briwera
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Moving time machine backup to another drive

Hi

 

We have an iMac (2011, OS X 10.8.3) in the family with 4 users accounts.

Having done Time machine backup on an external WD 2Tb firewire hard drive which now requires a firewire update.

Anyway, I want to move the time machine backup (aprox. 500 Gb)  to another external hard drive and this gives me some the troubles.

 

I have already searched google for a suitable solution but without any luck so far.

 

The destination drive is a 4Tb external seagate firewire disk drive already partitioned with (Extended Journaled +) and the drive was set to NOT "ignore ownership" to allow the file copy process.

 

What I already tried:

 

  1. Logging in as "Myself" (having admin rights) and using Finder by drag and drop and giving admin password to allow the operation. But as the copy operation takes a long time and my iMac is as default set to "go to sleep" after 2 hours of passivity, the operation failed as the machine when to sleep after some time.
  2. Did the same opertion as 1) but changed the settings to NOT allow the machine to sleep. This time the problem was that my account was logged out in the middle of the operation which resulted in broken operation again. More that half of the 500 Gb was copied already but doing a compare operation revealed that data for the other user accounts was NOT copied??
  3. Tried the same operation with another File manager (ForkLift) but with same issue.
  4. Went to DiskUtilities to create a disk image of the time machine backup drive as a file the destination disk. The took 8 hours but looked very promising. As the image was done I started a validation of the image as I have read that sometimes DiskUtilities may "screw up" the image. No issues found :-) - but I cannot mount the image file ????
  5. Have also tried (but not completed) the good old Terminal command cp which should be both faster and (perhaps more reliable) but gave up as I'm afraid this again may be a failed operation.

 

Running the first operations 1) and 2) in Finder I notices both Error code -40 and -38 dialogs stopping the copy operations. No futher information and choosing OK had the operation continuing. What a strange way of helping the user?

 

I'm system developer and have been working with Windows machines for 20 years and I bought my iMac 2 years ago because I like the design of the machines and OS X UI. This switch has been mixture of happiness and frustration as "many" operations like this one is quite easy in Windows but (at least to me) very difficult on a Mac. I had the understanding the everything is just so much easier on a Mac.

 

What is going on?

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on May 17, 2013 1:59 AM

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briwera

Q: Moving time machine backup to another drive

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  • Helpful answers

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R May 17, 2013 2:21 AM in response to briwera
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    May 17, 2013 2:21 AM in response to briwera

    Can you explain more about the 'firewire' (?) update the 2 GB WD drive needs? What does it do & who distributes it?

     

    It's possible this is related to your issue.

  • by briwera,

    briwera briwera May 17, 2013 2:35 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 17, 2013 2:35 AM in response to R C-R

    It's a 2 TB drive.

     

    Actually I want to move the data to another disk for 2 reasons. To do the firmware update and clean up my stuff. The drive also contained a bunch of other data (aprox. 1TB) that I have already successfully moved to the same destination drive. I did this in ForkLift without any issues. This is very unlikely a bug in the drive itself.

     

    /B

  • by R C-R,Helpful

    R C-R R C-R May 17, 2013 4:02 AM in response to briwera
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    May 17, 2013 4:02 AM in response to briwera

    But what exactly is this firmware update? Does it affect the compatibility of the drive with OS X? Is it from Apple or WD or what?

     

    Under normal circumstances, even if the Mac goes to sleep during a file transfer, it should resume doing that when it wakes. It should also never log out a user during a file transfer. So something unusual is causing those things on your system.

     

    Also, as explained here Time Machine backups use hard links to save disk space so moving the TM backup to another drive may not work as expected if you use a copy utility that isn't aware of that.

     

    In fact, Apple recommends a very specific procedure for this, using a drag & drop Finder copy of the entire "backups.backupdb" folder from one drive to the other. If you haven't followed this procedure exactly as the article describes, I would try that.

  • by briwera,

    briwera briwera May 17, 2013 4:32 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 17, 2013 4:32 AM in response to R C-R

    Thanks for your reply.

     

    The firmware update is for the WD drive only and is not related to stability or compatibility issues on OS X.

    However, I searched this forum for a similar question and found dozens of people having issues moving a TM backup, so I'm aware this is not an easy task to accomplish. The links you mentioned is definitely a move in the right direction. I will start reading this weekend.

     

    My iMac was originally delivered with Lion and upgraded to Mountain Lion. I have a feeling that this could have an impact on the stability of my mac. Its just that these kind of problems (moving GB of files) is NEVER an issue on the Windows machines I am using in my day to day work. 2 days ago my mac just booted with a kernel panic error. To me that's the same as BSOD which according to many nice apple commercials (I'm a Mac and I'm a PC) and (Apple users) ONLY happens on Windows machines. I am using Finder a great deal. Perhaps it's mostly coming down to being Finder that's ready for a rewrite.

     

    I really want to be a happy Mac (OS X) user - but most of the time I am just frustrated with the many issues handling (what I believes are) simple tasks.

     

    /B

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R May 17, 2013 6:15 AM in response to briwera
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    May 17, 2013 6:15 AM in response to briwera

    Kernel panics are most often the result of user-added third party software that isn't fully compatible with the installed version of OS X. Typically, it is something that must add a kernel extension (a 'kext' file) to either /Library/Extensions/ or to /System/Library/Extensions/ to fully enable its functionality. An example is a third party device driver.

     

    If you have any of these things installed, it is a good idea to make sure they are the most up-to-date versions available from their developers & that the developer explicitly mentions that they are compatible with the OS X version you currently use.

     

    You should also do the same for any third party utilities you use, particularly those that interact with the file system or could change a file's metadata. Much of what makes OS X unique is the ever increasing use of metadata to do file operations intelligently without having to rely on user expertise for guidance. A utility that isn't aware of the latest changes to the metadata store can result in what should "just work" instead going very wrong, often with no clear indication of why it did.

     

    The second most common cause of a kernel panic is some kind of hardware issue, particularly one that involves a peripheral device. That's why Apple recommends disconnecting all non-essential peripherals when troubleshooting recurring KP's. But since you mentioned seeing just one KP it is likely that making sure all your software is up-to-date & compatible with Mountain Lion will make you happier about its behavior.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis May 17, 2013 2:15 PM in response to briwera
    Level 10 (208,044 points)
    Applications
    May 17, 2013 2:15 PM in response to briwera

    Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.

    Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root May 17, 2013 2:41 PM in response to briwera
    Level 9 (74,238 points)
    iTunes
    May 17, 2013 2:41 PM in response to briwera

    More information.

     

    Time Machine – Transfer Backup to a New Drive (2)

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R May 17, 2013 3:38 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    May 17, 2013 3:38 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Linc,

     

    In my experience it is best if possible not to use Disk Utility to duplicate (restore) a Time Machine volume to another drive if you want to continue using the same backup set instead of creating a new full backup on the new drive.

     

    That's because the erase & restore sometimes results in the existing backup set not being "connected" to the Mac on the new drive, which requires doing the tedious "reconnect" process described in Pondini's "Reconnecting" to your backups" to convince TM to keep adding incremental backups to it.

     

    I'm not sure how often this occurs or what causes it but the Snow Leopard or later Finder apparently does something that avoids this issue if you follow Apple's instructions exactly.

     

    Of course, if any of the backed up files are damaged, all bets are off.

  • by jparonson,

    jparonson jparonson Sep 3, 2013 9:19 AM in response to briwera
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 3, 2013 9:19 AM in response to briwera

    I too have had a problem copying the time machine file to a new drive. After two tries, I discovered that the

    finder app "Locum" had crashed. I have submitted the Locum crash log to apple and I am waiting for their reply.

    I am running Mountain Lion, 10.8.4.