I lose my Time Machine drive, like, every year or two.
Sometimes, Time Machine just goes stupid and I have to wipe the drive and start over. All of my efforts in the past to copy or repair or do anything to a Time Machine drive has ended in folly, so when it starts acting up, I just wipe it and start anew.
Other times, it's the drive itself, and I swap it out.
99% of the time, it Just Works. Wiping the drive for me is more annoying than catastrophic (99.9999% of the time I don't care about my 18 month old data). It's mostly for local catastrophic fat fingering on my part, and to make sure I have a solid back up after I do a OS update. I have BackBlaze for "Why is there 5 feet mud in my burning house" scenarios.
Outside of that, I've always been able to recover from it.
My wife has a SSD drive she plugs into her laptop for TM backup. That machine at most makes laps around the house, so its not that big of a deal for her.
Sometimes, Time Machine just goes stupid and I have to wipe the drive and start over. All of my efforts in the past to copy or repair or do anything to a Time Machine drive has ended in folly, so when it starts acting up, I just wipe it and start anew.
Other times, it's the drive itself, and I swap it out.
99% of the time, it Just Works. Wiping the drive for me is more annoying than catastrophic (99.9999% of the time I don't care about my 18 month old data). It's mostly for local catastrophic fat fingering on my part, and to make sure I have a solid back up after I do a OS update. I have BackBlaze for "Why is there 5 feet mud in my burning house" scenarios.
Outside of that, I've always been able to recover from it.
My wife has a SSD drive she plugs into her laptop for TM backup. That machine at most makes laps around the house, so its not that big of a deal for her.