External drive to Time Capsule backup

I have to buy a LAN-to-thisdamnednewport adapter.

This is a mighty handy item to keep in your desk drawer for situations like this when you need a much faster backup......or......you are having problems with WiFi on your Mac. Hard to know why Apple removed the most important port in networking from most of their computers.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD463LL/A/thunderbolt-to-gigabit-ethernet-adapter

I can't do a quick erase on the TC as I also have other folders.

Then, you can delete only the "new" partial backup file using the Finder.

I will leave the other one as basically that MBP won't be here anymore but just for safety I will keep them.

Good plan. After a month or two, you will probably realize that you don't need the old backups, and can erase them and use the USB drive as a spare.

Good luck!

Frankly, this is something that you may not want to do.

Why? Time Machine backs up differently to a USB or local external drive connected directly to a Mac than it does to a network drive like the Time Capsule....and the different types of files are not interchangeable.

If you move or copy the backup file on the external over to the Time Capsule, Time Machine will not be able to continue backing up to the file than you transferred over from the USB drive, it will start all over again with a new complete backup of your Mac and then move forward with new incremental backups.

In addition, and probably more importantly...... you will not be able to use Time Machine to restore any of the files from the backup that was moved over from the external USB drive.

My suggestion would be to hold onto the external USB drive for a time.....3-6 months or so......until Time Machine has had time to build up 3-6 months of new backups on the Time Capsule. At that point, you may likely decide that you really don't need all the old backups going back months and even years and you can erase them to clear space on the USB drive.

With few exceptions, all that most of us really need is a current backup of our Mac(s) in case the hard drive fails on the Mac. Once the Mac has been repaired, you can use the most recent Time Machine backup to make your "new" Mac look just like your "old" Mac.

What you were thinking of doing will not do what you want.

You will have an unusable copy of the backups from the USB drive taking up a lot of space on the Time Capsule, while Time Machine will start all over again with a new complete backup of your Mac. So, you wind up with two separate backups on the Time Capsule and one of them will be unusable.

Something is wrong with your current backup.

Stop the backup

Perform a Quick Erase on the Time Capsule hard drive

Restart the network

Connect an Ethernet cable from the Mac to one of the three LAN <--> Ethernet ports on the Time Capsule

Turn off the WiFi on the Mac to insure that the backup will be over much faster Ethernet

Start a new backup

Data will transfer at 30-40 GB per hour on average, so a 65GB backup will take 2-3 hours.

You are very welcome! Glad that things seem to be working better.