Time Machine keeps renaming my 2 external hard drives after restore

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Time Machine keeps renaming my 2 external hard drives after restore

I bought a larger back up drive (12 TB) and restored my existing TM Back up drive (4 TB) to it. Disk Utility, as part of the restore process, renamed the larger drive to the same name as the old drive, i.e. 'WD4'. I renamed the larger drive back to 'WD12'. However whenever I tried to back up to the 12 TB drive TM renames it back to 'WD4' again. I have tried removing both drives from TM in 'select drive/add or remove drive' window and re-adding them but it seems to rename one or the other drive every time (as I alternate which drive I use for each subsequent back up). Is there a way to solve this please which doesn't involve wiping the drives and starting again? TIA.

iMac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 22, 2020 12:52 PM

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Answer 1

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PliSsK Author

Level 1

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Oct 29, 2020 4:38 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks and you. Further testing shows that I have to plug in both drives at once before running TM and then TM operates normally, i.e. it backs up to one drive, then if I run it again it back up to the other drive, without any problems, but if I only plug in the 12TB drive that I restored from the 4TB drive, it prompts me (more or less) 'the identity of this drive has changed, do you want to back to to it?' So then I have to plug in the 4TB drive and it works ok again, but if I don't and choose to back up to it, it renames the 12TB to the 4TB drive like before.

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