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How to transfer Time Machine backups

Hi,


although there are some answers on this topic, they don't seem to work on macOS Monterey.


I would like to copy Time Machine backups from one external drive to another larger one and use the new drive for my backups from now on. How do I do this?


Some problems I encountered with other suggestions are

  • When using cp -R via command line to manually copy the Backups.backupdb folder, it produces a lot of "cannot find file: Backups.backupdb/..." errors.
  • When I copy the Backups.backupdb folder manually, I cannot add it as a Time Machine drive afterwards because it wants to format the drive and then the data is gone (even if previously formatted in MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS).
  • When I try to use the "Restore" option in Disk Utility to clone the volume, the process fails with the message "Operation not permitted".
  • In general, I cannot increase the size of a Time Machine partition since it is marked as macOS core storage.


Do you have a suggestion on how to avoid this?

Thank you in advance!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 17, 2022 6:40 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 19, 2022 2:15 AM

Thanks a lot for your help!


How it worked in the end was:

  • in the Mac settings, disable automatic backup and add the new hard drive as Time Machine drive so that the drive is correctly formatted etc.
  • remove the drive from Time Machine again
  • copy over the Backups.backupdb folder (cp -R should not be used here because of the symlinks, instead I used cmd+C, option+cmd+shift+V for exact copy)
  • add the drive in Time Machine again

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4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 19, 2022 2:15 AM in response to kai2718

Thanks a lot for your help!


How it worked in the end was:

  • in the Mac settings, disable automatic backup and add the new hard drive as Time Machine drive so that the drive is correctly formatted etc.
  • remove the drive from Time Machine again
  • copy over the Backups.backupdb folder (cp -R should not be used here because of the symlinks, instead I used cmd+C, option+cmd+shift+V for exact copy)
  • add the drive in Time Machine again

Feb 17, 2022 6:52 AM in response to kai2718

kai2718 wrote:

• Hi,

although there are some answers on this topic, they don't seem to work on macOS Monterey.

I would like to copy Time Machine backups from one external drive to another larger one and use the new drive for my backups from now on. How do I do this?

Some problems I encountered with other suggestions are
When using cp -R via command line to manually copy the Backups.backupdb folder, it produces a lot of "cannot find file: Backups.backupdb/..." errors.
• When I copy the Backups.backupdb folder manually, I cannot add it as a Time Machine drive afterwards because it wants to format the drive and then the data is gone (even if previously formatted in MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS).
• When I try to use the "Restore" option in Disk Utility to clone the volume, the process fails with the message "Operation not permitted".
• In general, I cannot increase the size of a Time Machine partition since it is marked as macOS core storage.

Do you have a suggestion on how to avoid this?
Thank you in advance!



restore items backed up with Time Machine

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple ...




Transfer Time Machine backups from one backup disk to another

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202380 —(seems to have been removed: try the 2/26/2021 archive

https://web.archive.org/web/20210226200806/https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202380


—or try https://www.macworld.com/article/228862/how-to-transfer-a-time-machine-backup-to-another-backup-drive.html )

How to transfer Time Machine backups

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