Best (and easiest?) way to transfer Time Machine backups from Drobo to new ReadyNAS

[dcg13]

Hi-

After enough issues with my Mac recognizing a Drobo or Drobo disconnecting itself, I purchased a ReadyNAS.

On the Drobo, I have Time Machine backups from various computers, as well as other files (not in a .sparsebundle or backupsdb format) that I want to copy over to the ReadyNAS. Ideally, backing up my Mac would continue to use the same TM folder that was created on the Drobo.

What is the best way to do this? I've considered simply copying directories over via SMB, but I also noticed that ReadyNAS hides the .sparsebundle .

It surely couldn't be as simple as removing the hard drives from the Drobo and putting them into the ReadyNAS, could it?

Thanks for ideas.

[StephenB]

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@dcg13 wrote:

It surely couldn't be as simple as removing the hard drives from the Drobo and putting them into the ReadyNAS, could it?

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Definitely not.

Though I am not a Mac user, so I don't know how to transfer the backups.

[mdgm-ntgr]

The ReadyNAS uses sparsebundles under e.g. /data/.timemachine (where "data" - no quotes - is the name of the data volume)

To move your backups across you'd need to get them into sparsebundle images named appropriately and have the correct ownership/permissions set.

Note that ReadyNAS OS 6.9.3 introduced support for Time Machine backups over SMB (now the default, though AFP can still be used if you prefer e.g. if you need it with older Macs).

[dcg13]

Thanks MGDM.

Having mounted the .sparsebundle, I tried to move (through Finder) a directory from the backups.backupdb folder on my Drobo, but am unable to-- "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified." Assuming this is due to ownership/permissions, but I haven't been able to find a solution. Any additional advice/solution you can offer? Thanks.

[mdgm-ntgr]

See e.g. http://readynas.sphardy.com/2011/06/migrating-timemachine-backups-to_1097.html

[mdgm-ntgr]

Hmmm. Maybe something changed since that article was written.

You're logging in as a user that has read/write access to the sparsebundle?

[dcg13]

Thanks again MGDM; I really appreciate your patience and persistence.

By logging into ReadyNAS as admin over SMB, I can navigate to the appropriate .sparsebundle and mount it. Yesterday I changed ownership of it (previously owned by root), thinking that would help; it is now owned by my laptop's user ID, and permissions to the Backups.backupdb in the attached image are drwxrwxrwx+

From the article you linked, I then tried to Restore (Disk Utility) from Drobo to the mounted "Time Machine Backups". It fails, giving OSStatus error 22, with "could not validate sizes - invalid argument" error. Here's the setup (below).

Alternately, I get OSStatus error 19: "source volume is read-write and cannot be unmounted, so it can't be block copied"

[dcg13]

No ideas? That's too bad.