Time Machine issues after replacing HD

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Level 2

222 points

Time Machine issues after replacing HD

Hi all,

I recently bought a larger replacement HD for my old MacBook. Last night I cloned the original drive using SuperDuper and then swapped the drives over. However, every time Time Machine now tries to backup, it thinks it's a full backup and starts deleting old backups to make room.

I've seen this tutorial on the web:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789

I followed it about halfway, then it asked me to type in "my_partition" saying "Replace my_partition with the name of the partition that you'll be swapping the UUIDs on."

At that point I got totally confused. What's the name of the partition, and when it says the partition I'll be swapping the UUIDs on, which partition is it referring to? The Time Capsule partition? I don't want to mess with the whole Time Capsule partition surely, cos that has backups from other machines on it...?

Anyway I wasn't 100% sure and I was worried I might screw something up. So I've switched TM backups off and have come to ask you guys in your wisdom how to do it 🙂

Thanks!

:-Joe

MacBook (1g), iMac G5 (17” iSight), PM G4 (MDD), PM G4 (AGP), Mac OS X (10.6), iPhone 3GS

Posted on Jan 22, 2010 4:27 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Jan 22, 2010 4:32 PM in response to Jowie

this tutorial is for 10.5 and won't work in 10.6 as 10.6 is missing the command fsaclctl that turns off ACLs on a volume. there is a way around this but unless you are quite proficient with terminal (you are clearly not) you should not try it. it will only end in disaster. I strongly suggest you let TM do its thing and make a full backup. if space is an issue then erase the TM drive and start a new backup sequence. if you want to keep old backups get a new drive for use with TM.

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Answer 2

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Jan 22, 2010 4:45 PM in response to V.K.

awwww... Disappointment 😟 Snow Leopard's not all a bed of roses!

It's a shame because I guess it will make an entire backup from scratch... Which will take up about 100GB of space... Even though the files themselves haven't changed.

Nothing else I can do?

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Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Jan 22, 2010 4:55 PM in response to Jowie

Jowie wrote:
awwww... Disappointment 😟 Snow Leopard's not all a bed of roses!

It's a shame because I guess it will make an entire backup from scratch... Which will take up about 100GB of space... Even though the files themselves haven't changed.

Nothing else I can do?

no. as i said a fix for that tutorial is possible but it's even trickier than the original tutorial. if you are not proficient with terminal you should definitely not even try it and I won't go into the details of what and how should be done. nothing good will come of it, really. believe me. i have experience with this. I tried to walk some terminal newbies through the old tutorial on this forum and it was a disaster every time. I won't do it again.

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Answer 4

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Jan 22, 2010 5:00 PM in response to V.K.

well, thanks for being honest... I guess I'll just connect it up via Ethernet to speed the process up and let it do its biz...

Thanks anyway!

:-Joe

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Answer 5

Jan 29, 2010 1:38 PM in response to V.K.

So, it sounds like the best way, at least when adding a new TM back up drive, is to simply 'tell' TM to start using the new drive. Then leave the old back ups where they are until one feels they are no longer useful. At that time, erase that back up and use for whatever.

Is my understanding correct? 😉

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Answer 6

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Jan 29, 2010 3:07 PM in response to xairbusdriver

Hi there,

That's not really the same issue... I was replacing my laptop hard drive, not my Time Machine backup (TC) hard drive.

So long as your Time Machine backup was over a network, you should be able to copy your old sparseimage backup files across to the new drive. I did that on mine and managed to carry on using the original backup files.

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Answer 7

Jan 29, 2010 3:25 PM in response to Jowie

Well, you're obviously more informed about the technical aspects of all this. I am just trying to confirm the easiest way to start using an added drive, not sure I want to have the whole, current back up added to the new one, anyway. It's big enough as it is. 😉 How long do I really want to trust any data to a mechanical device? 😉

Nor do I understand the TM backup to be a 'sparse image.' Not saying it isn't, I'd just not heard it described that way. I know SuperDuper uses that method, so it's nothing new. And it is certainly reliable, as far as I know. But I have also seen many threads here about the troubles people have in moving old TM back ups to a new drive. Perhaps all of those people had directory/permissions or other corruptions that caused that. I dunno. And that's just ONE thing I don't know! 8-)

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Answer 8

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 29, 2010 4:05 PM in response to xairbusdriver

xairbusdriver wrote:
Well, you're obviously more informed about the technical aspects of all this. I am just trying to confirm the easiest way to start using an added drive, not sure I want to have the whole, current back up added to the new one, anyway. It's big enough as it is. 😉 How long do I really want to trust any data to a mechanical device? 😉

Yes, the easiest way is to just let TM start fresh on a new drive, and keep the old one "on the shelf" until you're sure you don't need anything from it.

Nor do I understand the TM backup to be a 'sparse image.' Not saying it isn't, I'd just not heard it described that way.

Some are, some aren't. If you back up to an internal HD or a directly-connected external HD (Firewire or USB), your backups are in a "normal" folder named Backups.backupdb. If you back up to a network drive, such as a Time Capsule, the Backups.backupdb folder is enclosed in a +sparse bundle disk image,+ a rather odd sort of container.

But I have also seen many threads here about the troubles people have in moving old TM back ups to a new drive.

That depends on a couple of things; it's mostly impossible to continue backing-up to the same set of backups if you change from directly-connected to wireless, or vice-versa.

But you can copy the backups from an old drive to a new one, and continue backing-up in the same way. See #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

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Answer 9

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Jan 30, 2010 8:32 AM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

That depends on a couple of things; it's mostly impossible to continue backing-up to the same set of backups if you change from directly-connected to wireless, or vice-versa.

That's one reason why, even before I bought a Time Capsule, I deliberately did all my backups from one machine to another over the network... So that I could (hopefully) continue with the same backup files when moving them over to the TC.

I find it odd that Apple decided on a different format for local backups (though I'm sure there was a reason for it). Just means that anyone who uses Time Machine in "local mode" has less-portable backups.

But yes, unless you know what you are doing, just shelving the old backups is probably the best thing. 🙂

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Answer 10

Sluft

Level 1

0 points

Apr 29, 2010 9:45 AM in response to V.K.

After the reuse option in Snow Leopard won't work ( http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11442225#11442225) I chose the Terminal commands from macosxhints. With a fresh 10.5 Leopard on my old MacBook I did the fsaclctl command. But the backup won't work. I got each time a new spars bundle. Did I choose the wrong MAC address?

Network > Ethernet (en0) > Ethernet > MAC address
Or should it be Network > Airport (en1) > Ethernet > MAC address?

@V.K. What is the alternative?

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Answer 11

Sluft

Level 1

0 points

May 1, 2010 1:20 AM in response to Sluft

Thank you. Thanke you for nothing!
I don't know where my mistake was. But why should we use difficult Terminal commands which are only available in Mac OS X 10.5 if we can also let show us the package content of the sparse bundle, open the com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist with TextEdit and change the linked MAC address from old to new.
For example with Tinker Tool I can show the hidden files and change also the name of the UNIX file with the MAC address.

And see there, after a short check I had a Backup of my new MacBook Pro in the Time Machine timeline of my old MacBook. Where is the problem?

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