09-19-2011, 04:59 PM
Time Machine normally treats backup drives as the datasets themselves, which is why when you swap out a drive with a new one it wants to start all over. You're seeing a similar symptom with the flaky RAID drive/controller/enclosure/whatever.
One way around the Time Machine issue to divorce the dataset from the physical drive. The way you do that is to create a sparse disk yourself that sits on the drive and then configure TM to use that sparse disk image.
Doing so will also allow you to copy the sparse disk image at any time onto a different hard disk of your choice and TM won't complain, won't force you to start all over with backups etc. In other words it also permits backing up the TM backup easily.
One way around the Time Machine issue to divorce the dataset from the physical drive. The way you do that is to create a sparse disk yourself that sits on the drive and then configure TM to use that sparse disk image.
Doing so will also allow you to copy the sparse disk image at any time onto a different hard disk of your choice and TM won't complain, won't force you to start all over with backups etc. In other words it also permits backing up the TM backup easily.