Migrate Time Machine .sparsebundle to DAS

I'm trying to migrate my .sparsebundle off of a 3rd party NAS onto a new Thunderbold DAS but I can't seem to find any documentation to describe how to go about doing this.
Right now, I've mounted the .sparsebundle and I'm doing a Disk Utility restore from it to the new DAS (prompted me to erase the destination as a result). This process seems to want to take one full day by way of the Disk Utility time counter.
Is this the most efficient, fastest way to do it? It only took 5 hours to copy the 800GB sparsebundle over to it's temporary home, so I'm unsure why the restore wants to take 5x longer to complete, unless I'm doing this the hard way. I notice that it seems to be doing a block copy . Would this account for the increase in expected completion time?
Thanks in advance.

There is a way to force the backup history to be inherited, but I consider it too complicated for most users to carry out, and it won't do any good if you've already started using Time Machine with the new setup. If you're familiar with the shell and want to try it, search the tmutil(8) manual page for the terms "inheritbackup" and "associatedisk."
Otherwise I suggest you set the backup drive aside and stop using it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data. Then erase it and start over. Meanwhile, start a new backup on another drive. You need more than one backup to be safe anyway.

Similar Messages

Strange error trying to restore from time machine sparsebundle

I had my iMac hard drive go bad, so I replaced it, powered the unit back up and booted into the Snow Leopard install disk.
I got to the step where I'm trying to restore from my Time Machine .sparsebundle and I selected the date and time of the backup I wanted to restore. When I click Next to go the next screen (Select a Destination) the utility gets stuck "Searching for Disks," and below that a warning icon says
"This disk does not have enough space to restore your system."
This sounds scary, and as the Time Machine drive now has the sole copy of my data I'm reluctant to do anything to it.
Does anyone know what's going on?
Thanks in advance,
Dan.

Are you sure the new drive is formatted properly?
Check it via Disk Utility (you can get there from the same Utilities menu where you selected +Restore from backups).+
Select the top line of the drive (with size and make). Be sure the *Partition Map Scheme* at the bottom says +GUID Partition Table.+
Then select the next line, with the name you gave it, and be sure the Format shown towards the lower left is +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ unless you made it +Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive, journaled),+
Also see how much space it shows for Available to the right.

Time machine was not working. I bought a new time machine and migrated time machine files to new time capsule; not recognized by yosemite

Time machine was not working after yosemite upgrade on new and old MacBooks in my house. I bought a new time machine and migrated time machine files to new time capsule. I changed the names of the older sparse bundles to the default values. Yosemite still does not recognize them.

I presume the bought a time machine means a time capsule.
How did you migrate the Time Machine files?
From where? A Time Capsule or external drive?
It is difficult to get TM working with Yosemite.. since it doesn't work after the upgrade on the old TM backup.. it will not work on the migrated files either.
You simply start a new backup and store the old backups for a few months until you are ready to dump them.
The instructions for inheriting old backups is B5 and B6 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
However it is just unlikely to work.. TM in Yosemite is very different. Broken even.
I also strongly recommend people to use Carbon Copy Cloner or some other 3rd party backup until Apple get the bugs fixed. And after several months.. they are still rampant.

Trying to repair a Time Machine sparsebundle

I am trying to repair a Time Machine sparsebundle file. However I am getting errors at the first step of trying to attach the image.
hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck -verbose /Volumes/ReadyNAS/RobertsiMac.sparsebundle
Initializing…
CBSDBackingStore::newProbe directory, not a valid image file.
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 0, score    -1000, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 1, score    -1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 3, score    -1000, CCarbonBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 4, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 5, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 6, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
CBSDBackingStore::newProbe directory, not a valid image file.
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 0, score    -1000, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 1, score    -1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 3, score    -1000, CCarbonBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 4, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 5, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface 6, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
Attaching…
Error 110 (image not recognized).
Finishing…
DIHLDiskImageAttach() returned 110
hdiutil: attach failed - image not recognized
Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.
Regards
Bob

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.)

Slow copying a Time Machine sparsebundle

Hi everyone,
I stored old and no longer used Time Machine sparsebundle files on my networked Drobo drive. I bought a new DroboFS which is also networked. I have been moving files from the old unit to the new unit, and copying over the network is very fast.
That is, until I tried to copy the sparsebundle files. For example, I tried to move one of the sparsebundle files. Finder says "Preparing to copy". It has been saying that now for 3 days. The sparsebundle files are large, in the 1 TB range. Is Finder unable to copy or move these files? If so, is there another way to move them?
Cheers!
Phil

The Snow Leopard Finder (but not the Leopard version) can copy them, if they're undamaged. Try Repairing them, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum). Use the procedure for a Time Capsule.
But there are many thousands of "bands" in a sparse bundle, and they won't copy quickly under the best of circumstances.

Backup time machine sparsebundle

My time machine sparsebundle is corrupted and after trying many different ways to repair it, it is time to reformat the hard drive.
I read that there is a way to copy the TM sparsebundle to an external drive connected to Time Capsule. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the article.
Can anyone tell me how to move my corrupted sparsebundle to an external usb drive?
Thanks

How to load 5.6 into ML.
1. Download 5.6 for Lion.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482
Click to open the dmg but do not attempt to install the pkg.. it won't work anyway.
2. Download and install unpkg.
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
Run unpkg on the desktop.. it is very simple.. drag the AirPortUtility56.pkg file over to unpkg.. and it will create a new directory of the same name on the desktop.. drill down.. applications utilities .. there lo and behold is Airport utility 5.6 .. drag it to your main utilities directory or just run it from current location.
You cannot uninstall 6.1 (now 6.2 if you updated) so don't try.. and you cannot or should not run them both at the same time.. so just ignore the toyland version.. the plastic hammer.. and start using 5.6.. a real tool.
For screen shots see this post.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4668746?tstart=0
This is only one method.. if you google you will see any number of methods but they generally require you to pay for software.. this is free.

How can I close my Time Machine Sparsebundle so Time Capsule can do a scheduled backup?

"Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Your Time Capsule". The backup disk image “/Volumes/Steven Weinberg's Time Caps-1/Steven Weinberg’s MacBook Pro (4).sparsebundle” is already in use."
I have both a Time Capsule and a 2Tb external drive using Time Machine to back up my laptop.
Is it as simple as when the Time Capsule goes to do a backup and finds that the other drive is in the midst of using Time Machine to do its backup that I get this notice on my desktop?
It's 10:30 AM now. The last Time Capsule backup was almost 12 hours ago.
There have already been 6 Time Machine backups today on the 2nd drive.
Sounds like the Time Capsule really is being blocked from doing its job.
THe 1 Tb Time Capsule backs up to a .sparsebundle document which fills the Time Capsule at 985 Gb. You can't open and peek inside the .sparsebundle backup file.
The other drive backs up to a .backupdb folder within which are subfolders for each backup which appears to be a complete recreation of thebacked-up 500 Gb hard drive on my MacBook Pro laptop. And even though there are 37 separate folders with backups going back to Sept 2013 when I installed the second backup drive, it's only used about 500 Gb of its 2 Tb capacity.
1. How can I solve my primary problem of freeing up the .sparsebundle file for the Time Capsule?
2. Since both drives are using Time Machine to do the backup, why are they producing such diffrent backup file structures?
Steve

David Bean wrote:
So copying from a one-week-old TM volume was failing
Have you run Repair Disk on it?
I now realize that the folder in which the problem file(s) are stored on the backup,.DocumentRevisions-V100, is the folder in which OS X stores its versioning data for all users. I am now trying to work out whether I can safely delete these files from the backup
That does get damaged on occasion. I haven't seen it in quite a while, so it's pretty rare.
You can delete it from the backups, via the TM interface, but you must be able to show invisible items).
First, open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be very careful with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.
In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: <Computer Name>:~ <your name>$
(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.
Copy, do not type, the following after the prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles 1
and press Return.
You should just see the prompt again.
Then see Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 to delete all the backups of it.
and from the live system filestore so they don't get copied out to a backup again.
Yes. You will, of course, lose all previous versions, but since the file is corrupted, you may have lost some, most, or all of them already.
When done, run the same command to hide the invisible items, but replace the "1" with a zero.

Clean install, migration, time machine

I am not a MAC OSX specialist in any way, but I would like to share what I have found out the hard way about the clean install.
1) Never do this unless you are absolutely sure that you have complete back up. Time machine cannot restore to the latest backup status, it can only go back to full backups and those are not made very often. In my case it was July 29, 2012. What a surprise! . Do the vital backups by hand. I propose copying your home folder to an external disc or usb pen drive. Copy Application folder as well. Why? If you are fond of iWorks'09 and hate new versions and you do clean install your favourite software is gone. You may just as well erase your Time Machine disc and start backup from clean drive. I didn't do it.
2) Make copies of your mails.
3) If you purchased software outside AppStore make notes of serial codes. Mail backup helps.
4) When making USB drive bootable do it this way: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=18081307&postcount=3 it preserves RECOVERY partition which is needed for FIND MY MAC option and it is usefull to have it anyway. Place the USB intended for clean install directly into your MAC, don't use USB hub.
5) Migration assistant never worked for me. The reason might have been that my last full Time Machine backup was done 18 months ago, and it was 10.8... I have read quite a lot about getting restore from the Time Machine, and dwelled on the subject myself.
I can't give explanation why that happened but that is found out the hard way:
- I discoverd that long name of the user should be different than the one you used before clean install.
- After doing trial and error attempts I made short user name the same as in my user before clean install, and started it with a capital letter. Why? That gave me access to my time machine. When the I had a different short user name than stored in time machine then upon entry into time machine all the backups well dimed and going back was not possible. With the same short name the backups were accessible. The system complained that I had no permissions to access the folders. But that is possible to change. When you look up Time Machine folders in Finder, those that are restricted to you have got red circle with a white line inside. Ctrl click on the restricted folder and select Get info. Add yourself as a user that has the access and change permissions to read and write. Your Documents folder appear in every back up in Time Machine. The best it is to change the permissions in the latest backup.
At the end of the day I managed to recover my mail. Data from other programs and my old MBP is up runnning again and faster. It takes however, a lot of work to make it.
The biggest pitty is that I lost my Pages v4.3 and now don't have an option to recover it.

Are you sure its not shown? It should have a yellow or green icon, and list the name of the system and HD that was backed-up, not the one it's on.
If not, try to repair the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

RE: Where are Time Machine sparsebundle files on Time Capsule?

I recently bought a Time Capsule. After some odd issues trying to get it to work in place of my Airport Extreme, it looked like it was finally working correctly.
When I first turned it on (before the problems getting it to work wirelessly), I did a full backup with Time Machine on the Capsule via Ethernet. When I clicked on the Time Capsule, I could see the sparsebundle files with a number and a date.
Somewhere down the line, I knocked all of our computers offline while trying to get Time Capsule to replace the Airport Extreme station after I ran the first backup on it.
I finally had to call Apple Support to have them walk me through setting up Time Capsule correctly and get us back online. After several attempts, we finally got it all working, but in the process the original backup files disappeared from Time Capsule, so I ran Time Machine again. It said it completed the full backup (again), and it was doing incremental backups.
My problem is, I cannot see any files on the Time Capsule when I click on it. Is that the way Time Machine/Time Capsule are supposed to work? No folder called Backup, no files. When I enter Time Machine, I see that it's backing up, but it kind of worries me that I can't SEE the sparsebundle files anywhere.
Any idea of where those files are hiding? I guess I'm used to using Backup, where I could actually see a list of files.

Any idea of where those files are hiding? I guess I'm used to using Backup, where I could actually see a list of files.
Time Machine stores backups over the network in the form of a sparse bundle "file". This file should show up in Finder as "ComputerName_MACaddress.sparsebundle". However, the sparse bundle is not actually a file, but a container/folder with a number of files, called bands within it.
You can access the backup files within the sparse bundle, by using Finder, as follows:
o From within Finder, click on the Time Capsule (TC) that appears under the Shared category
o Double-click on the TC's disk name
o Double-click on the sparse bundle
It may take a while but eventually the disk image will open and you will see a folder named "Backups.backupd." This folder contains the Time machine backups.

Migration / time machine backup not seen- help!

I have been using time machine for years and have never had to use it until now- and it does not work. White screen of Death indicated a dead HD. New HD installed on my computer today, I reboot....after the start up video I ask to transfer everything from Time Machine on an external WD HD. The computer sees the backup HD, but does not access it for some reason. when it prompts to check which files to transfer, it says "calculating" for everything except Network. Even when I tell it to TRANSFER, it does not, spins the ball then eventually goes into video mode again.
Ok, so I try Migration assistant.
It does not even see the backup when asking for which system to transfer.
I am kinda freaking out...I hope you can help.
thx

I have no idea why you are posting in a Networking forum about a Migration problem with Time Machine. I would recommend reposting in the Time Machine forum. Assuming you are still running Leopard you can find it at:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1227
Roger

Clean install mavericks and migrate time machine

I have been having lots of trouble with my MacBookPro, 17", late 2009. Seems like it takes forever to boot or to launch apps. I have reinstalled th OS several times and done a full restore from TimeMachine twice. I still see the beachball for hours each day. I am now trying to do a full backup to Time Machine with the System excluded so that if I do a clean install of the OS, I won't recorrupt the system when I migrate the backup. My question relates to some posts I have read that say Mavericks has trouble migrating TimeMachine. Any advice would be appreciated.

I did exactly this on my mid-2009 15" MacBook Pro, only I have the boot SSD in the optical disk bay and left the HDD in the disk bay. What you want to avoid is having only one copy of your data, be it on the old HDD or as a Time Machine or other backup; although the risks are small, they are not zero.
Since I had multiple backups, I wiped and formatted my HDD, and did a clean install of 10.9 onto the SSD and then used Migration Assistant to move everything I wanted to it. I then created the folders and links on the HDD and put the files I wanted there, mainly large media files which are read sequentially and would not benefit as much from an SSD.

Resize Time Machine sparsebundle size in Disk Utility

I have two MacBooks backing up to a 500GB Time Capsule. Each has a sparsebundle on the Time Capsule that seem to have maximum sizes of the entire disk.
Can I resize each sparsebundle in Disk Utility to something smaller, say 100GB, by simply dragging the partition size down?
If I create a third sparsebundle and mount it can I then use it to store miscellaneous files, basically acting as a NAS drive.
I have seen many topics that discuss ways to limit the size of a Time Machine archive, but I don't think that this one hasn't been presented.
Thanks.

You've got other problems in addition to the Erase being grayed out.
The menu icons at the top are not right either. The Info, Burn and Eject menu items should be active also.
I'd suggest quitting Disk Utility, reboot your system and trying again.
Post back if that doesn't fix it.
regards

Lion Server Time Machine sparsebundles

Subject indicates where I think my problem lies, but for background:
MacBook Pro got bit by Thunderbolt firmware upgrade snafu last week. Contacted Apple Store the next morning, saw Genius at 11:00. Concuded hardware and firmware were OK and because I had a Time Machine backup less than an hour old I gave permission to install a fresh 10.7.3 image on my bare metal.
Got home and booted Command-R. Happily saw my Time Machine shares on Mac Mini Server running Lion Server 10.7.4. Yes, "shares." A Backup and Backup-1.
As a Lion Server novice I found a tip here to "defaults write /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/sharepoints/Backups timeMachineBackup '(1)' to make my shared mountpoint work with Time Machine over the network. Perhaps thats how one does it if one doesn't have Server. I later found the Time Machine panel in Server and turning that on gave me a Backups-1 share as well.
So back with Command-R my MacBook Pro saw both the Backups and Backups-1, I navigated to Backups and it saw its previous Time Machine archive. I started a bare metal restore and happily went to bed. Next morning found the restore stopped at about 20% of the progress bar and message instructing me to reboot the computer. Repeated, same results.
Back to Command-R I reinstalled a new copy of Lion from Apple over the internet. Did minimal configuration until I could get into Time Machine and try to manually pull files. Again it quit unexpectedly no matter holding the Option key to Verify Backups passed.
So back to the Mac Mini Server I turn off Sharing from System Preferences and Time Machine from Server. The /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/sharepoints/Backups file disappears when Server Time Machine is turned off.
I have attempted to move "David Kelly's MacBook Pro.sparsebundle" from "/Volumes/Macintosh HD2/Backups" to "/Volumes/Macintosh HD2/Shared Items/Backups" where Server Time Machine seems to expect it. The problem now is that the MacBook Pro doesn't see this Time Machine archive in that location, or see it at all.
I have performed the Disk Utility verify tasks listed in the Time Machine FAQ with no errors found or repaired.
I have seen a -6584 error this week but don't remember exactly when: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3123920?start=0&tstart=0
How can I get the sparsebundle back under Time Machine Server?

Finally figured it out on my own 2 weeks later.
You have to open the Lion Server app and then turn on Time Machine on the server.
It will then ask what disk you want to use, which in my case was an external 2tb USB.
My confusion was that this is not they way you had to do it on Snow Leopard Server.
On SLS, I never used Time Machine, but had to partition my external disk individually for each user. e.g. 2tb disk was partioned into 4 separate volumes. This was necessary to keep one user's Time Machine backup from taking up the whole disk and not leaving room for the other users.
You then setup these partitions as Time Machine Sharepoint which would then show up as a choice on the users machine under Time Machine preferences, select disks.
Therefore, under SLS, a user could select from any number of partions to backup to on the server. On Lion Server, it appears you do not have a choice and can only backup to the one disk you selected on the Server App.
At the risk of carrying on a conversation with myself online, my concern is now about limiting the size of the individual user's sparse bundle to again keep one user from taking up the entire disk for their Time Machine. I guess that is another fight for another day.

Cant access time machine sparsebundle - "not recognized"

Here is the situation: My wife's MBP was recently reformated at an Apple Store to resolve some performance issues. She has been running Time Machine backups for a few months now, and ensured before the reformat took place that a backup was performed so that all files would be recoverable. I'd like to now selectively recover files from that backup (itunes, mail, documents, etc).
Here is what I've tried
(1)
First, the "normal way" doesn't work: I enter TimeMachine and can see all the old backups in the timeline on the right, but can't browse back to them. Oddly, the newer backups (since the day it was reformated) are there with grey ticks and dates and are browsable - the older ones are visible in the timeline in purple, but I can not click on any of them. Despite the grey, I'm fairly certain that these recent backups are being stored remotely.
(2)
So, I tried to connect to the drive directly and open the sparsebundle file. Double-clicking this file does not work. It tells me that the disk image couldn't be opened because it's not recognized. I can right click and "Show package contents", which shows the band folder and other seemingly useless stuff.
(3)
I tried repairing the file using DiskUtility. I drag the file into the DiskUtility sidebar, and click repair. It returns very quickly w/ no error or status. I look at the logs and it says:
Unable to attach “XXXX’s MacBook Pro.” (not recognized) (XXXX is my wife's name, removed for privacy )
(4)
I tried mounting the sparsebundle file using the command line:
$ hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite /path/to/backup.sparsebundle (again, /path/to/backup.sparsebundle was replaced w/ actual path and file name)
it returns:
hdiutil: attach failed - not recognized
(5)
I hold down alt/option while clicking on the time machine icon and click Verify. That seems to run fine and reports no errors!
This is my first time messing with this stuff, other than configuring the machines to backup to begin with.. so I feel like I must be doing something wrong.
Here is what is especially weird: my Macbook Air also has time machine on and is backing up to the same drive. I can view *all* my old backups (purple or grey) by "entering" time machine in the interface... but have all the same failures on steps 2-4 above. In otherwords, I can't open it's sparsebundle either, despite no indications of any issue in the "starwars like" GUI interface.
I've dug through the forums, and read through a lot of Pondini's posts/troubleshooting guides on the subject. I'm getting nowhere.. any help?
Thanks!
-Ben

Benjamin192 wrote:
First, the "normal way" doesn't work: I enter TimeMachine and can see all the old backups in the timeline on the right, but can't browse back to them. Oddly, the newer backups (since the day it was reformated) are there with grey ticks and dates and are browsable - the older ones are visible in the timeline in purple, but I can not click on any of them. Despite the grey, I'm fairly certain that these recent backups are being stored remotely.
Yes, the white/gray ones are "Local Snapshots" stored on the internal HD, and the pink/purple ones are on the external drive.
The reason you can't see them normally is, the internal HD was reformatted. That gives the drive a new UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier), which OSX uses to keep track of drives, and means it's treated as a different disk for most purposes. If the data is put back properly, Time Machine should automatically treat it as the same, but sometimes it doesn't.
See if you can view the backups from the MBP via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting
(2)
So, I tried to connect to the drive directly and open the sparsebundle file. Double-clicking this file does not work. It tells me that the disk image couldn't be opened because it's not recognized.
That usually means it's damaged.
I tried repairing the file using DiskUtility. I drag the file into the DiskUtility sidebar, and click repair. It returns
very quickly w/ no error or status. I look at the logs and it says:
Unable to attach “XXXX’s MacBook Pro.” (not recognized) (XXXX is my wife's name, removed for privacy )
So does that.
(4)
I tried mounting the sparsebundle file using the command line:
$ hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite /path/to/backup.sparsebundle (again, /path/to/backup.sparsebundle was replaced w/ actual path and file name)
it returns:
hdiutil: attach failed - not recognized
And that.
(5)
I hold down alt/option while clicking on the time machine icon and click Verify. That seems to run fine and reports no errors!
That's pretty strange. Are you doing that from the MBP? If not, it may be verifying the wrong sparse bundle.
Here is what is especially weird: my Macbook Air also has time machine on and is backing up to the same drive. I can view *all* my old backups (purple or grey) by "entering" time machine in the interface... but have all the same failures on steps 2-4 above. In otherwords, I can't open it's sparsebundle either, despite no indications of any issue in the "starwars like" GUI interface.
There are two rather important tidbits you haven't mentioned:
* Exactly what are you backing-up to? It doesn't sound like a Time Capsule, as you mention that you "tried to connect to the drive directly".
* What version of OSX are both Macs running?

Moving Time Machine sparsebundle to new backup drive

Hi all,
This may be a bit of a unique situation, but hopefully I can get some guidance...
I've been backing up two different computers using Time Machine, with the backups stored on a hard drive attached to a third computer (an old MacBook) that's set up as a server. So the backup drive has had two different sparsebundle files, one for each computer.
That drive filled up, so I've recently purchased a larger one. To keep things a little cleaner and to keep the larger computer's backup from crowding out the other one, I've decided to put the TM backups in two separate partitions on the new drive. I set up the partitions in what is hopefully the correct way based on some other discussions I've read (Mac OS-Extended, case sensitive, journaled; partition map scheme: GUID Partition Table).
However, I couldn't find any tips on how best to transfer over the old TM sparsebundles to keep using them on the new drive. SuperDuper probably wouldn't work since I only want to copy one of the sparsebundles into each of the partitions, not duplicate the existing drive.
So I'm hoping I can just copy them over manually using the Finder (that's what I'm doing now — and will be for the next 5 hours or so). Once it's done I'm planning to point the TM Preferences at the new partition and hope that it recognizes the existing backup. (If that fails, I'll mount the sparsebundle first.)
In the meantime, I just wanted to confirm that this is the correct way to go, and see if there are any other factors I need to take into consideration.
Thanks!

maxfreund wrote:
Thanks! Your timing is perfect -- I was just looking at Pondini's FAQ on exactly my situation:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html
This would seem to confirm that I'm on the right track. I guess I'll know for sure in around 5 hours!
Always a Good Read...
Let us know how it goes...

Migrate Time Machine .sparsebundle to DAS

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