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Cannot copy backups.backupdb to a new drive

I have run out of space on my Time Machine backup drive and need to swap to a larger backup drive. I followed the steps in the article Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive. But the copy process fails at about 25% complete with this message: "The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items."

The original drives has the permissions:

System - Read & Write
Wheel - Read & Write
Everyone - Read Only

The new drive has the permissions:

the permissions

System - Read & Write
Admin - Read & Write
Everyone - Read Only

I am logged in with an administrator privileged account. The system is:

iMac (21.5 inch, Late 2013)
Mojave 10.14.2
Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jan 1, 2019 11:28 AM

Top-ranking reply

Steve Stevens Author

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Jan 1, 2019 11:56 AM

I chatted with Apple Tech Support. The partition map for the new drive was set to "Master Boot Record". I needed to change it to "Apple Partition Map".

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Cannot copy backups.backupdb to a new drive

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