I was using a very large backup drive for my systems backups. I would like to use a different drive and move my existing backups to that drive. However I have no permissions on that drive. So I can access all the files but I cannot copy them to a new drive. Any solutions? It says You can only read.
iMac, OS X 10.10
Not sure why you wouldn't have permissions on this other drive if you originally partitioned & formatted it for Time Machine use.
EDIT: I see that John Galt has responded and he is correct. My link below is no longer valid. Sorry about that.
See if the following support article can help:
Not sure why you wouldn't have permissions on this other drive if you originally partitioned & formatted it for Time Machine use.
EDIT: I see that John Galt has responded and he is correct. My link below is no longer valid. Sorry about that.
See if the following support article can help:
Apple no longer supports transferring TM backups from one storage device to another, but it's not a significant concern. I recommend that you add the additional drive to TM. It will continue to back up to both devices.
Just remember old and "expired" backups get deleted automatically.
Here is the issue. I have a late 2015 iMac. Unfortunately I upgraded it software to Big Sir (this happened back in February of this year). This is the computer where all the backups are from. Big Sir caused a split fusion drive on my Mac. I got on with Apple support and they walked me through recovering the hard drive and then using a backup drive to restore everything I had on their prior to the Big Sir upgrade. Every time I went through recovery mode to try to get rid of the fusion drive the way they told me to it would still revert to a split drive. So I went out and bought a new computer instead of playing with the 2015 drive. The drive that I had backed everything up on was 8tb and I could really use that drive to backup some of my other external hard drives. I am trying to go to my old computer to restore it but now when I go to recovery mode on my 2015 computer it will let me type one letter every 30 seconds so it is impossible to work with. I really don't want to waste an 8 TB drive for 100 gig worth of backups but I don't want to loose what I have backed up either.
No; as is their practice Apple just quietly deleted any reference to their old "transfer" instructions. However, I can find no reason for them not to work as they always have. In fact I have done it and it works, but when something is no longer officially supported it just means "you're on your own." Those backups might fail at any time, but then again so can anything.
You can find Apple's previous instructions on the Wayback Machine but the Lifewire article explains it just as well.
I totally understand and don't want to dissuade you from trying to move the backups. Try it, but really large TM backups with their hundreds of millions of little files become unwieldy for a number of reasons.
You won't lose anything by setting that existing backup aside. In fact it'll be less likely to fail. Besides, it is literally impossible to predict when a macOS update or upgrade causes TM to reclaim an enormous amount of what you may have thought was safely backed up. All TM guarantees is one and only one complete, restorable system backup. If that means it has to delete five years of older backups, so be it.
I really don't like Fusion Drive.
I agree with you on Fusion drive. Even apple told me that my computer should not be using that. But I didn't create it, Big Sir did. Frustrating. I just set up an appointment to bring it in. It is a great computer I just didn't have time to try to figure out how to get it to work and because of the pandemic Apple would not allow me to bring the computer in.
Thank You for your suggestions.
I am trying to go to my old computer to restore it but now when I go to recovery mode on my 2015 computer it will let me type one letter every 30 seconds so it is impossible to work with.
Getting off topic, that's a sign of hard disk failure. Specifically, the spinning drive portion of Fusion Drive – always its weak point.
Not a conclusive and 100% certain indication of failure, just a typical symptom.
Hi John,
Did Apple provide an updated support article on this. I see that the reference I provided is no longer valid, yet there is an Oct 2021 Lifewire article that still says this can be done.
Frustrating indeed 😕
Copy Time machine backup drives and retain old backups.
