Help: Trying to return backups to the original external HD but unable ? "Not enough space" error

Hi everyone,
I really hope you can help. I've spent a good 3 days with this issue, including speaking with WD directly and Apple support. But, no solution.
I have a MacBook Pro with the newest version of Mountain Lion.
I recently realized that my backups were taking way too long and that the partition that I had created on my external hard drive was too small. The external hard drive is 500GB in size and the partition was 160GB for Time Machine backups.
I decided to copy my backups to my Mac Mini then reformat my external hard drive using Disk Utility so I would have only one single partition of 500GB. I created a folder in the Mini called "Nubee Mac" then another folder within that called "Backup" and dropped the "Backups.backupdb" of Time Machine inside there. At the time, the Mini had Snow Leopard on it. I have since upgraded to Mountain Lion on the Mini, hoping the issue would be solved. I erased the external WD 500GB drive, repartitioned several times, etc.
The issue occurs when I try to place my backups back into the external hard drive that I reformatted. I open the "Nubee Mac" folder then the "Backup" folder then drag/drop the "backups.backupdb" into the freshly reformatted WD external drive. The items start copying (like 3.8 million) and towards the end of the transfer, I get the following message:
The item “Backups.backupdb” can’t be copied because there isn’t enough free space.
I tried several times, and keep getting the same error message. I used the Mac terminal to determine the size of my "backup.backupdb" folder which is 139GB. So there should be plenty of room on the WD external.
Why is this happening ? Can someone help me please ? I've read Pondini's Time Machine help website, but was unable to find a clear solution. I tried some of the simple things suggested like "repair" and"verify" and there are no problems. Also tried with GUID and Apple partition seperately. "Ignore permissions" is checked, etc ... Yet, I still can't re-transfer my backups to the external hard drive. I would really like to keep these backups ... you never know which file I may need one day.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks everyone !

First, start by opening up Terminal.
Navigate to the Backups.backupdb folder: Type "cd " and drag and drop the folder onto the terminal window. Hit enter.
Type the following command: "sudo du -sch" and hit enter. Enter your admin password.
Wait for du to finish counting. It will prompt the actual size of the folder in GB, not counting hard links.
Get info on "Backups.backupdb" through Finder and compair the results. If the two sizes match, then you've lost the hard links during the first copy.

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HELP: Trying to return TM backups to the original external HD but unable. "Not enough space" error.

**** I posted this in the wrong OS section, so I have reposted it in the Mountain Lion section. Sorry for the mix-up. Here is the original post. Thanks for looking. ****
Hi everyone,
I really hope you can help. I've spent a good 3 days with this issue, including speaking with WD directly and Apple support. But, no solution.
I have a MacBook Pro with the newest version of Mountain Lion.
I recently realized that my backups were taking way too long and that the partition that I had created on my external hard drive was too small. The external hard drive is 500GB in size and the partition was 160GB for Time Machine backups.
I decided to copy my backups to my Mac Mini then reformat my external hard drive using Disk Utility so I would have only one single partition of 500GB. I created a folder in the Mini called "Nubee Mac" then another folder within that called "Backup" and dropped the "Backups.backupdb" of Time Machine inside there. At the time, the Mini had Snow Leopard on it. I have since upgraded to Mountain Lion on the Mini, hoping the issue would be solved. I erased the external WD 500GB drive, repartitioned several times, etc.
The issue occurs when I try to place my backups back into the external hard drive that I reformatted. I open the "Nubee Mac" folder then the "Backup" folder then drag/drop the "backups.backupdb" into the freshly reformatted WD external drive. The items start copying (like 3.8 million) and towards the end of the transfer, I get the following message:
The item “Backups.backupdb” can’t be copied because there isn’t enough free space.
I tried several times, and keep getting the same error message. I used the Mac terminal to determine the size of my "backup.backupdb" folder which is 139GB. So there should be plenty of room on the WD external.
Why is this happening ? Can someone help me please ? I've read Pondini's Time Machine help website, but was unable to find a clear solution. I tried some of the simple things suggested like "repair" and"verify" and there are no problems. Also tried with GUID and Apple partition seperately. "Ignore permissions" is checked, etc ... Yet, I still can't re-transfer my backups to the external hard drive. I would really like to keep these backups ... you never know which file I may need one day.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks everyone !

First, start by opening up Terminal.
Navigate to the Backups.backupdb folder: Type "cd " and drag and drop the folder onto the terminal window. Hit enter.
Type the following command: "sudo du -sch" and hit enter. Enter your admin password.
Wait for du to finish counting. It will prompt the actual size of the folder in GB, not counting hard links.
Get info on "Backups.backupdb" through Finder and compair the results. If the two sizes match, then you've lost the hard links during the first copy.

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Help: Trying to return backups to the original external HD but unable ? "Not enough space" error

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