Continuing TimeMachine Backups on New External Disk

I am sure that this has been brought up before so forgive my ignorance of
such matters.

Lately, my TimeMachine external disk drive has been failing more frequently
until the other day it got to the point where it just stopped backing up my
MacPro running Lion 7.4.

I ran Disk Utility on the TM drive and it reported that it could not be
repaired and save what files that I could to another disk, and reformat the
drive. Then I ran DiskWarrior on the TM drive and it reported severely
damaged directory, which I replaced. I then again ran Disk Utility and it
Verified the TM drive as being just fine.

Alas, when I again tried running another TM backup to the drive, it got
through about halfway and then stopped, displaying the same error message of
failure. DU again complained that it could not repair and DW again detected
a bad directory and replaced it. TM backup to that drive again failed.

So, sensing a physical problem with the drive itself, I am currently backing
up the external bad drive to another external disk drive with a different
name.

My question: Should I tell my MacPro's System Preference TimeMachine to
select the new duplicated TM drive to be the new external drive without
losing my earlier backups? Anyone know of a better solution., please?

Thanks in advance!

In article <CC53F6D0.8D0AF%>,
George Kerby <> wrote:

> I am sure that this has been brought up before so forgive my ignorance of
> such matters.
>
> Lately, my TimeMachine external disk drive has been failing more frequently
> until the other day it got to the point where it just stopped backing up my
> MacPro running Lion 7.4.
>
> I ran Disk Utility on the TM drive and it reported that it could not be
> repaired and save what files that I could to another disk, and reformat the
> drive. Then I ran DiskWarrior on the TM drive and it reported severely
> damaged directory, which I replaced. I then again ran Disk Utility and it
> Verified the TM drive as being just fine.
>
> Alas, when I again tried running another TM backup to the drive, it got
> through about halfway and then stopped, displaying the same error message of
> failure. DU again complained that it could not repair and DW again detected
> a bad directory and replaced it. TM backup to that drive again failed.
>
> So, sensing a physical problem with the drive itself, I am currently backing
> up the external bad drive to another external disk drive with a different
> name.
>
> My question: Should I tell my MacPro's System Preference TimeMachine to
> select the new duplicated TM drive to be the new external drive without
> losing my earlier backups? Anyone know of a better solution., please?

George-

I think it depends on your being able to successfully copy your
..sparsebundle file to the second hard drive.

I upgraded from a 1 TB Time Capsule to the 2 TB version. As best I
recall, I connected them together via Ethernet, with my laptop in the
loop. I did a drag-copy of the .sparsebundle file from one to the
other. When finished, I reconnected the system with the new Time
Capsule, ran Time Machine Preferences and selected the new disk. Time
machine found the copied file, and all previous backups were accessible.

Fred

On 8/25/12 8:11 PM, in article
fmmck-, "Fred McKenzie"
<> wrote:

> In article <CC53F6D0.8D0AF%>,
> George Kerby <> wrote:
>
>> I am sure that this has been brought up before so forgive my ignorance of
>> such matters.
>>
>> Lately, my TimeMachine external disk drive has been failing more frequently
>> until the other day it got to the point where it just stopped backing up my
>> MacPro running Lion 7.4.
>>
>> I ran Disk Utility on the TM drive and it reported that it could not be
>> repaired and save what files that I could to another disk, and reformat the
>> drive. Then I ran DiskWarrior on the TM drive and it reported severely
>> damaged directory, which I replaced. I then again ran Disk Utility and it
>> Verified the TM drive as being just fine.
>>
>> Alas, when I again tried running another TM backup to the drive, it got
>> through about halfway and then stopped, displaying the same error message of
>> failure. DU again complained that it could not repair and DW again detected
>> a bad directory and replaced it. TM backup to that drive again failed.
>>
>> So, sensing a physical problem with the drive itself, I am currently backing
>> up the external bad drive to another external disk drive with a different
>> name.
>>
>> My question: Should I tell my MacPro's System Preference TimeMachine to
>> select the new duplicated TM drive to be the new external drive without
>> losing my earlier backups? Anyone know of a better solution., please?
>
> George-
>
> I think it depends on your being able to successfully copy your
> .sparsebundle file to the second hard drive.
>
>
> I upgraded from a 1 TB Time Capsule to the 2 TB version. As best I
> recall, I connected them together via Ethernet, with my laptop in the
> loop. I did a drag-copy of the .sparsebundle file from one to the
> other. When finished, I reconnected the system with the new Time
> Capsule, ran Time Machine Preferences and selected the new disk. Time
> machine found the copied file, and all previous backups were accessible.
>
> Fred

Thanks Fred for the reply! Seems like you are the only one in here willing
to help.

Since I posted this 10 days ago, I have looked at SuperDuper which failed
and found that Carbon Copy Cloner can get the job done in a special setting
mode. So now I have been testing the enclosure with another drive and the
backed up files. It seems to be working well and I just going to attribute
it to a drive failure and see if Hitachi will replace since it is only less
than a year old.

Take care!