Comments on: Moving a Time Machine Backup to a Time Capsule

By: airmanchairman

airmanchairman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:25:06 +0000

Perfect execution – Disk Utility failed me as it repeatedly refused to mount the temporary sparse bundle created by Time Machine (“Resource temporarily unavailable”).

But SuperDuper scaled the enterprise neatly, and about 24 hours later I had migrated 165Gb of backups from August last year from my Maxtor 300Gb HDD to my spanking new 2Tb Time Capsule. All visible and reachable from Time Machine, w00t!

And this after my local Apple Store Geniuses told me it couldn’t be done…

By: Giancarlo Gomez

Giancarlo Gomez — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:37:54 +0000

Thank you so much for posting this. Just upgraded my Gen1 to a new Gen 4 TC and this was the last thing I needed for my Mac Mini Server which used an external drive unlike the other machines in the house.

By: TCGuy

TCGuy — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:25:56 +0000

Well it took me 3 tries but it worked. The first time my anti-virus scanner bombed the thing. I uninistalled sophos and tried again. The second time it overheated my iMac. So I installed derman fan control, cranked the fan speeds up, and it worked great. 250GB of data copying took about 20 hours. Thanks!!!

By: Sardonick

Sardonick — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:43:37 +0000

After killing myself for 5 days on the “proper” method, I used this one and it worked first time. It took just over 14 hours but worked like a charm. Thank you!!!

By: Michele

Michele — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:34:20 +0000

I did eventually copy my Sparsebundle to Superduper BUT I just couldn’t get it to work so I had to get help elsewhere & now I’m rocking

By: Al

Al — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 04:04:24 +0000

This is more complicated than it needs to be (for me at least)! I just dragged the one sparsebundle file itself from my external drive to the new time capsule. There was no increase in file size, no problems with hard links etc.. The only problem I had was that after I had copied the sparsebundle file and tried to go into Time Machine, I had to specifically mount the sparsebundle file at first because Time Machine couldn’t find it on it’s own. Then I did a “backup now”. This gave an error saying the sparsebundle was already in use. I unmounted the sparsebundle and tried “backup now” again. Now Time Machine found it and “remembers” where the sparsebundle file is and will automatically mount the sparsebundle when needed, just like before.

I have SuperDuper, and originally followed the instructions in this blog posting, however for whatever reasons, it just wouldn’t work for me (and took a LONG time as well). I had problems with a weird ‘OS X Boot’ partition showing up, time machine wouldn’t see the old backups etc. In the end, the good ‘ol drag and drop of the *single* sparsebundle file worked fine for me. I can appreciate all the effort required to write this up and send my thanks, however, I thought I’d add my experience with this incase someone else runs into the same thing I did.

By: Michele

Michele — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:10:18 +0000

I have managed to copy successfully with Superduper & in the under shared My TimeCapsule it now shows my previous Sparsebundle file when I double click,also in TIMEmachine system prefs pane it showing that I have the right amount available with the previous backups deducted & when I click the blue drive with the wifi icon it’s showing the previous Sparsebundle image & when I click on the mounted drive (TIMEmachine backups) on my desktop it shows my Sparsebundle image file inside it which is the previous amount but I’m having the same problem as (sl says) august 14th, It keeps failing when I try to backup & when I mount TIMEmachine I can’t see my previous backups?

Anyone can help me please. . THANKYOU

By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 02:43:16 +0000

PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU CAN HELP.?

I was told by mac forums to Archive my previous Sparsebundle image to my external hdrive ,so I did becoz I had sold the TimeCapsule & needed to ship it ,
So I then used Superduper to copy the archived Sparsebundle to my new larger TimeCapsule ,but now I have 2 folders when I double-click my TIMEmachine backups & my old Sparsebundle file is in the Archive folder NOT the backup.backupsdb. Folder. So I don’t know how to see all my old backups in the timeline of my new TimeCapsule .

ID REALLY APPRECIIATE SOME HELP – queenofcoins66@yahoo.co.uk is email AD I can be reached. THANKYOU

By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 02:29:53 +0000

Hi,can anyone help me out here? I have copied my older Sparsebundle file which contains all my old 500Gb TIMECAPSULE backups I saved /archived onto an external hardrive & used SUPERDUPER to copy the Sparsebundle image from my External HDrive to my new 1TB TIMECAPSULE BUT now I have 2 folders
1 called backups.backupdb. That’s empty & the other is my Sparsebundle copied with Superduper so which one do I use as I want to continue & see & access all my older backups in the new TIMECAPSULES Timeline. I’m stuck here? CAN SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE. Thanks.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:55:41 +0000

A much easier way, assuming that your original USB drive was of adequate size, do your backup on the USB drive, then plug the drive into your Time Capsule. Once your USB drive shows up on the Time Capsule, go to Time Machine Preferences and select the USB drive for your future backups.

Whilst granting that a USB drive is not as fast as a wired connection, it’s still faster than 300Mb/s 5GHz wireless, so will not affect a wifi backup speed. It also has the advantage that the sparsebundle will not take up the complete Time Capsule, so the internal drive is left for your normal files.

Finally if you need to do a major change backup, you can just plug the USB drive back into the Mac and re-set the preferences back to local.

Works for me.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:59:28 +0000

I have now simply copied the backups.backupdb folder from the old drive to the new sparsebundle.
First I have changed the access rights to RW.

It now seems to work perfectly.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 04:13:28 +0000

And as it happens, SuperDuper! is not so super at seeing the destination, the new target disk I just installed. It can open the sparseImage file I want to copy but can’t figure out where I want to put it. I can see it, rsync can see it, even the Finder can see it. So rsync looks to be my only option, without delving into more esoteric ideas (dd, hdiutil, &c.).

By: paul

paul — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 07:39:55 +0000

I am on this same path but wasted some time archiving the old backups to the new drive (250+ GB worth) before realizing the Time Capsule couldn’t use it that way. It wants to reform the drive for two small hidden partitions.

[insert multi-jointed profanity of your choice here]

So I am just using rsync (I’m more at ease in the Terminal that in the Finder) to do what I suspect SuperDuper will do. I’ll find out in the AM, I suppose.

This is so easy. From turning of the TC to firing it up with a new drive might be 10 minutes. Why I waited, I have no idea.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:55:13 +0000

Well, actually, I do encounter a problem…

Time Machine keeps prompting me that the backup can not be completed because the backup disk has changed…

Any idea anyone?

By: Jasper

Jasper — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:30:57 +0000

Perfect post. Works exactly as planned.
Thanks Matt!

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:56:23 +0000

I am transferring back-ups from an external drive to a new 1 TB Time Capsule, but I think I made a mistake.

On the same external drive I have my Time Machine back-ups, I also have my iTunes library along with some video folders. When I started the copying process, I selected to copy to TC the whole drive, didn’t realize that it also had these files.

My questions are: will they be erased from the original drive once they process is done? Will I be able to access them easily on my TC? Did I mess this up and do I have to start it all over again?

By: magrolino» Blog Archive » Some useful tools and links for OSX

magrolino» Blog Archive » Some useful tools and links for OSX — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:01:27 +0000

[...] I really like the fact that Time Machine keeps track of your files back in history, that means if you accidently delete ore overwrite something in the past and your backup is newer that that date, you can still go back in time and restore the file. I recently bought a Time Capsule so I would not have to manually attach the backup drive all the time, but there is no official way to move all your existing backups into the Time Capsule, you would have to start backing up from scratch. “But there is an app for that” Superduper for the rescue: http://www.unlikelywords.com/2009/01/05/moving-a-time-machine-backup-to-a-time-capsule/ [...]

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:24:03 +0000

Going to try this method.

Charles, the apple support bulletin covers going from external to external, or time capsule to time capsule…but NOT external to time capsule.

The external is formatted “journaled”, the TC Sparsebundle is formatted “case sensitive, journaled”. Not compatible. Just spent an hour on the phone with Apple. They are trying to figure it out. We’ll see.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:52:30 +0000

Thank you! My move didn’t succeed the first time so I had to buy SuperDuper! so I could copy the rest of the files.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:27:04 +0000

FYI,

Here’s Apple’s recommended way of achieving the same result:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Charles