Time machine back up files - can it be transferred?

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Time machine back up files - can it be transferred?

I wanted to transfer my time machine back up files from one external hard disc to an SSD one. I formatted the new SSD disc to APFS system but cannot find a way to transfer the back up files. I bought the new disc because there were online suggestions that I can move them simply in Finder. Then browsing some recent posts, I am beginning to wonder whether this is no longer the case? I have an iMac (2017) running Big Sur.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Apr 8, 2022 9:57 AM

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Answer 1

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Tesserax

Level 10

149,075 points

Apr 8, 2022 1:59 PM in response to akonbertieong

Sorry, but Apple does not provide a means to transfer a TM backup from one APFS-formatted drive to another. In theory, it may be doable via a low level duplication, but it looks like VikingOSX has already tried, and was unsuccessful. The reason is the way TM stores TM snapshots.

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Answer 2

Apr 8, 2022 12:36 PM in response to tbirdvet

I have not found any means via several approaches to transfer TM backups on an APFS drive to a larger, newly formatted APFS drive. Not via Finder, Disk Utility, SuperDuper!, rsync, ditto, or other method.

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Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

141,994 points

Apr 9, 2022 1:35 PM in response to VikingOSX

Apple used to support transferring TM backups from one device to another. They don't any more.

For reference here is the (archived) Support document: Transfer Time Machine backups from one backup disk to another (archived). That method (using the Finder) was incredibly slow, so I always preferred using Disk Utility Restore which took only a few hours at most. Unfortunately not even that works any more.

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