Q: Disk Utility Restore of Time Machine Backup to New Drive - Owners Enabled: No
Apologies in advance for the length of my questions but I've been searching unsuccessfully for answers and think there are others that may have the same questions. Also thanks in advance for your help.
I needed to move my Time Machine backups from a 3TB drive to a new 4TB drive. I referenced this article: Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support but instead of dragging the Backups.backupdb folder from the 3TB to the 4TB drive, I used Disk Utility Restore to do so. This was based on advice from Linc Davis in this article: Time Machine Moved Backup don't open in a new drive.
I restored 1.9TB which took about 31 hours (USB 2.0). It appears to have been successful because I have been able to restore files from the 4TB Time Machine backup, but I notice some things that don't seem quite right. I've noted the technical details of the drives at the end of this question.
I need to reuse the 3TB drive but before I erase it, I want to be certain I have a good backup on the 4TB drive. I'd also prefer to not have to redo the restore because it takes so long but will if necessary. I've tried to research my questions below but cannot seem to find a good answer.
1. The original 3TB Time Machine drive shows Owners Enabled: Yes. The new 4TB Time Machine drive shows Owners Enabled: No in Disk Utility. Before I started the Restore, I unchecked the "Ignore ownership on this volume" per the 1st article above
- Should a Time Machine Backup drive be Owners Enabled: No or Yes?
- I can't seem to find a solid answer on what it should be or how to change it to Yes.
- If it should be Yes, how can I change it? I can "unlock" the permissions in Get Info but the "Ignore ownership on this volume" is no longer displayed.
2. The original 3TB Time Machine backups shows most permissions as: system = Read & Write, wheel = Read & Write, everyone = Read only. The new 4TB Time Machine backup shows most permissions as Dave(me) = Read & Write, staff = Read Only and everyone = Read Only.
- Which should it be for a Time Machine Backup? I would think the 3TB is correct.
- If it should system/wheel/everyone like the 3TB drive, how can I change it?
3. Using Disk Utility, the original 3TB Time Machine drive shows more files than the new 4TB Time Machine drive (see below). Using Get Info, I compared the most current Time Machine backup folders in the Backups.backupdb of each drive (i.e. the folders with the date/time stamp.). The backups of external drives were the same. However, I noticed that the backup of the internal hard drive (Crucial 512GB SSD) shows more 27,716 more items on the new 4TB backup than on the original 3TB backup. These additional items are in the Users folder (25,529), the Library folder (4) and the System folder (1,643)
- Does this make sense? I'm nervous that the original 3TB shows more files than the new 4TB. I would think with a Disk Utility Restore that they should be the same.
- Could Get Info show more items on the new 4TB than the original 3TB because the permissions are different?
4. I entered Time Machine's System Preferences and changed the backup disk from the 3TB to the new 4TB but did not run a backup. I noticed that Time Machine correctly shows the 4TB drive but shows Oldest Backup: None and Latest Backup: None. This seems very odd because the Backups.backupdb folder is on the 4TB drive.
- Why would the new 4TB drive not show the oldest and latest backup dates?
5. I tried to use Time Machine to restore files from the new 4TB drive to the original 3TB drive. When I select the 4TB drive in Finder then go into Time Machine, the 4TB become greyed out, the display changes to the internal hard drive's folders and I need to use Shift-Command-C to see the 4TB drive. From there I can select a backup folder and successfully restore it. (Incidentally, I can see the original 3TB drive and it's not greyed out).
- Is there a reason why the 4TB backup would be greyed out when I enter Time Machine?
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Seagate 3TB Time Machine Backup (Disk Utility Info)
Name : Time Machine Backups - Original
Type : Partition
Disk Identifier : disk2s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/Time Machine Backups - Original
File System : Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0/EHC1@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Universal Unique Identifier : removed
Capacity : 3 TB (3,000,248,999,936 Bytes)
Free Space : 1.07 TB (1,069,524,795,392 Bytes)
Used : 1.93 TB (1,930,724,204,544 Bytes)
Number of Files : 1,028,384
Number of Folders : 145,935
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 1
Western Digital 4TB Time Machine Backup (Disk Utility Info)
Name : Time Machine Backups
Type : Partition
Disk Identifier : disk1s2
Mount Point : /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
File System : Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0/EHC2@1A,7
Writable : Yes
Universal Unique Identifier : removed
Capacity : 4 TB (4,000,408,625,152 Bytes)
Free Space : 2.07 TB (2,072,978,022,400 Bytes)
Used : 1.93 TB (1,927,430,602,752 Bytes)
Number of Files : 1,028,330
Number of Folders : 145,738
Owners Enabled : No
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 2
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), iMac 2007, 4GB RAM
Posted on Nov 20, 2015 7:15 AM
Thanks Eric. I was unable to change the ownership with GetInfo. I executed the command and that took care of questions 1, 2, 3 and 5. I'm still testing some restores before I start a new Time Machine backup on the 4TB drive which should take care of question 4.
To finish this up, here's what I did to change Owners Enabled from No to Yes:
- Login as a user with Admin rights
- Open Applications/Terminal
- enter "diskutil list" at the $ prompt (without the quotes), note the drive and partition for which you want to enable the ownership. In my notes on Nov 20th above, it was disk1s2.
- enter "sudo diskutil enableOwnership /dev/diskxsy" (without the quotes) where x is the disk and y is the partition per the point above.
- you'll need to enter the password for the user with Admin rights
This will change the ownership, which you can check with Disk Utility.
Posted on Nov 21, 2015 5:39 PM