Backing up Time Machine failed

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Level 2

230 points

Backing up Time Machine failed

I attempted to copy my Time Machine backup to a new, larger hard drive by dragging the Backups.backupdb folder from the existing drive to the new drive in accordance with these instructions from Apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5096?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

If I do so, after a long process of counting files, I get this error message:

The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred. (error code -50)

No good result from a Google search.

What to do next?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), iPhone 5

Posted on Mar 29, 2014 9:12 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

YeOldMacFan

Level 3

820 points

Mar 29, 2014 9:28 AM in response to Ralphjh

Why not just set up and start a new Time Machine backup on the new drive?

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Answer 2

Ralphjh Author

Level 2

230 points

Mar 29, 2014 9:44 AM in response to YeOldMacFan

I could do that but not until I diagnose the problem.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

Mar 29, 2014 9:55 AM in response to Ralphjh

Try using Disk Utility/Restore to move the backup. It seems to work better than a Finder copy.

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Answer 4

Ralphjh Author

Level 2

230 points

Mar 30, 2014 8:40 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks to both responders for useful answers. Although I did not use either, probably both would work in the end. What I actually did was to boot into a partition containing an older OS (Snow Leopard) and doing a drag-copy from there. It took awhile (1 TB of data) but it worked and the new 3 TB Time Machine containing the old backups was recognized as the new Time Machine after returning to Mavericks.

Why a Finder drag-copy did not work in Mavericks, I’ll never know, but this is not the first “negative” that I encountered since upgrading to Mavericks.

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