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Don't copy an active TM backup
Authored by: lincd0 on Aug 07, '08 11:27:33AM

If you copy a TM sparsebundle while TM is running, the copy may be in an inconsistent state. You should stop TM while the copy is made.

Also, TM is designed to be a backup solution, not an archival solution. If you need to keep archives of old files, you should treat them as original data, not backups, and back them up in the same way as the rest of your data. Copying a backup onto the same storage device that's being backed up doesn't make a lot of sense. You should make a redundant copy onto a third device.



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Don't copy an active TM backup
Authored by: koyeung on Aug 09, '08 07:40:28PM

one sentence is missing from original post: "As minimal steps and without additional hardware, ..."

The sparse bundle contains more (including old changes) than the main harddisk, there is still benefit to keep the copy even on the same harddisk.
If no attached firewire HD is available, backup to the main HD is better than nothing :) The drawback of here is it takes a lot of time to do the copying.

You are right that we need to stop TM before copying the bundle. That's critical.



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