MacOS Recovery with Drobo5N or Drobo 5N2 Drobo NAS

I have Time Machine enabled volumes on my Drobo5N, and foolishly thought it would be easy to restore from Drobo using the Recovery tools in MacOS. I couldn't get the "Restore from Time Machine Backup" to recognize the Drobo. I tried some of the smb: and afp: commands I found searching around the internet, but nothing seemed to work.

Time Machine works great with both my iMac and MacBook, in that the computer backs up to the Drobo and I can use Time Machine to see files that were deleted or recover old versions of files just fine. I just can't seem to restore from the NAS via the Recovery tools.

Do I need to move the sparse bundle to a new external wired drive to restore from there? Would that even work?

Thanks!

Posted on Jul 21, 2019 8:16 AM

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VikingOSX

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Posted on Jul 21, 2019 8:44 AM

Supposedly, Time Machine accepts a Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB as a backup device.

The Recovery menu's Restore from Time Machine Backup expects a physically mounted Time Machine backup drive, and does not support a network share device. See the section, Restore both macOS and your files (Item 1) from the Apple article, Restore your Mac from a backup.

Here is Apple's official instructions on transferring Time Machine content to a new Time Machine drive. Absolutely no fun in that, but likely your only move to use the Recovery Restore menu item.

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MacOS Recovery with Drobo5N or Drobo 5N2 Drobo NAS

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