Old 'damaged' TimeMachine backup: Still of any use?

[Blackvibes]

Hey guys,

I've got a Synology NAS here and a few months ago I sadly got the message, something like

Time Machine backup is corrupt and therefor has to start a new backup.​

However, as my NAS is starting to get more and more filled, I'm seeking to kill some data. I found this old backup which is about 650GB of size.

And my only question is: Can it be of any use or should I just remove it completely?


If you ask "But by starting a new backup, the old one gets deleted. Why do you still have it?" That's because it ended up in the Recycle Bin, instead of permanently deleted.

 

[abhibeckert]

First of all, I wouldn't trust the "650GB" size, it could be a lot smaller due to the way hard links work. Checking the size of a time machine backup is often wildly inaccurate. The only way to really know how big it is is to delete it and see how much extra disk space you have afterwards.

As for wether or not it's any use, yes it is. It's just a folder with all your files in it, organised by date. If time machine complains about corruption in it's database you can just manually copy files across instead.

 

[Blackvibes]

Then you should tell me how I could access the files inside it..? As it's a network backup, not a local USB backup, it uses sparse bundles, which includes, in my case, 80.000 files each of exactly 8MB. These, which I can't open.
Besides that, when I try to open the backup in Finder, after about 30 minutes it says 'Macbook.sparsebundle backup could not be activated' with a regular TimeMachine window.

With those two things in my mind I'm wondering the remaining use..

 

[Weaselboy]

Is there archived data in the old backup set you want to keep? If not, there is no reason to hang onto that sparse bundle.

If you do want to access that data you can copy the entire sparse bundle file over to your local disk and access it follow step 4 at the bottom of this page.