Can't move Old Time Machine Backup to new drive

ElRay2676 wrote:

There's plenty of web pages that state that an old Time Machine backup can be copied to a new Time Machine drive. Has this be disabled in 10.15.4/Catalina?

I've shut off Time Machine, rebooted and even unlocked the new Time Machine drive in the "Get Info" window, but when I try to copy the old Time Machine backup folder to the new Time Machine Drive, I get the error:

Operation Can't be Completed Because Backup Items Can't be Modified 

Is there a way under 10.15.4/Catalina to move an old backup to a new drive? Can this be done in terminal? Logged in as 'root'?

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support

If your new Mac inherits your backup history - Apple Support

If you need to create a new backup from Mac—

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-you-need-to-create-a-new-backup-mh34042/10.14/mac/10.15

ElRay2676 wrote:

There's plenty of web pages that state that an old Time Machine backup can be copied to a new Time Machine drive. Has this be disabled in 10.15.4/Catalina?

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

The drive I want to consolidate the backs-ups on already has more than one pre-Catalina Time Machine archive and I really don't need three 4TB drives setting around with less than 1 TB used on each.

Why not? All drives will fail eventually. When your consolidated disk fails, it takes all the backups with it. Just start using the new drive. And then keep using the old ones too. You never hear stories of people expressing their regrets over having too many backups.

I never had a drive wear out, but I have smashed a few. The rate they have progressed over the last 10 years the old ones usually still work but they are 30GB and not big enough to hold anything significant.

Minimum you should have is two weekly bootable clones off site, and a fresh Catalina TM drive. This on top of the old Mojave backup drives.

I think you will end up with unusable backups.

My advice is keep the old backup safe and start afresh on the new disk.