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?

Similar Messages

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

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.

Easiest way to transfer time machine backup to a larger drive?

My drive was too small and now it is full, I bought a new larger drive. How can I copy the old one to the new one and have time machine just continue on? Thanks for any help guys I'm confused.

Mac OS X v10.6: How to transfer your backups from your current hard drive to a new hard drive
If you upgrade to a new hard drive with a larger capacity, you may want to transfer your existing Time Machine backups to it before using it for regular backups. To keep your existing backups on your new, larger backup hard drive, follow these steps:
Connect your new hard drive.
In Disk Utility, make sure it has a GUID partition and is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If needed, reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended with a GUID partition. If you do not know how, see the steps in this article. Note: Back up any data on the hard drive before you format it.
Select the new drive's icon on the desktop and choose Get Info from the File menu.
Make sure "Ignore ownership on this volume" is not enabled.
Open Time Machine preferences in System Preferences.
Slide the Time Machine switch to Off.
In Finder, double-click the current backup hard drive to open its Finder window.
Drag the folder "Backups.backupd" to the new hard drive.
Enter an administrator user name and password, then click OK to start the copying process. This may take some time to complete because all your backups will be copied.
In Time Machine System Preferences click "Select Disk…"
Select your new hard drive, then click "Use for Backup."
Now, on your new hard drive, you will have all of your existing backups from the previous backup hard drive plus have more room for more new backups.
Mac 101: Time Machine

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.

Help with Restoring from Time Machine Backup with new Hard Drive

Hello. Recently, my hard drive died in my 24" Early 2008 Aluminum iMac. Luckily, I had a time machine backup, and I took it upon myself to replace the 320 GB Hard Drive with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda disk. The hardware replacement (although difficult) went fine. Now, I'm having a bit of trouble restoring the new drive from my time machine backup. The new disk shows up in Disk Utility with the correct capacity. I formatted the new drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) using my installation disk. My only problem is that the drive isn't showing up when I am choosing which drive I want to restore my time machine backup onto. I can pick out the backup I want perfectly fine, but I can't find the new drive. Any help?

UPDATE: I restarted it (Classic IT Crowd "Have you tried turning it off and on" moment) and the drive shows up on screen. Right now, I'm waiting for it to "Calculate disk size needed for restore" and I'll keep you posted.
UPDATE 2: Currently restoring. Let's see if it's successful.
Message was edited by: funman895

Can't copy Time Machine backups to new hard drive

The external HD with the Time Machine files is unusable (it can't be written to). Disk Utilities reports missing/damaged nodes and recommends copying all files to a new volume and erasing the HD. I got a brand new HD and began copying the contents. I was able to transfer all the regular files but when I tried to copy the Time Machine files, I got this message: "The backup can't be copied because the backiup volume doesn't have ownership enabled."
I want to use the new HD as the TM volume and continue with the same sequence of backups. How can I enable the ownership soI can copy the files?
Thanks

Michael Brady wrote:
I want to use the new HD as the TM volume and continue with the same sequence of backups.
You can't.
Time Machine backups use a complex structure; everything is intricately linked together. If that structure is damaged, as yours is, they can't be copied successfully.
If you have a copy of +Disk Warrior+ or another heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app, it's possible it can repair the backups. DW is about $100, and probably a good investment for the future, but there's no guarantee it can fix the backups.
And it's not a good idea to mix other data with your backups. See #3 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Adding old Time Machine backups to new hard drive

Hi,
I've filled up two external hard drives with Time Machine backups. I just bought a 2 TB drive and was wondering if I can add the backups from other two drives to the new drive, consolidating all my Time Machine backups. If so, what is the best way to do this?
Thanks,
Ron

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
No, you can't.
What you can do is duplicate (not copy) one to the new drive, then use the new one as your TM drive, and the backups will just continue normally.
But you can't combine two that already have backups on them into one.
Use the Restore tab in Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).
Now, let me ask a question: how old are your oldest backups, and why do you think you may still need them?
I do hope you're not deleting things from your internal HD, and depending on TM to keep it's copies indefinitely. If you are doing that, then your backups aren't really backups any more, they're your only copies. When (not if) your TM drive fails, you may lose them.
In this case, you need to "archive" the items, probably on an external disk, and back them up; with Time Machine, to another external disk, or to DVDs.

Time Machine Backup to New Hard Drive

So, I bought a new 1TB hard drive. Now, I only need to backup SOME applications and some music and photos. Can I choose which applications I want to backup with Time Machine? And if so, how do I do it, do I just back it up, replace the hard drives and put the Mac OS X disk in and back up, right?

Scofield94941 wrote:
Thank you for your help. I understand. But my OS X started to be very slow after I installed Parallel Desktop and it remains slow even after I uninstalled it, that's why I wanted to restore my new hard drive like Parallel Desktop was never installed.
Then exclude only the Parallels file(s), which most users do anyway, and back them up separately.
See the pink box in #11 of [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum) for the consequences of omitting system folders and/or apps.

Time Machine backups onto new hard drive

My hard drive recently failed and I had it replaced. I am trying without success to restore my data using the Time Machine external drive that backed up my old hard drive. When installing Snow Leopard, it wouldn't recognize my TM drive, so I just did a regular install and updated it to 10.6.6. When I click on the external drive in the sidebar it says there is a file in it called backups.backupdb, however it says there isn't any data in there. Disk utility shows the external drive has 400gb of data on it, which is correct, but I am unable to access it.
This link: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/5.html describes how to pull data off of Time Machine, but it says both disks must have the same partition scheme - my external TM drive is APM and my comp is GUID. Is it possible to change my computer's partition scheme without causing problems in the future? Any other idea on how to pull data off of TM, even if it is manually doing it piece by piece?

Oh, that doesn't sound good. Have you tried doing this on the drive:
Repair the Hard Drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. After DU loads select your TM backup volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Check the drive again to see if the Backups.backupd folder is still empty. If so then the next thing is to see if there's anything on the drive that's now invisible. The following instructions will enable the Finder to display invisible files:
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Now if all this fails and you find nothing in the user tips, then that means trying recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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.

Need help copying Time Machine backups to new drive

I was attempting to move my Time Machine backups from one hard drive to a newer hard drive, by copying the Backups folder. It gets through the process of preparing the files to copy but then as it starts to copy the file I get an dialog error box saying that it can't convert one file and that I need to install a newer version of IWork. I don't have IWork installed on this computer, but I have used pages on the iCloud website. I have attached a screen shot showing the error. The copying stops at this point. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed?

That usually works better than a Finder copy and is often faster.
If required.
Inherit a Backup
Inherit a Backup (2)

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 to resolve errors (-50 and -8058) when moving Time Machine backups to new disk?

I'm trying to move my Time Machine backups (about 600GB total) to a new external hard drive. I started the process last night, but after an hour or so received two errors, each repeated multiple times:
"The operation couldn't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8058)."
"The operation couldn't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50)."
I opted to cancel the file transfer. I looked up the error codes but I'm still not sure what they mean. I found an old support article about error code -50 (Mac OS X 10.1: "Error Code -50" Alert Appears When Copying Files From a Remote Disk) and an old support article about error code -8058 that doesn't appear to be entirely relevant to my issue (Mac OS X 10.4: Error -8058, unable to eject when trying to copy a disc in Finder). I've also found a number of Support Community discussions, none of which are particularly helpful.
Questions:
What do these two error codes mean? Are the files that cause these errors somehow corrupt?
If I click "Okay" when the error dialog appears, are the files that are causing the errors transferred or are they omitted from the transfer?
If I transfer the files and click "Okay" when the errors appear, or if I use Terminal and cp -R as suggested in Mac OS X 10.1: "Error Code -50" Alert Appears When Copying Files From a Remote Disk, will I have trouble recovering files from the new backup disk?
Do I need to verify/repair permissions on the original Time Machine disk before attempting the transfer?
Is there some other method I should use (e.g. Terminal instead of Finder) to transfer the backups?
Details:
MacBook Air
Mac OS 10.8.5
Both the old and new Time Machine disks are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

The two drives are handled as separate drives, even if they have the same name.
In essence, the old backups are from a drive that's no longer connected; see #E3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Moving time machine backups to new external

I want to move my time machine backups from my lacie 600g to my new 1T Seagate. I tried to use disk utility/restore and dragged the image(la cie) from the left to the source pane and dragged the image (Seagate) to the destination and clicked "restore". After 5 minutes of calculating it said 'operation not possible' or some such. What am I doing wrong?
GH

GH wrote:
How do you do that as I am still waiting for the computer to finish preparing to erase.
Do you mean preparing to delete or empty the trash via the Finder? If so, just cancel it (there should be a cancel button or small "X" in a circle icon at the right of the progress bar). That may take a while. If it takes more than a few minutes, you can relaunch the Finder by clicking the Apple icon at the left of your Menubar, selecting +Force Quit+ then Finder and click Relaunch.

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

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