How do I turn off Time Machine in Mojave 10.14.3 ?

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Level 1

15 points

How do I turn off Time Machine in Mojave 10.14.3 ?

I have a large external drive that I use for working storage and backup. I want to change partition sizes, including the one used for Time Machine, but I ran into a problem.

The disk is partitioned like this:

1.55 TB, nearly empty
450 MB, SuperDuper partition
2 TB, Time Machine partition
1.49 GB, nearly empty
510 B, SuperDuper partition

I like to have a couple of SuperDuper partitions so I can rotate backups in addition to the Time Machine backup. SuperDuper creates a restorable image. It doesn't replace Time Machine but complements it. I want to make the 2nd partition a bit larger (it's smaller than the MacBook HD) and Time Machine doesn't need all that space. I understand I can only delete the last partition.

I intended to restore the current TM (partition 3) to the smaller partition 1 as only 600 or so GB is currently being used by partition 3, and then delete/resize the other ones. I'm willing to lose the SuperDuper backups and recreate them. But partition 3 is in use, I assume by TM ... and I can't restore it. I tried to turn off TM in System Preferences but the off/on slider is gone. All I can do is turn off automatic backups.

Any advice?

MacBook Pro 15", 10.14

Posted on Feb 7, 2019 2:08 PM

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Answer 1

dialabrain

Level 10

136,133 points

Feb 7, 2019 2:11 PM in response to Kentuckienne

Unchecking the box is the same as off in the old slider.

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

136,133 points

Feb 7, 2019 2:33 PM in response to Kentuckienne

Outside of my knowledge base I'm afraid. I don't move partitions around for one thing. I also don't use SuperDuper!. I thought if you are going to restore one volume to another they have to be the same size, regardless of how much info is in them. That could be wrong though. Also, there seems to be an issue with how the source is formatted.

Maybe someone else will join in.

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Answer 3

lkrupp

Level 7

22,651 points

Feb 7, 2019 4:46 PM in response to Kentuckienne

I feel compelled to make a comment here about your backup strategy. Having multiple SuperDuper partitions and Time Machine on the same physical drive is beyond dangerous. If the drive itself fails you lose everything, all your backups, everything. I would not recommend this under any circumstances. It’s your data and your machine of course but think about it for a moment.

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Answer 4

Kentuckienne Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 8, 2019 7:31 AM in response to lkrupp

Ah, that's so true, but it isn't my only backup. I have the big disk so I do back up to it, but I also have two smaller external disks that I use for full backups. I keep one at home and the other in a safe deposit box. That way if the house burns down I still have something even if it's slightly out of date. Plus I back up offline using Backblaze, and photos also go to Google Photos and important docs to Dropbox. The local disk is more convenience than anything. I just wanted to preserve my existing TM backups by moving them to a different partition.

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Answer 5

Kentuckienne Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 7, 2019 2:22 PM in response to Kentuckienne

I went ahead and changed the TM backup disk to the first partition and renamed it. Then I tried to restore from the old TM partition (Backup, #3) to the first. Here's the error message I get.

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How do I turn off Time Machine in Mojave 10.14.3 ?

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