Mac 911

Transfer Time Machine
Backups

Christopher Breen
Macworld Senior Editor

Reader Charles Franks needs a little more elbow-room for his Time Machine backup. He writes: I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 500GB external hard drive but it's full. I'd like to get a 1TB drive and use that for my backup. Is there a way to transfer the current backup on the old 500GB drive to the new hard drive?

There is. Rolfje.com has a tutorial that shows you how to do this without changing your Time Machine history. I'll sum up the steps here.
1. After attaching, formatting (Mac Journaled), and naming the new drive, launch Time Machine and switch it off.

2. Unmount the current Time Machine drive by dragging it to the Trash. Remount it by either turning it off and then on again, or mounting it with Disk Utility. You do this so it loses its Time Machine icon and
appears with the typical orange external drive icon.

3. Launch Disk Utility, select the old drive, and click on the Restore tab.

4. Drag the Time Machine partition from the old drive to the Source field in the Restore tab. Drag the new drive's partition (assuming there's just the one partition) to the Destination field.

5. Enable the Erase Destination option and click the Restore button.

6. Wait while Disk Utility does its job (this can take several hours).

7. When the job is done you'll see two identical volumes on the Desktop. Unmount and disconnect the one that shows a capacity of 500GB (the old drive).

8. With the new drive mounted, open Time Machine and switch it on. Click on Select Disk and direct Time Machine to the new drive that contains your copied Time Machines backup.

Time Machine should do the right thing and use that drive for its backups. Should you need to restore you'll find that all your old backed up data is on this new drive.

Balancing Headphone Volume

Reader Dan G. finds listening to his MP3 player an unsatisfying experience due to variable hearing loss. He writes: You've told a reader who's deaf in one ear how to rip his tunes in mono,but I've never been able to find a solution to my partial--and variable-- loss of hearing in one ear. I don't want to rip my music off-balance. Is there some kind of an inline balance control I can plug into my earbuds cable? I've never found an MP3 player with a balance control so I'm
stuck listening to my laptop. You ever try jogging with a laptop?

Doing so would require that I jog at all, and I try to leave that kind of dangerous (and ungeekish) activity to Adam Engst, so let's just amble along at a reasonable pace, shall we?

First, I'd like to update the "rip as mono" advice. If you're using an iPhone 3GS, a third-generation iPod touch, or an iPad, you can ask these devices to play all audio in mono. To do so, plug one of these devices into your Mac, fire up iTunes, select the device in iTunes' Source list, and in the resulting Summary pane click the Configure Universal Access button. In the Universal Access window that appears, enable the Use Mono Audio option and click OK.

This advice doesn't apply to you because you hope to change the balance of the audio so one side of the stereo signal is louder than the other. An inline balance control will do that for you. Sennheiser makes just such a thing with its $40 (around $27 at Amazon) HZR 62 Universal Inline Volume Control.

This is a passive control (meaning it won't boost the volume beyond the volume of the device it's plugged into). It also has a very long cable-- 3.5 meters--so you'll want to be sure to bundle up the extra cable with a rubber band to help ensure you don't trip over it while you and Adam sprint into the distance.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of "Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition)," and "The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)" both from Peachpit Press and "Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)" from lynda.com

Find Chris' books at www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today