My wife has a Mac laptop that I set up Time machine backups about 5 years ago on an external HD. The HD has starting acting up a bit, so I decided to get a new one and transfer everything over.

I've read several posts and tutorials online about how "easy" this is, but I've been trying for the past 3 nights and can't get it to work.

Everytime I try and copy over the backup folder, it "prepares to copy" for over an hour. It then gives me a message that "some items cannot be accessed because they are in use." I don't know why they would be, but I can either skip, stop, or continue. If I click either skip or stop it kills the whole process. If I click continue, it will begin copying for about 20 minutes, and then crap out and say "operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items". When you click OK on this window it stops the copying process.

I've done this whole process several times, and it always dies at the same spot...about 7 or 8 backup folders in, around 20 minutes.

This is my setup:

- New HD has been formatted to match the old drive in terms of format type
- New Time Machine partition is completely clean
- Time Machine has been turned off
- "Ignore Volume Owner" is checked on the new drive
- User is administrator
- Energy Saver is off, meaning the computer won't sleep

Any ideas of either someone else I can use to copy the files over instead of just standard Mac finder, or something else to try? The whole 1 hour+ "preparing to copy" thing is awful because each time you want to try something new you have to sit around and wait.

3/5/2015 12:46:12 AM

I was hoping this thread would be about a real time machine

3/5/2015 12:52:24 AM

Sure, cause that's a thing

3/5/2015 1:11:30 AM

3/5/2015 10:22:24 AM

Have you tried it at 88 mph?

Sorry, couldn't resist. Good luck to you.

3/5/2015 10:54:46 AM

you might need a new flux capacitor

3/5/2015 11:16:06 AM

I was hoping this was a hilarious troll thread . good luck to you sir.

3/5/2015 1:13:28 PM

Bah, no ideas?

3/6/2015 9:40:39 AM

And I wish it had been for fun...this is driving me crazy.

3/6/2015 10:18:44 AM