How might I move my Time Machine Backups.backupdb file to a partition on a different drive to enable reformatting the drive it is on, so that might put it back in place later?

I have an external drive I use as my Time Machine backup location.
Recently, I started getting an error on it. It tells me there is a problem, and to repair it with Disk Utility. Disk Utility cannot verify the disk, and needs me to repair it, but it cannot repair it. It advises me to copy all of the important files from this disk to another location, and then reformat the drive.
So, I have copied all of the files that were not part of the Backups.backupdb folder structure to a partition on another disk, and removed them from the defecting drive, leaving ~250GB of files in the Time Machine backups files.
I cannot seem to get this to copy to a ~350GB folder on another drive, formatted Journaled, Extended as recommended.
What do I do?

A Time Machine backup is owned by TM.. this is standard kind of issue.. the very fact that you cannot copy it suggests it is corrupt.. or you cannot change permissions on the whole file.. let me assure you the way TM works.. what you have so far copied is completely useless.
Have you run a verify of the backup??
The fact that disk utility is not working means something is wrong.. it should be able to fix a drive..
And the fact the drive is only 12-18months old is also not relevant.. the present state of the drive is too poor to be considered reliable.
What type of drive is it.. ie USB2 USB3 and what brand??
It is not just the disk that can go bad but the controller/power supply as well.. and some brands seem to have bad batches.. eg seagate USB drives I was seeing recently.
I prefer drives where I buy a shell and put the drive into it.. so I can move the drive to another shell without breaking warranty (or the case).
The actual command for terminal I always just look up when I want to do them.. I am getting old and I have no space left for command line stuff.. although it was all there in the past.
eg today I hit. http://www.cnet.com/au/news/using-the-os-x-terminal-instead-of-the-finder-to-cop y-files/
This includes the rsync command.. lets try this one..
I can copy my downloads directory to a time capsule disk. I start with login as super user just to make sure I don't have permissions issues.. you should definitely do this. running rsync is great as it will give you info when it fails and it will do incremental if you run it again later. You construct the command by simply dragging the folder from finder into terminal and slightly modifying it as per the article above.. So my actual command as I am copying deliberately to a new folder on the TC.. You don't want files to land on the root.. even if it creates another folder.
$ sudo su
Password:
sh-3.2# rsync -av /Users/Ray/Downloads/* /Volumes/DataTCgen3/downloads/
building file list ... done
#A 12v25v Descrip.doc
$T2eC16V,!)!E9s2fB+iqBQNKwsSzpQ~~60_3.JPG
$_12.JPG
0198f23d9wahwkzzsf20dk15czcy.pdf
0340039AINETCNCTKGS.PDF
I have 60GB or so in this folder and it is copying at about 20MB/s over ethernet.. so it is not super fast.. but there is probably some error checking going on at the same time.

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

Hi,
I purchased a new 1TB USB disk and want to keep my historic backups. I remember trying this a while ago when I moved disks and ended up giving up. Anyone care to tell me the steps I need to step on ?
cheers
Adam

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!
Gilson

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.
It wouldn't have to be a 2 TB drive, just the same size as your internal HD (or at least 10% larger than the data on it). You might consider getting a portable drive, so you can take it to a secure off-site location once you get your TM backups working to the new WD box. Then update it periodically.

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.

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)

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

How does one SUCCESSFULLY transfer Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk drive using OSX 10.5.8

I have read a number of articles about how to transfer a complete Time-Machine backup to a new (larger) hard disk-drive. Some of these articles are specifically for OSX10.6 users, which are not applicable to me since I am operating with OSX 10.5.8.
However, I have tried several times to use the Disk Utility 'Restore' function, dragging my old time-machine volume into the 'Source:' box and my new volume into the 'Destination:' box. This works, of sorts, BUT the newly created volume on the new larger hard disk-drive remains the same size as the original volume on the old Time-Machine HDD, with no apparent way of increasing the new volume's size. So I am not really any better off:
E.g. the total capacity of my new HDD is stated by 'Disk Utility' to be 465.8 GB, of which I'm told 228.2 GB is used for the Backups.backdb folder, but only 4.6 GB of free space is actually available. Yet under the 'Partition' tab of 'Disk Utility' it tells me that there is still 236.4 GB of available space.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue without upgrading to OSX 10.6?

First, how did you prepare your new drive? See:
Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, 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. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. 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 Options 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.
If you plan to partition this new drive then be sure you create a larger partition for TM than your old volume.
Next, clone your old TM volume:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
4.Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

HT201250 How long should an initial time machine backup of tack for 675 GB?s with a USB external hard drive?

How long should an initial time machine backup of tack for 675 GB?s with a USB external hard drive?

Not much faster than 40 GBs-60GBs per hour. So, minimally, around 12 hours.

Does Time Machine backup system files (/usr/local/*)?

Does Time Machine backup system files (/usr/local/*)?
If so how do you locate them in the Time Machine interface?
If I go into Time Machine mode and type say "/usr/local" in the Time Machine search bar I get nothing although I can open a terminal application and cd to /usr/local and see bin, lib, include, etc.
Of course I can never see /usr/local in Finder either ... only at the command line.
Thanks.

John, another tech pro ("baltwo") suggests:
Run this in the Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
OPTION-click and hold on Finder's Dock icon->Relaunch which reveals all hidden files. Then, look for that file and delete it. To hide all of those, use the same command, substituiting zero for the one, and relaunch the Finder.

My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

Yes, I've done all "the ususal suspects.." repaired permissions, zapped pram, "reintroduced Time Machine to the backup drive by turning it off and on... etc

HT201250 How can I migrate a Time Machine backup from an external hard drive to a new TimeCapsuls?

I just got a 2TB Time Capsule. I want to migrate my time machine backups on an external hard drive to the new Time Capsule. I have about 430Gb of files to back up; I don't want to wait 7-8 days for the backup, unless I have to. I am using OS 10.7.5 (forget which cat that is). I have mounted the TC drive as 10.0.1.1; I tried to drag and drop from old to "data" on TC, but I get the error "The volume is the wrong format for a backup." Any ideas how I can move my old files to the new, and bypass creating a brand new backup file?
Thanks.

Rather than do that, which means starting over from scratch, losing all your edits, organisation and so on, why not simply use iPhoto Library Manager to revert the Library to the older version? Easier, less destructive.
The instructions on that are here
If you really want to start over: you can access the Originals folder simply by going to your Pictures Folder and finding the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.

How do I restore a Time Machine backup to a new hard drive in an iMac 5.1?

Hi all,
I recently had a hard drive failure in my mid-2006 iMac 5.1 and have now installed a new drive. The iMac was previously running an up-to-date version of OSX 10.7 - Lion. However I've struggled to restore the machine from its Time Machine backup, trying using both Setup Assistant which has never allowed me to overwrite my startup files with the restore, and several attempts using Migration Assistant and following Pondini's Migration Problems tutorial, which worked partially, but has left me with a series of files/folders, many of which have Permissions problems.
The most recent attempt, using Migration Assistant is giving me a new error message:
You can't transfer from your other Mac to this one because your other Mac uses a newer version of Mac OS X. You must upgrade this Mac before you can transfer from your other Mac.
I'm getting it that the Time Machine data is more current (in terms of OSX) than my desktop machine - which I have prepared using my Snow Leopard start-up disc (but wonder why this is the first time that I'm getting told this on attempting to restore). But how do I get my iMac to a state whereby I can restore from the Time Machine?
I can't upgrade the Mac using Software Update as this will only get me to OSX 10.6.8 (which is where I currently am, although some applications don't seem to want to work in this state - App Store, Safari on occasion); I can't download OSX 10.7 from the App Store as it is no longer there, and I can't install OSX 10.8 as my iMac is not compatible with this release. I seem to be stuck in an infinite loop from which I don't seem to be able to get out of.
Can anyone help at all?
Many thanks in advance for any contributions & apologies if I've omitted any crucial information that might be needed to help me out.
Paul

Thanks den.thed,
Apologies for not replying back sooner - I've been away.
Although your suggestion helped me in getting a copy of Lion that I could use, it didn't help with the restore from Time Capsule issue. I had to download the Lion app onto my MacBook & then transfer it across but it wouldn't let me upgrade my OS for some reason, so I ended up wiping the iMac completely and restoring via my Snow Leopard install disk. For some reason, this time, it let me have the option of using Setup Assistant to access the Time Capsule for a complete restore.
Now, over a week later, with various bits of tweaking and reinstalling some apps that didn't seem to come across, I have my system back.
Thanks for the help anyway.
Cheers,
Paul

How do I move my Time Machine data to another hard drive?

I have a WD Passport 250 external that I want to move my current TM data out of, and put in my new WD My Book 1TB. I tried moving over the Backups.backupdb file directly to a new whatever partition on my 1TB drive (I have two partitions, one for TM and one for whatever). Every time I do a copy and paste, it doesn't do anything. I can't even rename the Backups.backupdb folder. Is it locked? I want to move it over to my 1TB drive so I can format this Passport and use it for something else.

Fine - if you wish to use Apple's DU feel free to do so. However, you might ask yourself why Apple does not expose the DU's feature in its Time Machine Help docs for restoring a TM volume to another volume.
SuperDuper! version 2.5 was a long time coming because dealing with the Time Machine 'innards' was a non trivial task. It now works perfectly.
Do not assume that DU and the TM innards will always be in sync.
SD! is dedicated to ensure its customer base has a robust, reliable and up-to-date facility for cloning a TM volume which by the way can be on the same Volume as a cloned boot disk/volume.

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.
So I tried a different approach: I activated Time Machine on the Powerbook. A virtual drive labelled "Backup of Powerbook" pops up in Finder. Now I am able to choose this virtual drive in SuperDuper's "Copy" dropdown. I assume that this the correct file to clone?
Then I would say "to" Disk Image and give it an identical name ("Backup of Powerbook"). Now I should choose the destination where to store the clone. This will be the new USB-HDD that I am going attach to Time Capsule.
Image type would be "Read/Write sparse image"
Right?

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

How might I move my Time Machine Backups.backupdb file to a partition on a different drive to enable reformatting the drive it is on, so that might put it back in place later?

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