> On Feb 15, 2017, at 8:13 PM, Michael <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 2017-02-15, at 7:06 PM, Carl Hoefs <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> On Feb 15, 2017, at 5:40 PM, Macs R We <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> On Feb 15, 2017, at 4:47 PM, Carl Hoefs <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>> I want my new system to inherit my old system's TM archives. >>>> >>>> So when I do a backup, it augments the existing archive, and doesn't make >>>> an entirely new one from scratch, which would mean abandoning everything I >>>> have archived. >> >> Okay, thinking about this a little more deeply, yes, I don't actually need >> the "all or nothing" perfect clone approach. But I do need access to the >> years of archives that are there. If I can go manually hunt and peck around >> for the files I need, I thought maybe TM could support it as a "static" or >> "archaic" archive or something. That's not really so unreasonable, is it? > > You are asking for two very different goals here. > > If you want to continue backing up on the existing backup, you can do that. > > tmutil inheritbackup machine_directory > > Archives are *NOT* defined by special UUID's. That was true in 10.5, and > maybe in 10.6. I think it changed in 10.7; I know it is changed in 10.9. > > BUT: > > Your first backup will result in saying "These directories do not match", and > most of your files will be backed up from the current machine. This will > probably fill your drive, and it will delete some of your older backups -- > very likely most or all of the years of archives that are there. > > If your goal is to be able to restore files off those archives, that is > different. You can treat them as just another read-only directory from > finder, and look around. I think finder is smart enough that if you copy > files out of a time machine archive, then it will remove the time-machine > specific extended attributes and restore the normal ones if any. > > So what is your goal here: > 1. Look through the files and restore them as needed, or > 2. Use it as a destination for backing up and deleting the old backups as > needed to make new ones?
Very good points. I took a look at my TM drive: Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/disk6 1952031784 1803262740 148769044 93% 20199574 4274767705 0% /Volumes/TM_Drive Yep, that's pretty used up. (I had thought it was 3TB, but it's only 2TB). As you say, extending the existing backup, even if possible, would simply carve out much of what's there, and I would end up losing what I'm trying to save. So the path forward is to keep the old TM drive connected for historical purposes, and buy another one (hopefully larger!) and start a new active TM archive on it. Thanks to both of you, Michael and Macs, for disuading me from going down a path I would have regretted! -Carl
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