You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How to transfer Time Machine backups

Hi,


although there are some answers on this topic, they don't seem to work on macOS Monterey.


I would like to copy Time Machine backups from one external drive to another larger one and use the new drive for my backups from now on. How do I do this?


Some problems I encountered with other suggestions are

  • When using cp -R via command line to manually copy the Backups.backupdb folder, it produces a lot of "cannot find file: Backups.backupdb/..." errors.
  • When I copy the Backups.backupdb folder manually, I cannot add it as a Time Machine drive afterwards because it wants to format the drive and then the data is gone (even if previously formatted in MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS).
  • When I try to use the "Restore" option in Disk Utility to clone the volume, the process fails with the message "Operation not permitted".
  • In general, I cannot increase the size of a Time Machine partition since it is marked as macOS core storage.


Do you have a suggestion on how to avoid this?

Thank you in advance!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 17, 2022 6:40 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 19, 2022 2:15 AM

Thanks a lot for your help!


How it worked in the end was:

  • in the Mac settings, disable automatic backup and add the new hard drive as Time Machine drive so that the drive is correctly formatted etc.
  • remove the drive from Time Machine again
  • copy over the Backups.backupdb folder (cp -R should not be used here because of the symlinks, instead I used cmd+C, option+cmd+shift+V for exact copy)
  • add the drive in Time Machine again

Similar questions

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 19, 2022 2:15 AM in response to kai2718

Thanks a lot for your help!


How it worked in the end was:

  • in the Mac settings, disable automatic backup and add the new hard drive as Time Machine drive so that the drive is correctly formatted etc.
  • remove the drive from Time Machine again
  • copy over the Backups.backupdb folder (cp -R should not be used here because of the symlinks, instead I used cmd+C, option+cmd+shift+V for exact copy)
  • add the drive in Time Machine again

Feb 17, 2022 6:52 AM in response to kai2718

kai2718 wrote:

• Hi,

although there are some answers on this topic, they don't seem to work on macOS Monterey.

I would like to copy Time Machine backups from one external drive to another larger one and use the new drive for my backups from now on. How do I do this?

Some problems I encountered with other suggestions are
When using cp -R via command line to manually copy the Backups.backupdb folder, it produces a lot of "cannot find file: Backups.backupdb/..." errors.
• When I copy the Backups.backupdb folder manually, I cannot add it as a Time Machine drive afterwards because it wants to format the drive and then the data is gone (even if previously formatted in MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS).
• When I try to use the "Restore" option in Disk Utility to clone the volume, the process fails with the message "Operation not permitted".
• In general, I cannot increase the size of a Time Machine partition since it is marked as macOS core storage.

Do you have a suggestion on how to avoid this?
Thank you in advance!



restore items backed up with Time Machine

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple ...




Transfer Time Machine backups from one backup disk to another

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202380 —(seems to have been removed: try the 2/26/2021 archive

https://web.archive.org/web/20210226200806/https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202380


—or try https://www.macworld.com/article/228862/how-to-transfer-a-time-machine-backup-to-another-backup-drive.html )

How to transfer Time Machine backups

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.