Moving Time Machine backup files

cap


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MacBookPro 15" early 2009:2.4GHz,8GB,OSX10.10.3 & PBookG4:1GHZ,1.25MB,OSX10.5.8 &MacMini:2GHz,2GB,OS
I bought a 2 TB external drive to use as a Time Machine backup drive for all my computers and attached drives. I've backed up everything to it, and still have 1.1 TB of space left. I have some TM backups on a 1 TB drive that I am going to convert to file storage. Is it possible to move the old backups to the new drive before I erase the old drive? I've tried dragging the folders and get an error message ("...an unexpected error occurred. (Error code -1426)).
 
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The silence is scary! I hope someone has an answer as I would like to do something similar. I want to add a partition to my external Time Machine drive and need to move the data temporarily back to my internal drive so I can repartition. Using Lion on a MBP 13", Passport external USB 1TB drive.
 
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cap


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MacBookPro 15" early 2009:2.4GHz,8GB,OSX10.10.3 & PBookG4:1GHZ,1.25MB,OSX10.5.8 &MacMini:2GHz,2GB,OS
I found it rather disquieting, also. Then I searched around on the Apple support site Apple - Support - Mac and found the "Time Machine" link leading to this page: Apple - Support - Time Machine

Short answer, no, not after already having newer backup files on the drive, as I wanted to do. However, there IS a method for moving older Time Machine backup files, Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive. You can follow that by specifying the new drive for the destination for new Time Machine backups, and it works great (I've already done that twice). If you want to temporarily move the files to your internal hard drive, this method should also work for you.

Why do you want to repartition the TM drive? If it's to make TM backups of two computers, it's not necessary. Both backups can reside on the same partition.
 
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MacBook Pro 13", 2.8 GHz I7, 4G Ram, 750 G HD, Mac OS X 10.7.4 Lion, Passport 1TB External Drive
Thanks Cap! I'm not so sure I want to but I was curious and just learning about the process of creating partitions. I'm still relatively new to the Mac ways and I love the flexibility of the OS. I'll check the TM links out, thanks for the tip. The last one is particularly interesting as it sounds like I can use the drive for both my MBP and my wife's MBA. Thanks again.
 

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