I have a 4 TB external USB hard disk drive currently plugged into my 1st-gen Time Capsule, and it's worked very well for Time Machine backups over the years. Now I'd like to open up my brand new 2 GB Time Capsule and install that 4 TB HDD in it, to replace the 2 TB it came with.
However, I'd like to keep the Time Machine backup history that's currently on the 4 TB drive, without copying the sparsebundle to a temporary location (I'm not sure I have enough spare drive space, and it would take forever).
My main question is: if I install the 4 TB (with the existing sparsebundle of TM backups) into the new TC, will the TC automatically format the drive, thus wiping out my TM backup history? I know that TCs do that when you install an un-formatted or incorrectly formatted HDD, but in this case I would be installing a drive with the format that the TC would expect (i.e., HSF+).
And, if it *doesn't* get automatically formatted, can I use "tmutil inheritbackup" in Terminal to re-associate my computer with the existing TM sparsebundle? I think that will likely work, but does anybody know? (I'm not changing the computer in a significant way, just the location of its backups.)
I don't really *expect* to need the TM backup history, and I do have a working nightly clone backup in addition to the TM backup, so it wouldn't be a disaster if the 4 TB drive were formatted. I'm not trying to (mis-) use Time Machine as an archive system. However, one never knows when one might want to recover a file or directory as it existed sometime in the past. I'd like to keep that history if it's feasible.
I appreciate any experience, advice, knowledge, or even guesses!
However, I'd like to keep the Time Machine backup history that's currently on the 4 TB drive, without copying the sparsebundle to a temporary location (I'm not sure I have enough spare drive space, and it would take forever).
My main question is: if I install the 4 TB (with the existing sparsebundle of TM backups) into the new TC, will the TC automatically format the drive, thus wiping out my TM backup history? I know that TCs do that when you install an un-formatted or incorrectly formatted HDD, but in this case I would be installing a drive with the format that the TC would expect (i.e., HSF+).
And, if it *doesn't* get automatically formatted, can I use "tmutil inheritbackup" in Terminal to re-associate my computer with the existing TM sparsebundle? I think that will likely work, but does anybody know? (I'm not changing the computer in a significant way, just the location of its backups.)
I don't really *expect* to need the TM backup history, and I do have a working nightly clone backup in addition to the TM backup, so it wouldn't be a disaster if the 4 TB drive were formatted. I'm not trying to (mis-) use Time Machine as an archive system. However, one never knows when one might want to recover a file or directory as it existed sometime in the past. I'd like to keep that history if it's feasible.
I appreciate any experience, advice, knowledge, or even guesses!