Cloning Time Machine using Disk Utility

I understand this is possible, and I have been largely following instructions on pondini.org (great resoruce for a lot of Time Machine related issues) at this link:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html
What I want to do is transfer my current set of Time Machine backups (let's say Drive1) to a different drive (Drive2) and reuse the original drive as a new Time Machine from scratch.
So what I have been doing is this:
Repartition the destination drive, Drive2, so it is GUID and then checking OFF "ignore ownership" under the get info window.
Opening Disk Utility and selecting Drive1, and clicking the RESTORE tab.
Dragging the VOLUME for Drive1 into the source box.
Dragging the VOLUME for Drive2 into the destination box.
Go.
Everything actually seems fine (well, teh destination drive is slightly less occupied, but maybe that has to do wit .fsevents stores, and indexing) - I'm able to browse other Time Machine files and report to the new Drive2 to see in the Time Machine interface.
HOWEVER, my issue is this:
The permissions appears to be all wrong for the new clone on Drive2.
On Drive1, the proper Time Machine drive, using 'get info' on files on the drive, the listed users and permissions are correct, for example, the listed users are system (read & write), staff (read only) etc, and in terminal, permissions are under root, wheel, etc as I assume they need to be.
However, on the new Time Machine clone, Drive2, the permissions on all files all list my username (read & write) and staff(read & write). In addition, properties of the volume differ from the source, including things like whether ownership is enabled, or if permissions are repairable (get info in Disk utility pane - yes I understand that in Disk Utility, it used to say 'no' on drives when it sometimes meant yes, but this seems to be rectified in Mavericks).
In other words, it looks like the cloned volume belongs to my user.
Now is this all normal? If I were to associate the new Time Machine clone, Drive2 as my TM drive, would it fix this? Would restores from this Drive2, where all the permissions for my user are enabled would restore incorrectly to a new machine? It probably means I can restore individual user files, but would the system be broken?
Otherwise, did I not do the procedure correctly? Was I supposed to NOT check off 'ignore ownership' on the destination drive? (I'm assuming it doesn't matter as teh clone would inheret properties from teh source). Was I NOT supposed to clone VOLUMES, but use DISKs instead?
Or was I supposed to use Disk Utility not as my user, but from the Recovery HD or something?
I'm running 10.9, but a similar procedure I did under 10.8 has the same outcome.
Any help or insight would be appreciated.

mrkgoo wrote:
I understand this is possible, and I have been largely following instructions on pondini.org (great resoruce for a lot of Time Machine related issues) at this link:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU7.html
What I want to do is transfer my current set of Time Machine backups (let's say Drive1) to a different drive (Drive2) and reuse the original drive as a new Time Machine from scratch.
Please following these instructions from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5096
Once your Time Machine data is migrated, you can just erase the old drive and start from scratch.
Unfortunately, the owner of pondini.org has passed away and there is no one to support any instructions you will find on that site.

Similar Messages

Verifying Time Machine with Disk Utility

Is it normal for it to take a while (13 minutes) to verify a Time Machine drive using disk utility? My computer specs are listed below fyi.

It depends on how much data (more how many files that total size) is on the disk.
It will also vary depending on whether it's a USB, FireWire 400, or FireWire 800 connection.
In general, 13 minutes isn't terribly long -- TM backups have a rather unusual and complex structure, involving "hard links" at both the file and directory (folder) level, so there's a lot to do.
And don't bother running +*Verify Disk.+* Just run +*Repair Disk.+* The amount of time required is the same.
+*Verify Disk+* is really only useful to check your internal HD while you're running from it, since you can't repair the disk you're running from.

Reformat external hard drive for Windows machine using disk utility

I have a Maxtor 160GB dual-interface external HD. I used it for my Mac OS X. I erased and reformated the hard drive on my Mac to MS-DOS using Disk Utility for use on my fathers Windows XP. I hooked the hard drive up to the Windows machine and the hard drive was visible in both Windows Explorer and on the task bar. I right clicked on the hard drive and selected Format. The formatting takes a while but at the end an error appears indicating the hard drive was not formattable. How can I get a MS-DOS formatted hard drive (from a Mac) to be used on a Windows XP machine with a NTFS format?

Turns out it is possible:
Maxtor Support..
I would use your Disk Management utility within Windows to repartition and reformat the drive. To access Disk Management, right click on My Computer, go to Manage, and then choose Disk Management. Within Disk Management the drive should show in your list of disks (Disk 0,1,2 etc etc). I would delete any partitions that are on the drive. To delete a partition, just right-click on the partition and choose delete. Make sure you’re deleting the correct drive. Once the entire drive says unallocated then the drive should be ready to partition and format. Just right click within the Unallocated Space on the drive and choose the New Partition or New Volume option to set up the drive.
I followed the instructions and everything worked.

Is there a way i can restore my mac to a previous date without having previously backed it up using time machine or disk utility?

So over the past few days out of nowhere my macbook pro has started behaving very erratically, i have yet had time to properly set up time machine on an alternate device and i was wondering if it was possible to restore my system to a few days ago? i have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the most problematic programs but they still crash on open. My largest issue has been firefox which deleted all of my bookmarks and would not show a url in the navigation bar. as well as neither my trackpad or usb mouse would allow me to left-click until after i had restarted my laptop 3 times. Anyone have any ideas?

OS X doesn't have a "system restore" like Windows has.
You have to use TimeMachine or a external clone previously made.
My largest issue has been firefox which deleted all of my bookmarks and would not show a url in the navigation bar.
Uninstall all your add-ons, remove Firefox for now and use Safari
Use a external drive to make a copy of your user files only (not Timemachine) and disconnect all drives.
If you've installed crapware like MacKeeper you need to uninstall it here
http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/
If you've installed a always on anti-virus you need to uninstall it using the devlepers uninstaller
as well as neither my trackpad or usb mouse would allow me to left-click until after i had restarted my laptop 3 times.
Stick in your 10.6 install disk and reboot holding the c key down, boot off the disk and simply reinstall 10.6
reboot holding the Shift key down, then Apple menu > Software update to 10.6.8
reboot and try running all your third party software, a few may not work and have to be reinstalled as they insert kext files into OS X which you just replaced.
check the status of your plugins like Flash and Silverlight here, update if needed
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/
Now go to System Preferences and create another new user and log into it, does things seem fine?
Now log into your original user, does it seem fine?
Now install Firefox by itself, does it seem fine?
Add add-ons one at a time in FF, does everything seem fine?
Try FF in the new user, everything seem fine?
It should be, you've just replaced your OS X, bundled programs and replaced Firefox.
If something still is occuring but only in that first user then you need to transfer personal files to the new user and delete the old one it's corrupted. You can re-create the first user again and transfer files back so things work again (itunes playlists etc.)
Next time make a TimeMachine drive or a Carbon Copy Cloner which is bootable and updates on your scheduale.

I used a partitioned HDD for time machine, using a partition already containing other data files. I am now no longer able to view that partition in Finder. Disk Utility shows it in grey and "not mounted". Any suggestions of how to access the files?

I used a partitioned HDD for time machine, using a partition already containing other data files. I am now no longer able to view that partition in Finder. Disk Utility shows it in grey and "not mounted". Any suggestions of how to access the files? Does using time machine mean that that partition is no longer able to be used as it used to be?
HDD is a Toshiba 1TB, partitioned into two 500GB partitions.
OS X version 10.9.2

Yes, sharing a TM disk is a bad idea, and disks are cheap enough so that you don't need to.
Now
Have you tried to repair the disk yet

Time machine: An error occurred while copying files. The problem could be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.

Time machine backups are failing. I've followed the instructions I found on the Time Machine troubleshooting page (http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html) but have gotten to where I don't know what to do next.
Sequence of events:
The main error message is always:
An error occurred while copying files. The problem could be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.
Yesterday, I opened Disk Utility and verified the disk. Got this error:
Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.
I ran Disk Utility and repaired the hard drive. Then I manually started the backup before going to bed, figuring it was going to take a long time to run. When I got up this morning, the backup had failed with the same "could be temporary" error. I checked the log, which says:
Starting manual backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Tery%20Griffin;[email protected]/Tery%20Griffin's%20Time%20Ca psule
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Tery Griffin's Time Capsule using URL: afp://Tery%20Griffin;[email protected]/Tery%20Griffin's%20Time%20Ca psule
Disk image /Volumes/Tery Griffin's Time Capsule/Tery Griffin’s Computer (44).sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Error: (-36) Applying backup protections to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Tery Griffin‚Äôs Computer (44)/2014-03-05-201742.inProgress/ABB10CF2-F041-4DE5-B6AE-3C228B59ADCC
Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotStartDate path:/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Tery Griffin‚Äôs Computer (44)/2014-03-05-201742.inProgress/ABB10CF2-F041-4DE5-B6AE-3C228B59ADCC size:17
Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotState path:/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Tery Griffin‚Äôs Computer (44)/2014-03-05-201742.inProgress/ABB10CF2-F041-4DE5-B6AE-3C228B59ADCC size:2
Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Finished scan
Found 145601 files (11.88 GB) needing backup
16.1 GB required (including padding), 620.77 GB available
Copied Zero KB of 11.88 GB, 0 of 145601 items
Copied 0 files (Zero KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/Tery Griffin's Time Capsule/Tery Griffin’s Computer (44).sparsebundle
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Starting automatic backup
Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Tery%20Griffin;[email protected]/Tery%20Griffin's%20Time%20Ca psule
Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Tery Griffin's Time Capsule using URL: afp://Tery%20Griffin;[email protected]/Tery%20Griffin's%20Time%20Ca psule
Disk image /Volumes/Tery Griffin's Time Capsule/Tery Griffin’s Computer (44).sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Error: (-36) Applying backup protections to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Tery Griffin‚Äôs Computer (44)/2014-03-05-201742.inProgress/9F8E7957-9C50-49C3-8314-880E5203E3D9
Error: (5) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotStartDate path:/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/
Does anyone know what the problem is here and what I should do?
Thanks,
Tery

You have repaired your boot drive (which is good) but have you repaired your time machine drive? I don't own a Time Capsule so I don't know if disk utility can operate on it. If it can, you should repair it as well. You may need to erase it and start a new backup. That happens to time machine volumes from time to time and is why people who are serious about their data never rely on a single source of backup.

Can anyone help me?Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to... An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk. What is the problem? I've made no changes.

I recently starting receiving the error message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to... An erro occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk. I have had no problems backing up my MacBook Pro 2011 to my Western Digital My Book Live through a Linksys EA4500 router until recently. I've made no major changes. I've ran a diagnosis on my back up drive with no problems. The Time Machine back up starts, but about after about 5 to 10 minutes I get the error message. I can see the shared drive in Finder. The light on the drive blinks while it starts the back up. I can see the shared folders on the networked drive. The backup process starts but for some reason it just stops. Can anyone help?

You can't repair a network volume in Disk Utility.
Backing up to a third-party NAS with Time Machine is risky, and unacceptably risky if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want, and I also know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
If you want network backup with Time Machine, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
If you're determined to keep using the NAS for backup, your only recourse for any problems that result is to the manufacturer (which will blame Apple.)

HT1176 My airport TM will not backup and i keep getting the error msg "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup...An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."

My Airport TM will not backup and i keep getting the error msg "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup...An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."

My Airport TM will not backup and i keep getting the error msg "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup...An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."

Using Disk Utility's Repair Disk Command with Time Machine

I'm trying to figure out whether or not I can use Disk Utility's Repair Disk command on a Time Machine volume. Time machine is taking a very long time to finalize its backups. I don't know if there are directory issues that need to be addressed or if it's due to the very large size of the directory. I've been using Time Machine on this computer since last January and the Time Machine directory takes up over 7 GB of disk space! It's so large that DiskWarrior will no longer work on that volume. DiskWarrior has a limit of 4 GB. I can't be the only one in this situation. I don't want my Time Machine backup to get hopelessly corrupted and then have to start agin. I'm trying to be proactive about correcting any issues before they become serious.

Jon
So far I haven't a clue as to what is wrong, so until a person stumbles in here with one, maybe you could amuse me with as to how you figured how much space the "catalog" is taking. I surely see nothing funny going on my system, although my Time Machine volume is smaller than yours and I might not be looking in all the right places.

Migration Assistant fails to recognize a Time Machine disk (itself migrated using Disk Utility)

So I outgrow my Time Machine disk. I listen to the advice (repeated in multiple places) that one can simply use Disk Utility's Restore tab, select the old time machine disk as source and the new one as destination, and click restore to copy block-by-block, then rename the disk.
This works very well. I have indeed been able to use Time Machine on the new disk without losing any of the history.
But now I am in trouble. I am also outgrowing my MacBook disk. I put a larger disk in and install Snow Leopard from scratch. Now Migration Assistant does not recognize the new Time Machine disk (perpetually spinning wheel). Renaming the disk to the old name does not help. M.A. does recognize the old Time Machine disk, but that means manually managing the changes (and giving up on the larger TM disk). I reinstall Snow Leopard and do not miss that time the option to restore from Time Machine, but it still does not see the new Time Machine disk.
How does one convince Migration Assistant to use a Time Machine disk that duly has Backups.backupdb as a root folder and where "ignore ownership on this volume" is not set?

Thanks, Pondini, but the Time Machine disk passes the Disk Utility repairs and only the spinning wheel was visible under both the Setup Assistant and the Migration Assistant.
I now have some good news, and some bad.
First the good news: Lion's Migration Assistant offers the option to copy user (and other) files from the previous OSX disk, not just the Time Machine disk. If this option was already in Snow Leopard, then I missed it.
Now the bad news..
I spent several hours reading (Pondini's and others') suggestions to ensure that my Time Machine is as seamless as possible, namely, for the next backup to be incremental. No luck: all user data are copied. Until the interface of Time Machine stops trying so hard to shield us naive users from making decisions on our own, one idea is to keep the iPod and pictures/video collection backed-up by the straight-forward rsync. Then whether Time Machine is really incremental will not matter, and in any case a spare copy of the documents you wrote by hand is nice in case the some blocks of the disk fail.
But I may have been the one who messed it. In Preferrences \ Time Machine \ Options... I excluded all users except the user "Admin" who restored the user accounts. The idea was to test first whether the mildest user will get a full backup. It may be that Time Machine does not look in the history to see if a given file or set of files already have some copy in the past. If a file does not exist in the very last backup, it is saved to the Time Machine disk.
If you're reading this and are keen on an incremental backup, try this: restore your user accounts using a user Admin, but do not start to backup until after the accounts are restored. Will the backup afterwards be incremental?

TS1338 I have 4 Trojan Horse viruses on my external drive I use for Time Machine. My MacBook Pro hard drive is clean. I have eased the external drive 3 times using Disk Utility and it still has the 4 Trojan Horse viruses. How do I get rid of them. Wayne

I have 4 Trojan Horse viruses on my external drive I use for Time Machine. My MacBook Pro hard drive is clean. I have eased the external drive 3 times using Disk Utility and it still has the 4 Trojan Horse viruses. How do I get rid of them. I am using 10.8.3 Wayne

ksu62 wrote:
The infection names are: classload.jar-719ef6a5.zip
                                          classload.jar-5db452le31.zip
                                          ar3.jar-6ce3b2f-45l483f.zip
                                          classload.jar-lef99412-63bsd3fl.zip
Those look alot like file names and not infection names. I don't find any reference to anything like that on Norton or VirusTotal. Since you said these were Trojans, I would expect to see "Trojan" as part of the infection name.
".jar" files are executable Java applets. The random alpha-numerics would seem to indicate a cache file, likely from a browser with Java enabled. And we all know what ".zip" means.
Worst case is that you had Java enabled in a browser and were infected by one of the late variants of the Flashback Trojan over a year ago or one of a couple of other attacks using the same vulnerability but targetted against a small number of political sympathizers. Much more probable is that thes were Windows only Trojans. Hopefully you have a fully up-to-date OS X, including Java, and have disabled Java in all your browsers by now.

Time Machine Error: "An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."

I have a MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB, 500GB HDD, running 10.8.2 My computer as been running slow and fearing my HDD might die. I bought a brand new 1TB G-Drive from Apple yesterday and started my back up. It gets to just over 22GB backed up then I get this error message:
"An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
Anyone out there who might be able to help me fix this?

I have a MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB, 500GB HDD, running 10.8.2 My computer as been running slow and fearing my HDD might die. I bought a brand new 1TB G-Drive from Apple yesterday and started my back up. It gets to just over 22GB backed up then I get this error message:
"An error occurred while copying files. The problem may be temporary. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk."
Anyone out there who might be able to help me fix this?

Cloning HD to a new HD using Disk Utility

Hi,
I'm trying to upgrade my hard drive (500 GB) to a 1TB hard drive on my Macbook Pro using Disk Utility. Here is what I have experienced so far...
1) I placed the new HD in the enclosure and reformated it to "Mac OS Extended (Journalized)"
2) I restart my MBP and holding down to "Command + R" during the initial grey screen comes up - then selected Disk Utility from the menu (I'm currently running Mac OS 10.8.1)
3) Then the process starts with "Copying Blocking" and it shows that the whole cloning process is estimated to take about 2 days and 6 hours... Is that even possible? I'm using an enclosure that supports USB 2.0
4) I have read a few other options in cloning a HD using a software called CarbonCopyCloner - and it is said that it will be much faster compared to Disk Utility. But I just don't want to be pay for the software simply for HD cloning; figured disk utility is just as fine as long as the end result is the same as CCC.
I'm wondering if there is anything that I've done wrong as the approximate time required is simply WAY TOO LONG! Or is it because of the enclosure that I use that is slowing down the process (especially with USB 2.0)?
Also I'm following the cloning process from another post (https://discussions.apple.com/message/15431074#15431074) - and one of the disk preparation step states:
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Optionsbutton, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
And I don't seem to be seeing the Option button... All I see under Erase is a "Security Option" tab, but that doesn't lead me to a Zero Data button.
Hope to get some feedback on this soon so I can upgrade my HD asap. Thanks in advance
Peter

I've always done my cloning using carbon copy cloner - it is a 30 day trial.
I've never cloned using disk utility so I couldn't tell you.
I can however, give you the step by step with carbon copy.
Click HERE for the steps if you're interested...
Cheers..

I have 2 auxillary disk drives for my MacBokk Pro. Time Machine uses one for backup and I use the other for storage, but I am unable to create a new folder or drag and drop files or folders to the aux drive.

I am unable to create a new folder on either of my auxillary disk drives. I can access the files and folders that were there when I transferred one of the drives from a PC. Time machine uses one for backup and I want to use the other to store photos which are large files. An help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. If I reformat the drive will I be able to access the files on it from the MAC. I do not share the drive with a PC. The files were originally created on a PC which I no longer use. I do want to continue to access the files put there by the PC. I would like to not have to copy them over to the MAC hard drive just to use them. The second aux drive is new and works fine because it was formatted by the MAC. I can drag and drop files there and work with just as if they were on the internal drive.

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?

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