Can I move existing time machine backups to new, larger disk?

I have used Time Machine with success for a long time. Now I have a much larger disk drive and want to move the old backed up files to the new drive, then continue building files after that.
The current Time Machine backup file's Info says it is --get this-- 48.66 TB in size. But it sits on a 2 TB disk. I don't know if that's a mistake or a peculiar way to account for all the updates.
In the Time Machine preference screen it says I have 169 GB of 2 TB available.
Can I just copy this folder onto the new (4 TB) disk and tell Time Machine to select that as the current disk and have it continue to build and houseclean my accumulated history?
(I've started that process, but it tells me I will be copying zillions of files and will take a boatload of time to do it. It gives me a message that there isn't enough space to make the copy. But, of course, there really is.)

See Pondini's Time Machine FAQ: http://pondini.org/TM/18.html

Similar Messages

  • Move existing Time Machine backups to new (larger) drive?

    If I get a larger external HD for Time Machine backups, is it possible to move all the existing TM backups from my current drive to the new HD, or do I have to start from scratch?
    Has anyone successfully done this?

    One more question to the Pros here, please
    I perfectly understand how to clone a drive with SuperDuper. But I am unsure about how to clone the Time Machine backup file.
    In Finder's sidebar under SHARED I see the Time Capsule. On Time Capsule I see 2 sparsebundle files, one representing my iMac backup and the other my Powerbook backup, as the names indicate. But in SuperDuper's "Copy" dropdown I am not able to open either of them.
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    Image type would be "Read/Write sparse image"
    Right?

  • How do I move old Time Machine backups to new USB disk

    Hi,
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    See #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

  • How to move existent Time Machine backups to a NAS?

    Hello everybody
      I am not sure if I am posting this discussion in the correct community, so please move it to the right one in case you need.
      Currently I am using a 1TB external hard drive to store all my time machine backups. This drive also contains other information (movies, photos etc). I bought a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II which is a NAS. I want it to move my Time Machine backups to my NAS. How can I do it? Just copy over the backups folder from the external hard drive to the NAS?
    Thank you!
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    That's just crazy slow. 
    It won't be fast, as the data can't go directly from the old disk to the new one.  It must pass through your Mac, so is on the network twice, slowing the effective speed by roughly half.  But that's awful.
    There could be any number of causes, from bad ports or cables to problems with either drive or controller.  I don't have any experience with modern RAID systems, but some of the older ones were extremely slow when there was a problem with one of the drives.  
    And it may get worse -- if the backups are damaged, the copy will fail and the result won't be useable.
    About all I can recommend is the usual:  it's always prudent to keep secondary backups. If you don't have any, I'd strongly recommend getting a (plain) external HD and making a "bootable clone" on it ASAP (that will probably slow the copy down somewhat).  See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for details and some suggestions. 
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  • Can I move old Time Machine backups that were USB to Network backups?

    I recently bought a new Airport Extreme and attached my 1TB WD HD to it for network file sharing and Time Machine backups. I had originally backed up my MacBook Pro with that external HD via USB directly connected to the laptop. I know (thanks to these foruns), that, since I'm now using Time Machine backups via wifi, the location of the backups is different and my wifi Time Machine can't access the backups on the HD that were made when it was directly connected.
    My question is: is there a way to move the old TM backups so that they can be recognized via wifi? If not no big deal, but then I would need to delete those backups, since they are taking up a big chunk of the external HD space. I saw a few forum posts about deleting TM backups and it seems that I would have to do it via TM itself...does that mean I have to reconnect the HD via USB to run TM so I can access those backups to delete them?
    Finally, once I do get to delete the old backups (or move them, if possible), is it safe to repartition the external HD so there is one partition for TM and one for storing files via my network? I've read about using Disk Utility to do this, but I haven't tried it yet.
    Thanks for any input.

    No, what you're doing is splitting the TM partition in half, so this will only work if you have more that 50% free space.
    See: Disk Utility - Add, Delete, and Resize Existing Volumes With Disk Utility
    My only concern about that would be that my other files would be on the same partition as the 'old' TM and thus I wouldn't want to delete it, which brings me back to my original issue of space being taken up on the drive.
    You should consider putting those files on their own partition, so think about spliiting the disk into 3 or more partitons, and 1st move all of your other files to the 3rd (last) partition.  You just need to decide how much space to allocate.
    With some limitations, you can do a lot with Partitoning without losing data, see: Disk Utility - What You Need to Know About Modifying Existing Volumes

  • Continue using existing Time Machine backup on new mac

    I just had to replace my 13" Macbook Pro through warranty. When I first turned it on I selected to restore the computer from my time machine backup and after several hours it finished successfully with the exception of Ilife which on the restore had to be updated before it would open the restored databases. The other issue I am having is that timemachine is no longer working. I would prefer to have timemachine backup to the existing archive structure it created on the old machine but right now it just says it can not find the volume. Is there a way to keep using the existing backup or do I need to delate the archives and start a new archive?

    firemandan900 wrote:
    I just had to replace my 13" Macbook Pro through warranty. When I first turned it on I selected to restore the computer from my time machine backup and after several hours it finished successfully with the exception of Ilife which on the restore had to be updated before it would open the restored databases. The other issue I am having is that timemachine is no longer working. I would prefer to have timemachine backup to the existing archive structure it created on the old machine but right now it just says it can not find the volume. Is there a way to keep using the existing backup
    If there's room, TM can start a new set of backups for the new Mac on the same disk or Time Capsule. But it will make a new, full backup of the new Mac, so if your TM disk/partition isn't at well over twice the size of the data it's backing-up, your best bet will be to erase the drive with Disk Utility and let TM start over.
    There's a downside to that, though. TM on the new Mac won't delete the oldest backups from the old Mac when it needs room for new backups.
    Instead, it will delete the oldest backups from the new Mac, leaving the old backups "stranded." Without erasing the TM disk/partition, you'll have to delete the old backups one at a time, via the TM interface, which is quite tedious and time consuming. See the instructions in item #12 of the Frequently Asked Questions post at the top of this forum.
    or do I need to delate the archives and start a new archive?
    That's probably your best option.

  • Can I transfer a Time Machine backup to a new empty hard drive, without installing Mountain Lion again?

    Can I transfer a Time Machine backup to a new empty hard drive, without installing Mountain Lion on that new hard drive?

    Yes - I just did it the other night. Took five hours, but it finally finished and is working great.
    I sort of followed the instructions found here -->> http://pondini.org/TM/18.html.
    Also, if you want to have dual backups, see -->>
    http://pondini.org/TM/27.html.
    I say 'sort of' because I used Carbon Copy Cloner to do a block-level transfer. I just didn't want to get hung up with a Finder copy.
    Give CCC a try - you have to enable the block copy in Preferences before using this method, but I was quite happy with it. I used it to move over 1TB of TM backups from a FireWire 800 drive to a 2TB Thunderbolt drive. 5 seconds short of taking 5 hours.
    It should work well for you.
    Clinton

  • How to keep using existing Time Machine backup after replacing main hard drive

    The hard drive in my iMac (Lion) is failing. I cloned it to a new drive and installed it in the iMac. Now the system wants to start fresh with a whole new Time Machine backup.
    It seems obvious that there must be a way to keep using the existing Time Machine backup set, but I can't figure out how to do it. Help, please.

    If you had done a full system restore from Time Machine, it would have been done automatically.  But 3rd-party cloning apps don't leave a "trail" so Time Machine can figure out that the new drive has all the old stuff on it.
    Effective with Lion, there is a way to "associate" the new drive with the backups of the old one, but it requires the use of Terminal.  See #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.  As noted though, this only works on directly-connected backup drives, not backups made over a network.

  • Exclude Movies from Time Machine backups

      Is there a way to exclude iTunes movies from Time Machine backups? The "Movies" folder is visible and can be selected, but the "exclude" button grayed-out. I ask this question because I add TV shows and movies to iTunes really just for a short term, maybe a day or two, until I can watch them using AirPlay on my TV, and then they're deleted. For example, four 1-hour TV episodes equals about 20GB of mp4 files, and it's a waste of Time Capsule space to back them up.  I can exclude individual movie files, but I need to exclude the entire folder because the file names are always changing.
    Is there a terminal command I might be able to enter to exclude the "Movies" folder? Thanks in advance.

    Exposing the /Home/Library/ Folder
    Pick one of the following methods:
    A. This method will make the folder visible permanently. Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:
    chflags nohidden ~/Library
    Press RETURN.
    B. Click on the Desktop, press the OPTION (⌥) button, select Library from the Finder's Go menu.
    C. Select Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu. Paste the following in the path field:
    ~/Library
    Press the Go button.

  • HT201250 existing Time Machine backups to a new Mac

    how do i migrate existing time machine backups to a new mac from my time capsule?

    It took a little more research, but that link in the end solved my problem.  After mounting the Time Capsule and the previous backup sparsebundle, I ran these commands to inherit the old backup (with <capsule> and <machine> representing the names of the Time Capsule and machine/hard drive respectively:
              sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/<capsule>/<machine>.sparsebundle
              sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/<machine>/2012-12-09-114511/<machine>
              sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/<capsule>/
    "2012-12-09-114511" was the latest snapshot that was there.  According to the documentation, you can pick any snapshot, since the "-a" in that command will update all of the associated snapshots.

  • How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ?

    How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ? I bought a 1 Tb Time Capsule to replace my 512Mb Time Capsule. Now, I like to copy my time machine backup from the old Time Capsule to the new one so I can keep using my backup.

    from this support article: 
    (click on image to enlarge)

  • HT201250 My MacBook Pro (using OSX 10.7.5) suddenly can't find the Time Machine backup disk, which is on the harddrive of my desktop iMac. What to do?

    My MacBook Pro (using OSX 10.7.5) suddenly can't find the Time Machine backup disk, which is on the harddrive of my desktop iMac. What to do?

    Inherit a Backup
    Inherit a Backup (2)

  • Tried to restore my mac pro, now it`s not working, can i use the time machine backups?

    Tried to restore my mac pro, now it`s not working, can i use the time machine backups?

    Yes.

  • 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

  • Can i transfer my time machine backup to another drive?

    can i transfer my time machine backup to another drive?

    Did you prep the new drive?
    Drive Preparation
    1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
    2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
    3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
    4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
    5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
    6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
    New drives usually are pre-formatted for Windows, not Macs. WD is generally well known for their poor level of Mac support.

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