Copying backups to a new harddrive

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Copying backups to a new harddrive

Hi,
I'm hoping someone can help with a Time Machine backup transfer problem.
My original Time Machine harddrive I had running was a 750GB external drive. I recently copied the Backups.backupdb folder from the 750GB drive onto an external 3TB drive following the instructions from the Apple site 'http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427'
The files all copied fine and have sat with Time Machine off until my new 1.5TB drive arrived specifically as my new Backup drive.
Now though, when I try and copy the folder Backup.backupdb from the 3TB external to my new 1.5TB drive I can an error saying that there is not enough room to copy the folder?!?

I did I Get Info check on the folder and it says it's over 12TB in size?

Totally confused on how I can copy my backups to the new drive?

Any ideas?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Mar 13, 2011 12:51 PM

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Answer 1

Dalamser

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Mar 13, 2011 2:59 PM in response to Kembo

Strange, sorry no definitive answer, just some ideas to explore:

Given your disc is only 3TB in size it clearly can't have 12TB of data on it, especially as its just a copy of a 750GB disc! This suggests that the same file listed in more than one place (Time Machine uses +hard links+ to do this) is being counted multiple times, it should only be counted once...

Things to look at: a reboot for starters... How are your drives formatted? Should really be HFS+, HFS Extended, either with or without Journaling. If you are happy using Terminal what does +du -h+ give for the source folder? If it doesn't produce an answer less than 750GB (size of your original disc) something is very wrong. If it does you could try using ditto in Terminal to copy the folder, it maintains hard links.

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Answer 2

Király

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Mar 13, 2011 3:12 PM in response to Kembo

I have done this successfully several times using Disk Utility instead of Finder.

Use Disk utility's Restore button. Drag your current TM drive to the Source field, and the new 3TB drive to Destination. Check the "erase destination" box. Then click Restore.

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Answer 3

Kembo Author

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Mar 13, 2011 7:10 PM in response to Király

Thanks Kiraly,
Unfortunately I can't do this via Disk Utility as this will only work if the current drive that is holding my backups is being used as the backup drive (holding no other data).
I had to borrow the drive from a friend simply to store and hold my TM backups folder, so there's already over 1.5TB of data on there (2.5 with my files!!), so I can't see a way of using Disk Utility.

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Answer 4

Kembo Author

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Mar 13, 2011 7:15 PM in response to Dalamser

Hi Dalamser,
Thanks for the ideas.
Both drives are formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled), just as the 750GB drive that was being used for the TM backups was.

I have tried via the Terminal route, but at first I was getting alot of Permission denied errors on the files trying to copy.
So I cancelled that operation, logged in as su and tried again. Now the Permission denied error has gone, but I'm getting a lot of 'Operation not permitted' errors showing.

I also did a du -h command on the Backups.backupdb folder, but it lists everything as individual files/folders sizes (and there's thousands of them). Is there a command to do it to a complete folder?

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Answer 5

Kembo Author

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Mar 13, 2011 7:59 PM in response to Kembo

Dalamser,
Just did a check on the folder size via Terminal and it says the size of the folder is 524GB which is about right.

All I need to do now is get that copied to the new drive without errors etc.

Thanks.

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Answer 6

Dalamser

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Mar 14, 2011 1:28 AM in response to Kembo

Try the Disk Utility route and then delete the extra stuff that has been copied.

Turns out that Get Info in the Finder does double count hard links, so the large size in the Finder is OK, du does not and that gave you a reasonable size.

Time Machine plays some tricks with ACLs which is what is tripping up ditto, the Finder understands this and copies everything OK - except in your case 😟

Make sure you have the same case sensitivity and journaling states on the two drives.

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