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Time Machine failing .. how can old backups be moved to a new drive?

If Disk Utility > First Aid reports that the Time Machine drive is failing and files need to be moved to a new drive ASAP, can this be done just by dragging the single Backups.backupdb folder on the old drive to the new one?

An article here suggests the process is far more complex (including setting 'Ignore ownership on this volume') but I can't help wondering whether the simple drag and drop won't achieve the same result.

Thanks.

Posted on Aug 18, 2020 2:08 PM

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,014 points

Posted on Aug 20, 2020 4:44 AM

Not sure why you find that complicated.

The drive you are going to use must be formatted correctly, otherwise it won't work as a Time Machine disk.

Just about any drive you buy will be formatted for Windows which won't work at all until you format it for use on a Mac.

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Time Machine failing .. how can old backups be moved to a new drive?

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