After motherboard swap, Time Machine doesn't recognise older backups

Hello,
After I had my motherboard replaced on my MacBook Pro, my older backups are not recognised. Is there any way to access this data?
Many thanks in advance.

Hello,
Time machine uses the MAC address to identify each computer and as your logic board now sports a new MAC address TM can't see it.
I haven't tried this but Barry Sharp, posting on macosxhints suggests:
If you attempt to backup after the MAC address has been changed the TM backup will indeed fail and report it cannot found the TM backup volume. This is because the hidden file with the name of the MAC address (minus the colons) does not match the new MAC address.
All that is required here is to goto TM Pref panel and click on the "Change Disk..." button and reselect the TM backup disk and then manually force a backup via the Dock's TM icon "Back Up Now". The backup will now run and the new MAC address will be created as a hidden file alongside the old one. You can use sudo to remove this old one.
TM backup will proceed as it would have normally done without the MAC address change and without a deep traversal of all volumes that have not been excluded ...
from:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
Note: he points out the original suggestion at the start of that hint is unnecessary.

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I recommend the following.
1. Reset the TC to factory.
Universal Factory Reset.. any model TC or AE.
Unplug your TC/AE from power or turn off at the power point.
Hold in reset. and power the TC/AE back on.. all without releasing reset and keep holding in for about 10sec. (this is often difficult without a 2nd person or a 3rd arm).
Release it when the status light flashes rapidly. If it doesn’t flash rapidly you have missed it and try again.
Note..
Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel.. add no more pressure after that.
TC/AE will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations of the router.
No files are deleted on the hard disk in a TC.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
2. Rename the TC to SMB standard.
That means short names.. 2-20 characters but less than 10 is excellent. eg TCGenx (use number for x that is actual generation of the TC)
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric. No apostrophe.
3. Ensure IPv6 is set to link-local..
Do the same thing for ethernet if that is used.
4. Manually mount the TC disk in Finder.
Use Go in the top menu.. connect to server.
Type in
AFP://TCname.local (where TCname is your new short name for the TC and local is default domain .. it helps using the domain I found).
You will then find the computer either can or cannot find the network resource.. if it fails something else is wrong with the actual network and you will need to fix that.
It will request the password if it is found.. password is public by default unless you changed it.. type in the password and check to keep it in your keychain.
5. Delete current TM setup and redo it with the newly named TC.
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Message was edited by: Adam Lippiatt

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See C-17 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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
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mel_hann wrote:
I found this:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/217131en
This tells me it can be done and that it's quite simple. It's all fine until step 4. When I click on Time Machine Backup Configuration it just connects to the Apple support page for how to set up Time Machine. Nowhere to input my details. Grrrrr.... This shouldn't be this hard!
In theory, I agree that it ought to be simple, but that's Seagate's programming, not Apple's. Few folks here, and none at Apple, are familiar with it.
Do you have the current version? Does it claim to be compatible with the version of OSX you're on (is that Snow Leopard 10.6.8, per your profile)? Not all NASs are compatible with all versions of OSX. You need to contact Seagate (or return the NAS).
Again, I'd strongly recommend reconsidering. I just spent the better part of a couple of days helping a user of a GoFlex Home who replaced her internal HD, then found her backups were corrupted, piece her system back together. Not for the faint of heart.
Take a look for yourself: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5061341
There's a lot of chaff there -- she's not an experienced Mac user (she is now!), but was very determined to get her stuff back.

Time Machine doesn't recognise backup

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See B5 and B6 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Let me suggest it is much better to start afresh.
Archive off the existing backup.. do an erase of the TC and start a new clean TM backup.
In the end you should preserve the existing backup anyway.. as using TM now will likely erase the entire existing backup anyway.

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 seem to backup my recent data

I have a porblem that TM doesn't seem to be backing up my recent data.
If I enter TM, the 'Now' tab on the timeline shows me exactly what is in my folders, or in iPhoto etc.
If I go back to even the most recent TM date (eg 1 hour ago) then my recent data is missing. Specifically, I can see data from a about a month ago, but nothing kore recent than that is shown. So folders has no recent files, and iPhoto has no Events added in the last month or so.
I first picked this problem up in January, and what I now notice is that my data definitely refects changes since January. So this seems to not be a problem with TM working with my user account (I have multiple user accounts on the iMac, and TM is working for the others). TM is working but seems to have a lag of about a month!

Doug:
I don't have an answer for you, but I noticed the same problem while spot checking my backups, as I occasionally do. Troubling, if I can’t depend on TM to back up properly.
Booting into Safe Mode (the only “simple” remedy I could find on the Internet) did nothing.
The missing files all occur within the last month. Although the missing files are IN my home folder, most new files in my home folder ARE properly backed up, including the Desktop Folder.
At the same time, I noticed that the problem seems confined to one group of subfolders. As an experiment, I duplicated the enclosing folder (renamed as “xxx copy”), performed a Time Machine backup, and found THAT folder would back up properly. So, the contents of “xxx” won’t back up, but duplicating it as “xxx copy” WILL back up.
I can also move all of the original CONTENT of “xxx” to a new folder, and it WILL back up properly.
I can also place a new file in the original problem folder "xxx", and it WILL back up. (Go figure.)
There’s something about the enclosing folder “xxx” that won’t allow folders/files after a certain date (about a month ago) to be backed up, whereas a duplicate of it WILL back up. At the same time, putting a new file in "xxx" WILL back up.
Now I’m worried about what other folders might be a problem. Fortunately, I back up twice with an off site system . But I would like to know what’s wrong with TM, so I can depend on it. Hopefully someone can weigh in with a proper diagnosis and "fix" so we can depend on TM again.

Time Machine doesn't recognize my backups now that I restored from it.

After installing Lion 7.1 from the app store overy my Snow Leopard, my mid-2009 2.8 GHz MBP (15") started acting wonky . . . Would freeze up randomly, need to be hard-reset, would open up windows on boot-up that I DID NOT have open before (even if I unchecked the option to "re-open windows when logging back in"), would not remember certain preferences, etc.
Called Apple tech, all he could suggest was format/reinstall using the fun, new recovery feature in Lion, if the 7.2 update didn't somehow magically fix my problems. It didn't, so I made sure my time machine back-up was complete, booted into recovery, wiped the Macintosh HD, and re-installed Lion from the web. Took forever, but no problems, so I get to the part where I want to recover from Time Machine, and say to restore everything expcept my settings (in case something from settings before was causing the issues). It does all of this, no problem, and I log into my Mac and everything looks the same as before.
NOW, Time Machine wants to back-up, as usual, and I think it will look at the system and say, "Oh, yeah, I've got all this . . . I mean, you just restored from me, so I'll just take a few snapshots or whatever and back up every hour (or whatever I do)." But Time Machine ain't saying that. Time Machine says," Oh, you have a bunch of crap on this hard drive already, but I need more room to back up your computer." And I'm saying, "No buddy, that's not a bunch of crap, that IS the back-up of this computer. Just reference that!"
Except, see, I'm SAYING that to my computer . . . But it can't hear me, obviously. How do I get my computer to understand that I don't need a new back-up from scracth, that the hard-drive I restored from IS the TM backup?
Sorry for not being able to explain this problem more efficiently. Thanks 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?

After motherboard swap, Time Machine doesn't recognise older backups

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