Mac – How to temporarily relocate the Time Machine backup files

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I have a 1TB WD My Passport external hard drive that I've been using for Time Machine backups. I recently had an issue with it where I can't save to it anymore because it was corrupted. The way to fix it is to reformat the drive completely so I'm trying to copy everything on the drive over to my cloud (BitCasa or Dropbox), reformat the drive and then move everything back.

I have my Music folder on the hard drive and I've been able to move that successfully. When I try to move the Time Machine backups it says:

The volume is the wrong format for a backup.

I know that hard drives have to be 'formatted' to the Mac in order to be used for Time Machine backups but is there a way to just move the backup files around so I can get them off the hard drive. Thanks for your help!

Best Answer

If your drive is corrupted in any way you probably don't want to use it for backup purposes any more, unless the data is not of great value to you.

Apple does not allow an easy transfer from drive to drive regarding backups. I think this is due to the way TimeMachine works (As stated in this apple discussion thread)

Now how to do it anyways ? I would simply use command line power. If you're the admin of the computer, you can simply open Terminal and do something along this:

  • sudo -s
  • rsync -avhW --progress < Drag and drop external Hard Drive here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here >

or

  • mv < Drag and Drop backup folder here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here, ending with a "/">

sudo -s puts you in the super-admin position, so you have full access to the system

rsync will sync the content and you can stop and continue at any time. mv will move the whole thing at once.

You should be able to drag and drop any folder within the backup to any folder on you internal/other external drive. Only the "Machine.backup" folder is protected.

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