Move Time Machine external drive from AE to Mini Server

[bmclaurin]

I recently setup Mavericks server on an always-on Mac Mini for my home network. Previously, I used an external drive connected directly to my AE base station as my storage volume for Time Machine backups. I would like to physically move that external drive from the AE base station to the Mac Mini server. I enabled Time Machine with the server app and selected the external drive as my backup destination. All is well with that, in the sense that I can now create *new* time machine backups for all my connected macs.

But I want to use my *existing* backups. Those were originally stored in the root folder of my external drive (/Volumes/My Book for Mac), and I can see those individual backups within Finder. When I moved that drive to the Mini and enabled Time Machine in the server app, it created a new folder to hold all of my backups (/Volumes/My Book for Mac/Shared Items/Backups). So I moved the existing backup files into this new folder. By doing that, those backups show up in the "Backups" tab of the Time Machine section within the Server app.

But when I go to one of my connected Macs to do a backup, I cannot figure out how to make it continue to use its old backup file. It seemingly insists on making me start a new one, which I don't want to do.

Hopefully this made sense. Any suggestions?

 

[Weaselboy]

Follow the steps here to inherit the old backup.

 

[bmclaurin]

Thank you. I found the information at the link you provided very helpful. I read practically every page on that site. Unfortunately, I was unable to inherit/connect my previous backups using those instructions (possibly because my scenario wasn't exactly like any of the scenarios discussed on that site). I ended up just throwing in the towel and creating a new backup set. But if anyone has had success doing this, please post for future reference. Thanks again.