Transferring Time Machine Backup Between Two Hard Drives

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Transferring Time Machine Backup Between Two Hard Drives

I've been backing up my Macbook for years onto a 400GB partition of a Seagate external hard drive using Time Machine. I recently got a new 2TB Seagate external hard drive, and would like to create a second back up on a 500GB partition of it. The older Seagate still holds backups from over a year ago, and I'd like to transfer all of those backups to the new hard drive too.

I tried using Apple's method (Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support)), all seemed well until I went into Time Machine and backed up the new 2TB hard drive for the first time. For some reason, it deleted all backups I had just copied over from the older hard drive, and only kept about a month worth of backups. I know it is not a space issue, because I partitioned 100GB more on this newer hard drive than I did on the older hard drive.

Any ideas?

I'm currently running El Capitan 10.11.6 on a mid 2012 Retina if that influences anything.

MacBook Pro with Retina display

Posted on Oct 18, 2016 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,023 points

Oct 18, 2016 11:13 AM in response to nfgluvr

Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with Time Machine. This is an extensive site with most everything you may need for using Time Machine. You will not find a better resource for Time Machine in one location. Due to the passing of James Pondini the site is no longer being updated. Therefore, some of the information may be a little outdated.

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Answer 2

nfgluvr Author

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8 points

Oct 18, 2016 11:27 AM in response to Kappy

I viewed the site, but it looks like his method is the same as Apple's method, which did not work. The files copied fine, but when Time Machine was turned back on and I added the new hard drive to Time Machine, it began the first backup and erased everything transferred except backups from one month ago. The older hard drive has 100GB less in its backup partition than the newer hard drive and stores backups from last October so I'm not sure why Time Machine deleted all of the older backups on the new hard drive.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

685,341 points

Oct 18, 2016 11:33 AM in response to nfgluvr

Try booting into the Recovery Partition (command - R on a restart) and select the drive in Disk Utility, then Edit/Restore and select your drive in Restore from. This will likely reformat the external drive erasing all data.

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Answer 4

nfgluvr Author

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Oct 18, 2016 11:42 AM in response to Eric Root

So the hard drive that I want to restore would be the new hard drive, while the hard drive I want to restore FROM is the older hard drive with more backups, correct?

Do I need to tell Time Machine to stop using the newer drive for backups before I do this and then re-connect it after it's restored or do I still keep both hard drives connected in Time Machine? I have Time Machine off currently but both drives are still displayed.

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Answer 5

Eric Root

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685,341 points

Oct 19, 2016 9:34 AM in response to nfgluvr

Yes.

Turn Time Machine off while you are doing this.

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Answer 6

nfgluvr Author

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Oct 19, 2016 8:06 PM in response to Eric Root

It looks like that solution did work, so that's progress! But I might've discovered a new problem. When I backed up the new hard drive for the first time in Time Machine, it was showing duplicates of both disks under Time Machine preferences. I removed each of the duplicates but it still shows duplicate drives under "Available Disks" when selecting a disk to remove or add. Is this correct or is this a new issue? I don't remember a duplicate showing under "Available Disks" when I was using only one hard drive but I could be wrong.

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Answer 7

Eric Root

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685,341 points

Oct 20, 2016 7:22 AM in response to nfgluvr

Start with A4 in the 1st linked article.

Time Machine Troubleshooting

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Answer 8

nfgluvr Author

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8 points

Oct 25, 2016 10:05 AM in response to Eric Root

I reset Time Machine as A4 said but still seeing duplicate drives under the "Available Disks" section. Is this normal? I've seen some people that have their already selected hard drives show up in "Available Disks", and others that don't have them show up.

I'm not terribly concerned about it because other than that Time Machine seems to be working fine, I'm just worried that the duplicates may be showing that I have corrupted external hard drives or something of that nature.

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