As described in the header, I lost a hard drive that had a tortoise repository on it, but I managed to recover the files folder from that drive, unfortunately without the repository. In the meantime the recovered folder now has a "!" icon on it, and I can't do anything with it (clean up, relocate, check in) since it says that it can't find its old repository.
Is there any way to move it to an existing repository on the new drive, or even just create a new one?
Thanks!
Cleanup doesn't require access to the repository. If even cleanup fails, then your backup wasn't complete or completely successful because the working copy is broken.
If you lost the repository, then you have to start from scratch (now you know why backups are important). Since you still have the files from your working copy, copy them to the new drive, then remove all hidden .svn folders. After that, you can import those files in a fresh repository.