If you're like me after a year or two you may have outgrown your Time Machine backup and with Hard Drive prices dropping it's time to get a bigger hard disk to host your Time Machine backup. But starting a new time machine backup on a new hard disk means you lose the continuity with your old backups. Thankfully you can move an existing Time Machine backup from one hard drive to another. Here's how.
To stop excluding an item, such as an external hard drive, select the item and click the remove (–) button. If using Time Machine to back up to a network disk, you can verify those backups to make sure they're in good condition. Press and hold Option, then choose Verify Backups from the Time Machine menu.
Does Time Machine Clone The Hard Drive Control
1. Format the new Hard Drive as OSX Extended (Journaled) and make sure ‘ignore file permissions on this volume' is off.
2. Turn off Time Machine
Cloning a hard drive allows you to make a full and faithful copy of it, so that in the event that the original hard drive fails you can swap it out for the clone. This helps avoid the need to. The '2' refers to having backups in two different types of media (such as a clone and another Time Machine backup). The '1' pertains to having at least one backup source located off-site. Reduce Risks of Mac Failure by Cloning Its HD Now. There you have it, the most vital facts you need to know about Mac hard drive cloning. SATDOCK2REU3 USB 3.0 SATA Hard Drive Duplicator & Eraser Dock - Standalone 2.5/3.5in HDD & SSD Eraser and Cloner. Clone a 2.5in/3.5in SATA drive without a host computer connection, or dock the drives over USB 3.0 for easy access. When the copy is complete, now go back to the Time Machine system preferences and remove the prior drive from the Time Machine settings. Terraria win 10. Then add the new drive, and turn Time Machine back on.
3. Drag the Backups.backupdb from your old Time Machine Backup to your new Drive. (Yes it's that simple and it actually works – it's Apple's recommended way of doing it!) This may take literally a couple of days.
4. Xbox live store update time. Turn on Time machine and select your new drive.
You can read how to do this step by step in an article by Apple here: Transfer Time Machine Backups.
There's also a good article about this on c-net. They suggest you use the ‘Copy Exactly' feature but I did it without this (the way Apple suggested) and it worked fine.
Hard disks and partitions can either be backed up (or 'imaged') or 'cloned' (duplicated). So what are the differences and pros and cons for each option?
A hard drive backup
Does Time Machine Clone The Hard Drive Work
When backing up a hard drive the entire content of the selected drive or partition are backed up into a file (also known as an Image) on to the target location. By doing so, all data is saved into one single file. When carrying out a full backup of the system hard drive the entire operating system as well as all installed programs and settings are also saved. This file can also be protected or 'encrypted' with a password.
Pros:
Easy management as only one file contains the entire backup.
Providing the target disk is big enough, numerous backups can be saved simultaneously.
The backup file can be compressed and so uses less space. Default unzip program windows 10.
Cons:
In order to restore the system or data to a previous state or to access files and documents, the backup software is required.
Drive clone
When duplicating or cloning a drive a copy of the drive or partition is created directly to the target location. This means you get an immediate copy including the hard disk structure, i.e. the partition layout and split. A cloned disk or drive contains all the partitions from the source disk or drive.
Pros:
The data is copied directly to the target location and can be used and edited immediately.
A cloned system drive that contains the operating system can be mounted as a new drive and immediately booted.
Cons:
A clone needs more space because the partitions are immediately created on the target disk. For that reason it is not possible to compress or encrypt the data.
An incremental or differential clone is not possible.
Only one version of the duplicated data can be held at one time on a drive.
Recommendation:
Should the backup need to be created on a regular basis then we recommend the hard drive backup. This takes up less space and allows for the creation of incremental and differential backups afterwards.
If however you need a bootable spare drive in order to be up and running quickly after a crash and to reduce downtime then we recommend a clone or duplicate.
A combination of the two has proven over time to be the best practice: a regular hard drive backup for the daily data, then supplemented by a clone of the system drive in order to be up and running quickly in an emergency.