Mac – move a volume from one computer to another in Time Machine

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I am slowly migrating from an older Mac Pro to a MacBook Air. Both machines are backed up to two different 2TB drives using Time Machine. Recently I decided that I wanted to make the extensive data I have on my older Mac Pro more available to my MacBook Air, so I bought a 1TB portable drive which I can keep with me.

I moved approx. 430GB of data onto the portable drive ('SideCarlson'). This was enough data that I figured trying to back it up while associated with the Air would not work (I read somewhere that if TM is backing up two different computers, it can't delete old backups of the OTHER computer to make room for the current one)

So, I backed it up while associated to the Mac Pro.

Question: Can I drag this backup to the new machine's backup? (See screenshot)enter image description here

I'm assuming I would need to:

  1. Make sure both machines' backups are current (I see both have a backup in progress)
  2. Turn off Time Machine in Mac Pro ('jPro')
  3. Restore 'SideCarlson' from the MacBook Air ('Air Carlson')

Thanks for your help 🙂

Best Answer

No, you can't do this. The folder you've selected doesn't contain the entire backup, just the changes from the last backup, and many symlinks to the older data contained in other backups. Such symlinks will break if you do this.

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