Is there a way to transfer Time Machine backups and the “delta” history to a new larger drive? I have a 2Tb drive that is almost full and want to move the Time Machine history to an 8Tb drive. Anyone have a good process?
Thx!
Don’t do it. Put the full drive on the shelf as a good point-in-time backup. Buy a new drive and start over. Money well spent.
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TLDR; Don’t do it. You are better off archiving the current drive and starting an entirely new backup on the new one.
This is probably not what you want to hear, but this is difficult, and from Ventura onwards, next to impossible to pull off.
Ventura normally uses APFS-formatted volumes for Time Machine backups. Older HFS+ formatted Time Machine volumes, if that’s what you have, cannot be moved to APFS, and Time Machine APFS volumes cannot be moved to another APFS volume either due to the way Time Machine uses the advantages of the file system.
It’s not about simply copying files from one location to another (it used to be a decade ago, but it’s not any longer so don’t follow that sort of advice you may find online). All sorts of things may break. Time Machine backups are somewhat fragile to begin with.
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I tried to do this, and setup a new drive as APFS, journaled, encrypted. I used SuperDuper! to clone. When I tried to use that cloned, encrypted drive as a Time Machine volume, Sonoma made me re-encrypt it and I lost everything. I therefore had to start with a fresh disk.
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macOS often wants to format (that is, erase) its own Time Machine disk drive and it certainly wants to perform its own encryption of that disk. Choose a backup disk and set encryption options on Mac - Apple Support
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At one time (i.e. with HFS+) you could do this but no more.
I have a handful of old drives in my fireproof file labeled with the dates they were used for backups. The first backup with the new drive may take awhile but it’s a much better approach. If you find you need an older version of a file you can always mount the old drive and recover from it.
I’m amazed that SuperDuper even attempted to clone the drive. CCC will refuse to do so, and they have explained why.
I have also successfully copied Time Machine backups across SMB network shares. I haven’t done so in a while but I believe this may remain the single case where copying the entire folder is still possible as TM is not relying on the filesystem as such to do any of its tricks. It really is just a folder of files.