Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install of OSX Lion
I also tried using migration assistant with no success.
I just want to use TM to restore files and folders SELECTIVELY.
Does anyone also know how to fully restore my iTunes data? (purchaces, music, iphone backups, etc)
Thank you in advance

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, now I CAN'T go back in time using my Time Machine back-up . . . It says I've never backed up now (I guess because this is a fresh install that's TECHNICALLY correct), but I restored from this Time Machine file . . . Surely I've done something wrong that can be fixed. Help, please?

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Time machine won't recognize my old backup

I just bought a new MacBook Pro and am attempting to restore my old (stolen) laptop from my Time Machine backup. It recognizes my external hard drive, and I can browse all my files, but when I attempt to do a system restore it tells me that no valid Mac OS X backups are found. (Similarly, in Migration Assistant it just gives me a blank box in the "Select System to Transfer" dialogue.)
Does anyone know why my data is on my drive but not recognized by Mac OS X? I don't know if I set Time Machine to only backup my Applications / Personal Files and not the System, which is why it won't let me back it up. But it has everything else on there, and I really don't want to have to back up every file manually.
Thanks for your help in advance!

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time Machine won't recognize my last backup after a power outage

Good Afternoon Everyone,
I just set up a Western Digital My Book Live on my network. Last week, I set up Time Machine to start a backup on my MacBook Pro (running 10.7.5). It took 2 days to finish, but all went well. For three days, all the backups worked perfectly. However, we had a power outage for an hour during the night and now that I turn on my MacBook Pro, Time Machine recognizes the disk, but doesn't have a record of any backup.
I have gone to the drive manually and seen that the files are still there, but how to I tell Time Maching on my MacBook that the full backup is already on that NAS drive, so that it won't do a full backup?
I would really appreciate the help.
Brett

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

How to set up time machine so it can view old backup after renewal of user rights ?

I am newbie in the mac world but I am very happy to use the devices I have.
I just both and setup time capsule and did firt initial backup with time machine into account I have setup on the TC. But after while I was not able to view my user folder, so I resetup the user rights.
But now when I turn on time machine, I say that I didnt perform initial backup. In finder I am able to see and acces my folder on TC now and there is also a file with backup with name Václav - Mac mini.sparsebundle just in the root of my user folder on TC.
Can you please help me how to tell TM, that there is a initial backup that can be used for other incremental backups in the future ?
Thanks for your help.
Vaclav.

I did that. But and then reopen TM but still I dont see backup performed any suggestions ?
"Inherit" a backup
Copy the following after the prompt, and leave a space, but do not press Return yet:
sudo tmutil inheritbackup
If your backups are on an external HD, locate and open the drive in the Finder window. At the top level of the drive is a Backups.backupdb folder containing a folder named for your old Mac, per the sample. This is what you want the new Mac to "inherit." Drag that folder to the Terminal window.
(If your backups are on a Time Capsule, locate the sparse bundle containing the backups for your old Mac via the Finder, and drag it to the Terminal window):

Time machine is deleting all my old backups after moving to different iMac

Hi - I had to move my data to a different machine and so I prepared a different iMac (early 2008). This is what I did:
I booted into Snow Leopard from my DVD
erased the HD
installed SL 10.6
booted into SL
ran software update to upgrade to 10.6.8 (to get the App Store)
installed Mountain Lion 10.8.2
used Migration Asistant to restore all my data, apps, and settings from my time machine backup
This all worked fine and at some point time machine asked me whether to inherit the time machine history. I confirmed this and all seemed fine until I noticed that time machine was backing for a long time and a lot of space was being freed on the time machine volume. I found that it was deleting all my old backups. Before I had data going back to 2010 but now I only have backups left from JAN 2012 onwards.
After some searching I found the excellent Pondini time machine site and performed the actions under B6 ("Reconecting" to your backups):
exxi:~ michael$ sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi
Password:
exxi:~ michael$ sudo tmutil associatedisk -a / /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi/2013-02-03-150320/exxi_hd
I restarted the backup after applying the command above but it still is deleting old backups. I tried the same comand by associating it with an older backup but still it keeps deleting my backups.
What can I do to stop it from erasing all my backups?
Cheers
Michael

Just found this info in the Backup dashboard widget:
Starting manual backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb
Inheritance scan required for /, associated with previous UUID: [deleted]
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: exxi_hd
Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
First backup after disk inheritance for / - complete scan required
Finished scan
Found 839161 files (154.88 GB) needing backup
188.83 GB required (including padding), 145.37 GB available
Deleted backup /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi/2012-03-04-160328 containing 2.25 GB; 147.63 GB now available, 188.83 GB required
Deleted backup /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi/2013-02-05-181442.inProgress/57E7F008-929C-4 DF8-B062-F034FEE7A606 containing 4 KB; 147.63 GB now available, 188.83 GB required
Deleted backup /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi/2013-01-07-112745 containing 130.8 MB; 147.76 GB now available, 188.83 GB required
Removed 3 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Deleted backup /Volumes/tm2/Backups.backupdb/exxi/2012-03-11-191620 containing 2.08 GB; 149.86 GB now available, 188.83 GB required
Removed 4 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
Backup deletion was canceled by user
Deleted 4 backups containing 4.46 GB total; 149.86 GB now available, 188.83 GB required
Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Mar 31, 2012
Backup canceled.

Time Machine doesn't recognize old backup after logic board replacement

I recently had my logic board on my MacBook Pro replaced and when I tried to backup, Time Machine did not recognize the old backup on the drive and tries to create a new one. The drive is mounted fine.
Is there a way to continue using my old backup, or do I need to delete it and create a new one?

lissy-loo wrote:
Hi there I've just had this problem on my computer too but is there a possibly easier way to explain what is on this site...
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
I read through but got lost about half way down when it says:
"The last bit of information needed is the old MAC address. Open Terminal and change directory to the root of the Time Machine backup database, then get the old MAC address:...."
I was in terminal but couldn't work it out. Is this not a good idea to stumble around in if i have no idea what I'm doing? Seems difficult but I really wanna work it out because my Time Machine hard drive is full so I can't just get to back up everything from scratch and don't wanna delete what is already on there. Any help would be much appreciated!!
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
If you're not comfortable with the procedure, I'd advise against it. Mucking about with Terminal can cause all manner of problems.
But you can find your Mac's Ethernet Address via the *System Profiler* app. Click the Apple logo in your menubar, then +About This Mac,+ then +More Info+ to start it.
Select Network in the sidebar, then Ethernet in the upper panel. Near the bottom of the lower panel, under Ethernet, you should see *Mac Address.* It's 6 hex numbers (12 characters), separated by colons. Omit the colons when you type it into Terminal.
As noted in the Troubleshooting Tip, it's easy to do this wrong, get no error message, and have it not work (been there, done that!).
If it doesn't work, your only choices are to erase the drive and start over, or get a larger one and transfer your backups to it (see item #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
How big is your TM drive, vs. how much it's backing up? TM usually needs 2-3 times the space of what it's backing-up (see item #1 of the FAQ Tip).
Are you so concerned about not losing your backups because you've been deleting things from your internal HD, relying on TM to keep it's copies? If so, post back -- that's a terrible idea.

Time Machine doesn't recognize past backups anymore

My Macbook pro just came back from being repaired (issue with the video display).
I think they had to replace the logic board or graphics card or both - but I'm not sure.
Everything works fine now... except for Time Machine.
Before the Macbook Pro was shipped off I would backup regularly to an external hard drive.
While my Macbook was gone I had to use some of the backup files from within the Backups.backupdb file system. So on my Powerbook G4 with Tiger I had to go in manually and copy files over. No big deal... or so I thought.
Now Time Machine does not recognize the past backups from before I shipped the MacbookPro.
It just wants to start an entirely new backup again.
Is there a way I can get Time Machine to recognize my old backup again?
I'd hate to have to go in manually from now on. It's not exactly convenient.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OK, I didn't explain that well...
So here is what I'm typing in and what I'm getting back (the name of my computer being "Jason Argo's Computer":
Last login: Thu Jul 17 22:22:16 on ttys000
Macintosh:~ Jason$ cd /Volumes/Chubs/Backups.backupdb
Macintosh:Backups.backupdb Jason$ xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress Jason Taylor's Computer
I don't know why but I'm getting nothing back now. Before I was getting errors saying no such directory exists. I've typed in ls as well and get nothing.
Any ideas?

Replaced internal hard drive, time machine doesn't recognize as same volume

Howdy,
The hard drive (call it drive "X") on my iMac (one of the 2005 models) was dying so I had it replaced. I rebuilt the new drive (drive "Y") from my most recent time machine backup (from external drive "A"). I am now having problems with one of my backup devices, in that time machine doesn't recognize that the new disk is conceptually the same thing that had been backed up before (same volume name).
More details... I rotate my backups monthly through three external drives (I store the most recent offsite). After the disk replacement and restore process, I continued to use that backup drive (drive "A") without noticing any problem. Then it came time to rotate my external drives, and time machine doesn't find enough space on the next backup drive (drive "B"). Presumably this is because it doesn't realize that the drive I am backing up ("Y") is a copy of the drive that had previously been backed up on "B" ("X").
Is there any way to convince it they are the same? Or am I in the same boat as this poster:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2770362&tstart=0
Basically I just want to verify that I am in that same boat before I remove old backup files on "B". If I do decide I need to remove those, are the instructions linked in thread 2770362 correct, or are there better ones?
Thanks for any help,
Bob H

Actually, the backup I deleted above was the backup for the new internal drive. Apparently TM had created the (incomplete) backup during the failed attempt that ran out of space on the backup device. Since the new internal drive had the same name as the old internal drive, I didn't initially realize that's what I was deleting. Not that deleting it causes any harm, but it didn't address the original problem of freeing up space on the backup device.
Not to worry though. I've figured out how to get at the backups for the old internal drive, and am in the process of deleting those. I was about to follow the instructions in your troubleshooting items E3 and E2, but upon attempting to enter time machine I stumbled into the right place. Since I had previously told TM to do no backups (because there was still not enough disk space), and since I'd left the backup device connected, when I pulled up the TM menu from the menu bar, the usual "Enter Time Machine" menu was replaced by "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" (or perhaps "Disks" was "Backups"). This then gave me a list of the machines that I'd backed up on this backup device (in my case machine names and internal drive names are the same). Of course one of those was for the old internal drive, and after choosing it I roughly followed the same course of action as I did a few days ago, to initiate deletion.
I also saw how I could delete each of those old backups individually, but decided against that as I did not expect it would free up enough space. My expectation is that nearly all the space is shared among all the backups for the same source drive, since relatively very little changes between backups.
Bob H

HT203177 Time machine doesn't recognize my hard drive archive

I have time machine archive on a hard drive (not time capsule). It recently stopped backing up. On checking, time machine recognizes the hard drive (in preferences it is listed as the back up drive.) The files appear to be present on looking into the drive, but Time Machine doesn't recognize that there are backup files there, it wants to complete another full backup. Meaning - it says for latest backup: "none".
I am afraid if I do another full backup, I will lose the ability to access the older backups.
When I try to access older files through time machine, it predictably cannot find them.
How do I tell Time Machine that the files on that hard drive are the backup files?

Update:
1) Right click on TM icon - Menu choice "Browse other TM disks" allows me to see the data - i.e. it is a valid TM archive, not corrupted.
2) Looking at TM preferences immediately after showed the proper disk was targeted, but still Latest backup: None.
3) Shut down, anomalous shut down -required power button hit. (AHH - the problem??)
4) restart using command - R works - i.e recognizes the disk and emergency recovery system software
5) Restart - Still shows latest backup: None
6) trying to access data through standard TM startup shows data now.
7) go back to preferences - still no backup shown.
Aside - I can't recall what the purple vs white dates on right side of the screen signify, and can't find it in the documentation right now. Anybody know?

Time machine doesn't recognize external hard drive

Recently I went to the apple store to get help to switch from Mavericks to Mountain Lion (I had some problems with Mavericks). They used time machine to bring back my applications (from my external hard drive, LaCie) on the Mountain Liion software. They said my time machine/external hard drive should work the same when I got home. Now, when I go to back up my computer, time machine doesn't recognize that I've backed up my files before. In the past, when time machine was working, every time I plugged in my hard drive the icon for it would turn blue, time machine recognized it, and it would back up my files. Now, the icon for the hard drive shows up, but time machine doesn't recognize it.
Some other things:
- when I open my external hard drive on finder, it shows all of my previous back ups
- I used disk utility to check my hard drive and macintosh HD - both are OK
How can I use time machine to continue backing up files? Or am I going to have to partition or erase the hard drive and start a new back up?
Thank you in advance

nevermind! time machine suddenly recognized the disk after half an hour. sorry, I don't know how to delete this post!

Time machine doesn't recognize old time machine backups after new drive

After getting my original hard drive replaced on apple care. Time machine refuses to recognize time machine backups dating back to October when I first installed Leopard. The Records are there on an "off-board" Lacie drive. Any fixes for this? I have had so many problems with Time Machine I am afraid to turn it back on. Last time it took over 40 hours to do an initial back-up.

Yes I had been having multiple problems and once saved the entire system in archive and install and also time machine had been active since October when I first installed it. all of this was saved to an off-board Lacie drive I can find the old time machine files easily enough but time machine since the new drive, does not recognize them. Since I got the drive back with tiger installed, I first had to re-install Leopard so I don't know if that caused Time machine to start over . I did do an archive and install at that time but there was nothing really to archive since they had not recovered my old files. If this wasn't bad enough The Technician replaced my administrator password with his own and the was off for a few days and I couldn't do anything for awhile. You have been very helpful thank you for your time on my behalf.
Respectfully,
Thomas Carlisle

Time Machine does not recognize my iMac backup. Reports: not enough space; can't back up. How do I get it to recognize the backup?

Time Machine does not recognize my 430 GB iMac backup on 1 terabyte Time Capsule. Reports: not enough space; can’t back up. How do I get it to recognize the old backup and continue backups?

Thanks for the Time Machine Troubleshooting link. Apparently things have changed since 10.7.0. Backups.backupdb doesn’t exist. Path now is: Time Capsule/Data/Daru’s iMac.sparsebundle. So I did Terminal (I usually avoid Terminal) using the instruction in B6. It does not appear to be working. It went through looking for backup, preparing backup, and is now stopping backup, and the TMBackup has disappeared from the sidebar.
Well, just now Time Machine progressed to preparing backup again; the Tiime Machine Backups appeared in sidebar, and with it Backups.backupdb/Daru’s iMac/2012-04-21-112939.inProgress. So it does exist... I’ll let it run, see what happens... But that is a strange date. Today is 28.
I’ll let you know the outcome.
Oops. Just ended! Real time report: “Backup too large for disk...“ So it is not recognizing the old backup. I’ll look at those instructions again, see if I can do the Terminal thing with the backup running. I doubt I can damage anything except the existing baackup which I'll lose anywy if I can’t achieve recognition.
Daru

Time Machine Doesn't Recognize Drive

My Macbook Pro died the other night -- it wouldn't wake from sleep and couldn't be restarted -- and it now has a new logic board. Everything seems okay, but Time Machine no longer recognizes my time machine backups. The files are all there, on the same drive they were always on. But TM doesn't see them and won't back up, giving me an error that the time machine drive can't be found.
So I re-specified the drive in Time Machine preferences. And now TM now says that it doesn't have enough room for the backup on that drive -- presumably because it wants to start over and back up the whole drive again.
I've checked both the internal drive and the TM drive with Disk Utility. No problems found.
Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks very much,
Steve

Thanks for responding. Yes, I see. New logic board, new computer.
If I have to start over, I'd like to hold on to those old backups -- and put the new backup on the partition where the old one was. So I tried copying the whole TM backup to another partition, where I could keep it for protection.
But apparently you're not supposed to do this. The finder asks for your password twice in order to do it and it took about a half hour just to prepare to copy -- and it counted about 2 million files. Is there any way to back up the back up, or do I just blow it away?
In that FAQ they refer you to an article that allows you to use the terminal to point the Mac back at the original backup. But it seems pretty fragile and easy to make a mistake. (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101)
I also called Apple support and after escalating the call I got a guy who was willing to do much the same console thing. We started and immediately got an error from the console. If the Apple guy can screw this up, maybe I should stay away.
Suggestions? Do I just give up and start over?
Thanks again,
Steve

Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
Go into Time Machine.
Select the Macintosh HD.
Go back to one of the oldest backups.
Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.

Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

Using old Time Machine backup after clean install of system

I had a system crash on my G4 iBook running Leopard. Based on advice given at the Apple store genius bar, I reinstalled Leopard from an install DVD, reformatting the drive. During the system installation process I used my Time Machine backup to reinstall the former users (but nothing else). I then installed my needed applications. So far so good.
Now I'm in the situation where I have an external drive with the Time Machine backup of the pre-crash iBook, and I'm not sure how to proceed. Do I start over and do a new backup (effectively erasing all my pre-restore data)? Or can the old backup still be used, and added to? While losing the pre-restore time machine data would not be a major loss, it would be kind of nice to have.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
Dan

DanK wrote:
I had a system crash on my G4 iBook running Leopard. Based on advice given at the Apple store genius bar, I reinstalled Leopard from an install DVD, reformatting the drive. During the system installation process I used my Time Machine backup to reinstall the former users (but nothing else). I then installed my needed applications. So far so good.
You didn't want any of your settings, preferences, data, etc.? The +MIgration Assistant+ app will let you do that, for one or more users. And of course, you can use the +Star Wars+ display to restore selected items.
Now I'm in the situation where I have an external drive with the Time Machine backup of the pre-crash iBook, and I'm not sure how to proceed. Do I start over and do a new backup (effectively erasing all my pre-restore data)? Or can the old backup still be used, and added to? While losing the pre-restore time machine data would not be a major loss, it would be kind of nice to have.
Your next backup will be a full one; everything on your internal HD is considered as changed, so will be backed-up again.
If there's room for that, it will just be a large incremental backup, added to the existing ones.
If not, Time Machine will begin deleting your oldest backups, one by one, trying to make enough room for the new backup (the amount on the internal HD plus 20% for workspace). But it won't delete the latest backup -- if that's the only one left, and there still isn't enough room, the backup will fail.
If there is room, the first backup may appear to be very slow; why is not clear, but as long as it's making progress, let it run. Subsequent ones should be normal.

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install

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