Q: How to reclaim or re-use a disconnected Time Machine backup?
I had a hard drive go... "brown" (SSD overcooked, not sure how that happened; I think it's just a faulty drive). Unfortunately, my Time Capsule (backup drive--it's not really an Apple TC, if that matters) is also very finicky. Well, I got a new SSD and cloned the old SSD onto it, so I'm back in business on that end, but in the process, I disconnected my finicky backup drive in Time Machine (as in, I accidentally told it the finicky drive is NOT the source of the TM archive). Is there a way to "bless" the backup on that finicky drive to reclaim the archive there? I have access to all the files, and I acknowledge I really need to get a new, reliable, drive; but in the meantime, is there a way to make TM accept the current Backups.backupdb folder as the "current" backup scheme, rather than just start with a new one in the available space?
BTW, I'm using OS X 10.11.5. I followed the directions at Time Machine: How to transfer backups from a current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support, but am concerned that it's wanting to try to create an entirely new backup rather than build upon the archives I've already got. I've probably screwed things up; in any care, is there a way to fix it?
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2), 2.4 GHz i5, 4 GB SDRAM, 500 GB SSD
Posted on Jun 2, 2016 4:18 PM