Time Capsule Died / Recovered the HD But Need Help Setting It Up With Time Machine

Hi.

So my Time Capsule died but the HD was still working. Rather than getting another Time Capsule, I replaced it with an Airport Extreme and I put the working HD in an enclosure.

I plugged the HD into the USB port (on the iMac, not the Airport Extreme) and three volumes mounted:
- Data
- APConfig
- APSwap

I went into Time Machine and selected Data as the desired location for backups and it immediately tried to do a backup. The backup failed because it said there was not enough space on the disc. It looks like it is trying to backup the entire HD from my iMac when all I want it to do is save the latest version. I might be wrong but I think it is failing to recognize that there are existing backups there that can be updated and so it is trying to backup everything.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Should I be plugging the external HD into the Airport Extreme and selecting the Time Capsule option?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
JB

I think you are partly right about what is happening. The other issue is that the drive probably needs to be plugged into the USB port on the Extreme. Just to be sure look at the files on that data partition. If you see a sparse bundle file, it probably matches the name of your computer, then the drive needs to be attached to the Extreme.

This problem occurs due to Time Machines behavior over a network. When directly connected to the Mac Time Machine stores the files as a series of folders. When backing up to a Time Capsule, or other network device, it stores those folders inside a sparsebundle file.

I've seen a few procedures for reconnecting Time Machine with an existing backup. Some of them have changed a bit. I'll see if I can find something current.

Thanks Sly.

I tried with no success. There was a sparse bundle file and I did connect through the Extreme but it still attempted to create a new backup for the entire HD. There was actually nothing on there that wasn't still on the computer so I've just decided to reformat the drive and start fresh through Time Machine.

I appreciate your attempt to help me.
Thanks again.

That's probably less of a pain than some of the procedures I was seeing. Especially if you did not have much information.