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Can I transfer Time Machine data from two separate hard drives into one new one?

I'm using a MacBook Pro as my primary computer. My 500 gig Time Capsule filled up a year or so ago, so I stopped using it with Time Machine for awhile so I could keep the data from those old back-ups. There were a number of things I deleted from my computer's very limited hard drive after they were backed up to the Time Capsule. I got a 1T external USB drive last year to use as my "filing Cabinet" to store files I didn't necessarily need all the time or that were filling up my small laptop hard drive--including my iTunes library--all organized in a way that made it relatively easy for me to find what I needed, even if I didn't remember exactly when I'd filed it or what I'd called it. I got another 1 terabyte external (portable) drive last July and dedicated it to TimeMachine backups and labeled it "TimeMachine".


Over the last couple of weeks, my friend has been helping me upgrade to Yosemite and clean up my laptop hard drive. Last week he cloned my laptop hard drive to a new 1T hard drive and I exchanged it for my old drive in my computer today. All good.


Here's the issue. We replaced my Time Capsule hard drive with a 1 terabyte drive with the idea of transferring the data from the old Time Capsule (500G) drive and the newer USB 1T "TimeMachine" compact drive to the new 1T Time Capsule drive and beginning using the latter for my Time Machine backups going forward. Originally he thought we could copy everything from each of my external drives (the old 500gig drive from my Time Capsule, the USB "TimeMachine" drive I've been using since July, and the "file cabinet" files) to my computer in their own folders and then start regular TimeMachine backups to the new Time Capsule drive, thus preserving all my old data and making regular backups going forward. The "file cabinet" data was no problem at all, but when I tried to copy my USB "TimeMachine" data to my computer, I was unable to. My friend found instructions for transferring old TimeMachine data to a new TimeCapsule, but I don't know if I can transfer the data from two separate disks to the new TimeCapsule drive. I'm afraid that one set of data will supersede the other and either my newer backups or my old ones will be lost if I try to transfer both.


Are my fears justified or is there a way to insure that no such problem will occur? Of course, my data will still be on those two older drives, but that won't do me a lot of good if I can't access it when I need to. Also, the 1T drive now belongs to my friend; he used a brand new drive he'd bought for himself for my new internal hard drive and plans to take my 1T "TimeCapsule" drive in exchange, once the data has been transferred, so he will, of course, erase that drive.

Time Capsule 802.11n (1st Gen), iOS 8.1.3

Posted on Feb 26, 2015 5:28 AM

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4 replies

Feb 26, 2015 4:42 PM in response to Merry48

My head is spinning.. and I keep off the suds these days..


You have files and sources going in so many directions it is hard to keep track.


There are a huge number of things happening.


Biggest issue is that old TC files must be kept separate from files on the new TC.. and if the backup is named the same that will be a problem.. so I strongly recommend you change the computer share name.. This maybe the wrong time to do it.. as I not quite sure if you started your new TM backup to the TC or not.. if you change name it will start a new backup.. so it might be better to simply rename the old TC sparsebundle.


Access to sparsebundles is a bit harder but it will be there.


The current backup on the 1TB external drive can be copied to the TC but cannot be used from there..


As your friend discovered TM uses different methods of backup on local and network drives.


I'm afraid that one set of data will supersede the other and either my newer backups or my old ones will be lost if I try to transfer both.

This is easy to work around with different file names or directories.


The time to extract the files you are missing from the old backup is NOW..


So please think about it.. wasting a lot of space by storing an entire backup when perhaps 10GB is all the data that you need.. is wasteful.


It is better to really think.. if you want the old backups.. buy another external drive.. you can buy a 4TB Standard USB3 external drive for maybe $150 in the US.. And on that you can simply accumulate everything in separate directories.. do not waste the space on your new TC with 500GB of files you will never use.. or even more from the second backup on the external drive which is hard to access. (maybe impossible) on a network drive.

Mar 1, 2015 4:59 AM in response to LaPastenague

Your head is spinning!? Mine has been so much I'm surprised I'm still able to stand! :-)


Thanks for your reply. It explained the problem with the external USB "Time Machine" drive. I explained it, in turn, to my friend, who's never used Time machine, though he's studied and worked with and repaired Macs for awhile and did a lot of research on his own time. One correction I need to make to my post, which will make my strategy make a bit more sense: my new Time Capsule drive is 4T, not 1T.


I figured it would save time and energy if I were able to transfer the original 500gig TimeCapsule volume in toto, rather than try to go through nearly 5 years of backups! This is especially the case, since I was periodically deleting a lot of things that I wanted to keep, or great chunks of mail I hadn't yet sorted to free up space on my hard drive (which was only 250G), knowing they were backed up on my TimeCapsule. (I'm embarrassed to admit I'm bad about keeping up with real-world mail, filing and reading matter, too.) I also had a lot of files (including teaching materials, correspondence and records) from previous machines (some of which, I fear, may not be readable anymore, unless there's some conversion program, but if there isn't one now, there may be eventually). The newer (USB) Time Machine drive has less on it, since I started using it only last July, and there probably aren't that many things I have to recover from it, since I had already started using my "File Cabinet" drive. I'm not sure how to determine that, or if I can still access and recover those files, now that I have the new network Time Machine drive set up...

We had already started the initial complete backup (which was supposed to include the two USB drives) to the new TC network drive when I posted my question and it finished Saturday at about half past noon. I just went into Time Machine to see what was there and what it looked like. It doesn't show anything on the desktop on any of the backup screens. It shows the icons on the left side of the screen, including those for the external drives. I couldn't find my mail files, but then I found a number of folders labeled "Mail" and tried to see what was in one or two of them, but one had only a folder labeled VM and a couple of others were apparently so stuffed (I'm guessing) that the little time marker just kept going around and around trying to estimate the size. (My mail is the worst!) I gave up for now. The File Cabinet Drive shows its files when I open it, but the "Time Machine" USB drive shows only an apparently empty folder labeled "Seagate Dashboard" which I thought I deleted a long time ago. Apparently that can't be deleted, only hidden, even when you turn the drive into a Time Machine drive. (It kept popping back up when my friend was exploring my machine and helping me clean things up before upgrading.)


Should we be able to bring up the old (500G) Time Capsule Drive to rename it using a SATA to FireWire harness and then copy the whole thing to the new Time Capsule drive? If it's on the Desktop and I don't tell Time Machine to exclude it from backups, will it just automatically back it up? Will both volumes or directories (which is the right term?) show up when I open Time Machine? Or will we have to partition the new drive somehow--is that even possible? (I could swear I did that when I first got the Time Capsule and backed up my eMac--which may be why I had two different user names on my computer, though it may just be because I had some OS9 programs held over from the eMac when I first got my MacBook Pro in 2009?) It took so long to do the initial backup, I'd hate to have to do it all again! (Though without the USB "Time Machine" drive, this time--or, for that matter, the "File Cabinet" one, either, which is redundant.)

Hope I haven't confused you even more!

Apr 8, 2015 3:03 PM in response to Merry48

Should we be able to bring up the old (500G) Time Capsule Drive to rename it using a SATA to FireWire harness and then copy the whole thing to the new Time Capsule drive?

You can copy a whole sparsebundle from one drive to another. That is not a problem. Whether you can access the sparsebundle is something you should test before you even start though.


If it's on the Desktop and I don't tell Time Machine to exclude it from backups, will it just automatically back it up?

All drives you plug into the Mac are excluded by default.. you must include them. So no problems there.. but I hope I am understanding the question.


Will both volumes or directories (which is the right term?) show up when I open Time Machine?

No, Time Machine will only open what it is told to open... or its backup default location.


You can force Time Machine to open alternative/old/no longer used backups by (now I have a problem as things have changed somewhat in Yosemite and I consider it alpha release software at this point in time). The old method was to right click on the TM icon and select a different TM backup. easy. Yosemite seems to have made easy stuff harder.


Here it is on my current computer.. clearly not Yosemite.. Right click on the TM icon in the dock.. select Browse Other Time Machine Disks.. And supply the info of where that is located. Easy. If you cannot figure it out one of the other posters here (with more patience than me for Yosemite) will help you.


User uploaded file


Or will we have to partition the new drive somehow--is that even possible?

I am getting more lost as I go down the list.. but the TC disk cannot be partitioned.


If you have included all those USB drives in the new backup on a Time a Time Capsule.. you have made life rather hard because now your files are stored another layer deeper than they were.


So to open a file from a disk you need to open the sparsebundle.. then dig down to the drive in question and then dig down to the backup.. and all of this means Time Machine has to work perfectly which is Yosemite is a very big ask.


I thought you wanted to just backup your old drives to central location.. which means copying the files to a separate folder on the Time Capsule.


One correction I need to make to my post, which will make my strategy make a bit more sense: my new Time Capsule drive is 4T

😢 It makes it much harder.. and I have to pose a real question of long term .. if you have put a 4TB drive in a Gen1 TC.. did you also replace its power supply because I can assure you the drive might be ok but the TC itself will not last forever.. and what happens when it dies. The Gen1 power supply is already well beyond its normal life span and the vast majority are dead. When the backup device is unreliable and the backups on it are made that much harder to get access to.. is this a great plan??


If you are going to consolidate all your old files on one disk.. a task I find understandable. I have done much the same albeit the usefulness of files made on emac running OS9 may be questioned. A disk lying in the bottom of a draw is a more appropriate place for them.


You want those files as easily accessible as possible (at the point of recovery) and not buried inside a sparsebundle.. particularly not a sparsebundle from the old TC disk buried inside a new sparsebundle.. keep files as accessible as possible as you can run searches.. and that is best done on a USB 3 (or faster ie thunderbolt) drive plugged into a new(ish) computer.. not network. And since the files are not being accessed on a daily/weekly or even monthly or yearly basis.. keeping them in actively running TC network storage.. I would say is a waste of space. That is only my opinion of course.. you might consider it highly important that files you will never look at are available any time of day or night when the urge comes to track down that elusive pimpernel email you sent 10 years ago... but I find it hard to justify. What the case.. the problem with TM and things like Mail is you cannot search it.. you must restore the whole library/files/program even before you can access it.. that makes file recovery out of a sparsebundle double step process.


So.. summary.


If you want to store files on the 4TB drive in the TC.. that is not a great strategy but it can work.. simply create a folder named.. OldFilesEMac for instance.. and do a simple copy and paste of all the file to that location. Do not use TM.. Since you have already used TM.. and from what I am reading you have already done the backup with the external drives included.. then you are going to end up needing to erase the TC and start over.. which you may not be prepared to do.. which is fair enough. (I am coming across as overbearing school master.. apologies).


TM is to backup your main OS and current files.. not files from 10-20years ago.


Please do read the issues involved in Pondini..


See his FAQ. I recommend you read through Q14-17 so you understand what is involved in recovery.


http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html


I also recommend you read the first couple of articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html

Particularly so you understand the complexity of Time Machine.


And the articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html


Particularly Q3 on mixing data and backups on a TC.


I wish I could spend an hour or two face to face and work it out.. the whole strategy to do this.. !!

Apr 8, 2015 3:03 PM in response to LaPastenague

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain so much to me. My mind still boggles, but that's my problem, not your fault. I appreciate the links to the other articles. I ran out of time when I could focus on this, was pulled away to other, more current problems and activities and my friend had to move on to a more lucrative job, so I haven't been back to working this whole thing out. I gave up, for the time being, trying to access those old files or looking for other workarounds, which is why I didn't reply to you or comment sooner. It's a suspended problem that must take a back seat to others at present. So much to do and so little time! :-)

Can I transfer Time Machine data from two separate hard drives into one new one?

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