As some of you may already know, most ways of copying Time Machine backups will not end successfully because of hard links. Using Disk Utility however, it works to select the Time Machine drive and even choose a 'New Image From disknnn,' according to macosxhints.com. So, here's how to convince TM to use an existing TM backup, since TM's using the
MAC address to track
Time Machine backups sometimes fails.
Saving the image as a read-only image on an external
HDD will enable you to use it
(after mounting of course) with Time Machine's 'Browse other Time Machine disks...' feature. As such, using Disk Utility, you can easily move a Time Machine database from one disk to another.
The Restore feature in
Disk Utility will enable you to "restore" the Time Machine disk to another disk, retaining the history of changes. This method is probably the best way to go, should you outgrow your Time Machine backup drive. However, it is strongly recommended that you turn Time Machine off before starting to migrate your existing backups to a new and larger drive.
The next step also demands a lot of caution, as disks will have the same name and information, confusing Time Machine. Activating the Leopard's exclusive backup utility software on the newly-created disk and plugging in the old disk will show a Time Machine drive, while the backup will fail. Given you want to skip having to go through all this, it's probably better to just avoid having both of them plugged in or, "at the very least, rename one of them," as the same source advises.
Another crucial aspect about cloning a Time Machine Drive may very well concern Carbon Copy Cloner 2.3. Sources indicate that it doesn't work properly for cloning a Time Machine drive (3.x may, but that remains to be verified). The reason for this is simple: it copies what the links point to, rather than the hard links themselves.
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