care?
Personally, I think backups are too important to rely on such flaky software. I really like Time Machine but it is pretty complicated. Apple is able to make it functional over a network, but just barely. If you are using a 3rd party NAS, my suggestion would be to use NFS instead and backup with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Even if you want to continue to try using Time Machine, a Carbon Copy Cloner backup would be a good thing to have too.

HT201250 How can I revert to my internal drive for time machine backups after using an external drive?

Hi. I've been using an external drive for time machine back ups and decided to revert to my internal drive, but it isn't available in the time machine options. The only available option is to set up a time capsule, which I don't own.
Is it because not enough space is available on my internal drive (approx 50GB)?
Thanks!

50 Gb free on your internal drive is relly very low and of course not enought for a any kind of backup.
How big is your internal HD ? If you have left only 50 GB free it is probably 90% full. Let's imagine you have a 500 Gb. This means 450 Gb data and 50 Gb free. How can you backup 450 into 50 ?
Second point. The backup on your internal HD is a nonsense evenif it is big enough. If it stops working you will have no bakup.
Do you have an iMac or a portable ?
The portable automatic uses the internal HD if the external is not connected, but this is intended for a short time.
This could give you some more links to read about https://discussions.apple.com/message/20726927#20726927

I deleted my Time Machine backups using Finder, now the trash won't empty

Hello
I've just been to the Apple genius bar and thought this was solved, there the trash emptied no problem. But I realized that the problem has to do with two external drives that have time machine backups on them. I deleted some of the older back ups because my drive was filling up and I didn't see any other way to delete them.
Now they can't be reinstated back where they were, and the trash won't empty using any method. I've even tried the Terminal SUMO methods on here and other sites, and the Trashi It app, and Cocktail app - nothing works.
The only solutions I've found say to wipe your back up drive completely and start over but that is NOT an option as I have ALL of my photos on there. I use my external drive for my images (I am a photographer) and use time machine to back up my MacBookPro onto there as well. I had no idea deleting those was going to be an issue. Now I've tried to delete other things on both external drives and they are all stuck in the trash.
Someone please help!

photogirl67 wrote:
I use my external drive for my images (I am a photographer) and use time machine to back up my MacBookPro onto there as well.
Not a good idea, as you've learned the hard way.
And especially bad in the same partition, as you can't just erase the TM partition.
Plus, how do you back up the images?
For best results, consider getting another external HD; one for the images, and one for TM. Then you can have Time Machine back up both your Mac and the external. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations.
But my question for Pondini is this - if I use that command will it erase that entire drive, or just the trash on it?
Just the trash folders. I've reworded those instructions a bit, hopefully more clearly and safely, and put them in #E6 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Deleted time machine backups in Finder, now what?

I know this was foolish, but I didn't do any research before hand. My external drive had 8Gs left and the Time Machine window said it couldn't backup because it was almost full. I thought it also said something about deleting previous Time Machine backups, so I selected the first 10 or so and put them in the trash. Then when I tried to empty the trash, it took forever (still going right now at 317,996 items to delete). Anyway, my question is, now what? I am not concerned about the older backups but do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works. Any help is greatly appreciated!

photobug mjm wrote:
do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works.
Sorry, I neglected to answer this before.
Assuming there's no damage, or it's repairable, then no, you don't need to do anything more, although you should do a new backup as soon as you're sure the existing backups are ok.
What you've lost is only the backups of any files and folders that existed only at the time of the backups you deleted.
So if those "first 10 or so" were your oldest backups, all you've done is what TM would have done anyway, although perhaps a bit faster. If they were your more recent ones, then you've lost the copies of items that were added or changed after the time of the oldest one still there.
It is a strange concept, and a very powerful system, but let me put it this way: TM will never delete it's copy of anything that's still on your system, or was there at the time of any remaining backup.
You manually deleting them works exactly the same way.
This is the "magic" of the "multi-links" that TM uses. Think of them as multiple, extra-fancy aliases. Every backup contains "links" to TM's copy of every item that was on your Mac at the time of that backup. So a file that's not been changed in a long time will have a whole passel of them; a new file will only have one, or a few. What you deleted were these links; the actual backup copies are only deleted from the TM disk when the last link to it is deleted.
So . . . you may have dodged a bullet!

Time Machine Backup Stops Unexpectedly

My Time Machine backup has worked pretty much without a glitch for years, but two days ago it stopped working. About the time it stopped working, I was burning a number of discs with iDVD. Some of the burns were not successful and required that I reboot the computer (iMac updated to 10.8.3 this morning) in order to get the disc to eject.
When Time Machine starts running it says that there is 62GB of 1TB available on the backup drive and that there is 1.19GB to be backed up. At some point, the amout of data to be backed up starts increasing and eventually gets to a point where it exceeds the 62GB available. Then this message appears: "The backup disk ran out of space unexpectedly. Time Machine will try to make more space available by removing expired backups during the next scheduled backup." It looks like the oldest backup is from June, 2010 and I see no problem with deleting these old backups, if necessary.
I suspect that iDVD has created some file somewhere that needs to be deleted, but I don't know where to look. I have updated my OS and rebooted the computer, but this has not helped. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ 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 Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time Machine backup of LR on external

Does Time Machine automatic backups change how LR catalog backups can be handled?
I have original dng master files, lrcat file, and lrdata file on an external drive. It's a bus powered FW 800 that I keep with me between home and office. Both the home and office Macs have other externals used for Time Machine backups.
What's the risk of keeping lrcat backups (LR does one each time it opens) on external if Time Machine backs up hourly?
Thank you

Ans to Q1 - only the lrcat file is backed up!
Ans to Q2 -The size of both depends on a number of factors, including: number of images in catalog, size and quality setting for previews (see attachment). The following examples are based on high quality Standard-sized Previews at 1680 pixels:
Example 1 - 2,560 raw images with full sized (1:1) previews built for each = 49.6MB lrcat file and 7.8GB lrdata file.
Example 2 - 22,400 raw images with only Standard-sized previews = 302MB lrcat file and 20.3GB lrdata file.
Example 3 - same files numbers as example 2, but 1:1 previews built for each - 302MB lrcat and 60.3GB
The following FAQ provides some insight on how the previews are stored and why dumping them doesn't always mean that they go away: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b63219

Time Machine Backup transfer to another external drive

Hi all,
I keep my Time Machine backups on an external HDD drive (portable USB). I have a larger drive with more space, and wanted to copy my the backup to the larger drive.
My the Time Machine backup file folder is around 750GB. When copying the Backups.backupdb file over to the new HDD the process hangs in Finder. I wonder if there a way to successfully copy it, since the Finder does not seem happy to work with such large chunks of data.
Thanks

Although Apple documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
This technique will only work if the volume you're copying to is the same size, or larger than, the one you're copying from.
First, open the Time Machine preference pane and click the Select Disk... button. You may have to unlock the settings first by clicking the padlock icon in the lower left corner of the window. Authenticate as an administrator.
Delete the volume you're going to copy from the list of backup destinations. Then turn Time Machine OFF.
Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. All existing data on the destination volume will be erased. That shouldn't be a problem, because you don't want to mix backup and non-backup data on the same drive anyway.
If the volume you're copying was encrypted by Time Machine, you may have to unlock it first. Click the Unlock button in the toolbar of the Disk Utility window.
Turn Time Machine back ON and select the new volume as a backup destination. You can also continue to use the old volume, if you wish. The two will be alternated when both are available.
CAUTION: If the volume you're copying is corrupt, as shown by Repair Disk or Verify Disk in Disk Utility, then that corruption will be copied to the new drive. Don't copy data from a corrupt volume on a malfunctioning drive. Put the drive aside and don't use it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data. Then securely erase it and take it to a recycling center. Do the same if the Restore operation fails with "disk errors."

Time Machine backup stopped and now external HD cannot be mounted

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