Cannot access files in time machine backups

Greetings all. Thanks for your help with this.
I've recently replaced my internal HD in my 2009 MBP. Of course, I ran a backup to my external 1TB. Installed the new HD, reinstalled Mountain Lion, and figured...fresh start, let's just grab what I need from Time Machine and start "new." Well, when I get into Time Machine, it shows all of my backups, ever, which it should, but when I access the backup I want to draw from, I can't access the files I need. Everything in the Finder window, except for my computer name and the applications folder, is greyed out. THIS IS FRUSTRATING TO ME.
I've tried this..associating the new backups with the old:
http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html
didn't work.
I don't want to do a full backup from migration assistant. I like the idea of a fresh start with just my media. Any ideas? I"m so frustrated right now.
Thanks

I can't see backups for a disk/partition that's no longer connected

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My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help!

My MacBook w/ OSX 10.6.8 cannot access my external Time Machine Backup USB Drive. It says it is a Read Only drive. When I went to change permissions I found all pernissions were listed as "Custom" and I could not reset them to "Read Write". Any help would be appreciated.

This can be done easily with ethernet.
Please follow the instructions strictly.
To make it easier I want you to do this overnight so you can turn off all your current connection to the internet.
Just go to the airport fan in to the top right and turn airport off.
Get ethernet cable and connect the laptop to the TC lan port.. ie <-> ones.
Press and hold the reset on the TC for about 10sec. until the front led flashes rapidly.
Open the airport utility.. go to manual setup and change the wireless to off. (so other people around you cannot join your network of one).
Ignore all the errors.. they won't stop the backup working.
Go to the TM and reselect the backup target disk as the TC.
It should start after 2min and run through to completion.
That is it.. for a backup of many GB it might take a few hours.. so make sure the laptop has power plugged in and the sleep is off.. (on early ones I think this is needed but I am a late arrival to the scene).. sleep doesn't affect later OS.

Unable to restore from Time Machine after an erase and reinstall - MacbookPro cannot access my old Time Machine backup volume. Desperate for help please?

My MacbookPro would not move past the Apple logo and spinning wheel for a number of hours. After trying the numerous suggestions to solve the issue I eventually opted to erase and reinstall feeling confident my Time Machine backups would come to the rescue. After a successful erase and reinstall I tried to restore all my data from my TIme Capsule using Command-R during start up and by using the Migration Assistant. Neither worked and I have received messages to the effect that the backup volumes on my Time Capsule cannot be access because I have entered a wrong password or because the backup volume is damaged.
When I open my Time Capsule in Finder and click on my sparsebundle I get an eror message saying that the disk image could not be opened and that the resource is temporarily unavailable.
Desperate for some help and comfort that many years of personal data have not been lost.
Thank you.
M

When I try to Verify option it says Unable to Verify - Resource temporarily unavailable.
Here is the past of the log screen:
2013-06-09 15:00:00 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 15:09:01 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 15:19:53 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 15:19:53 -0500:
2013-06-09 15:20:00 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 15:20:00 -0500:
2013-06-09 15:20:05 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 15:20:05 -0500:
2013-06-09 15:20:13 -0500: Verifying Image “Macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 15:20:14 -0500: Unable to verify “Macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 15:20:14 -0500:
2013-06-09 15:25:21 -0500: Verifying Image “Macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 15:25:23 -0500: Unable to verify “Macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 15:25:23 -0500:
2013-06-09 15:25:27 -0500: Attach Image “Macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 15:25:27 -0500: Initializing…
2013-06-09 15:25:31 -0500: Attaching…
2013-06-09 15:25:31 -0500: Finishing…
2013-06-09 15:25:32 -0500: Unable to attach “Macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 15:25:32 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:02:06 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:05:22 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:07:11 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:18:34 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:18:34 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:19:34 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:19:34 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:19:36 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:19:36 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:22:29 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:22:29 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:22:33 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:22:33 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:22:45 -0500: Verifying Image “Macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 20:22:45 -0500: Unable to verify “Macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 20:22:45 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:34:53 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:34:53 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:34:56 -0500: [DUDiskController viewablePartitions] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2013-06-09 20:34:56 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:38:17 -0500: Verifying Image “Macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 20:38:17 -0500: Unable to verify “Macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 20:38:17 -0500:
2013-06-09 20:47:35 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:53:06 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:55:30 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 20:56:40 -0500: Disk Utility started.
2013-06-09 21:06:32 -0500: Verifying Image “macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 21:06:32 -0500: Unable to verify “macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 21:06:32 -0500:
2013-06-09 21:07:08 -0500: Verifying Image “macajee’s MacBook Pro”
2013-06-09 21:07:08 -0500: Unable to verify “macajee’s MacBook Pro.” (Resource temporarily unavailable)
2013-06-09 21:07:08 -0500:

Cannot access files on Time Machine due to permissions

I wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Mountain Lion. I am now trying to pull my files back off of Time Machine - music, pictures, documents. I keep getting errors stating I do not have permission to access certain files and the whole process shuts down. On my backup drive, I had a different username. Is that the problem? If so, how can I fix it without creating a new user with my old name and creating more problems?

I suspect that the problem isn't so much a different user name but a different user ID. You can see that for your current account in System Preferences > Users & Groups by right-clicking on a user and selecting "Advanced Options". (Heed the warning about changing the values you see in that panel!)
You can see the user ID for a file in Time Machine using a command in a Terminal session. Open a session and type "ls -ln ", where the letters "l" are lower-case "L"s and there's a space after what you type. (Don't type the quotes.) Then use the Finder to navigate to a file on your Time Machine disk that you can't access, drag it to the Terminal window, and press <return>. The user ID will be shown in the third field. It will probably be a number like as 501. If your account's user ID is 501 and that of the Time Machine files is 502, I'd create a new account on your Mac. It will probably be given the user ID 502, which will match that of the Time Machine files.

Cannot Access Files on Time Machine

Hi all I was hoping that I can get some help on Time Machine issue I have. I am having trouble accessing my external hard drive backup (WD My Passport for Mac) on Time Machine. I want to restore iPhoto. Somehow I have excluded items on Time Machine that I now need to put on to my Mac. When I hit the option key on Time Machine Preferences I can see the folder I want to restore but when I hit "-" nothing changes.
I can also see the same disk as a backup disk but only the unused portion. I am using Yosemite. I hope someone can help!!

Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a file named "com.apple.TimeMachine.plist" selected. Move the file to the Trash.
Repeat with this line:
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost
A folder named "ByHost" should open. Inside that folder, there may be a file with a long name beginning "com.apple.TimeMachine." If the file exists, move it to the Trash.
Restart the computer and test.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

I cannot access an older time machine backup after installing an new hard drive.

After installing a new hard drive I tried to access my older backups in time machine but cannot. They are there but do not light up and allow me to access them, or select them.

First, if you're worried about the possibility of losing a backup set, then your backup strategy is inadequate. You will certainly lose those backups, no matter what you do, when the drive hosting them fails, as it will eventually. If you take data safety seriously, you should have at least two complete, independent backups of all your data, one of which is off-site at all times. I suggest you make a second backup now, before doing anything else.
The action I suggested won't delete all the snapshots; only the selected one -- unless something goes wrong, which is always possible. Without adequate backups, nothing you do is safe.

Restore iBooks files from time machine backup after clean install

I just did a clean install of Yosemite. I still have a Time Machine backup of my Mavericks install. iBooks in my new Yosemite install does not have all of my books and pdfs in it - just the ones I can download from the iBookstore.
Is there an easy way to access my Mavericks Time Machine backup to retrieve my old iBooks files?

When I go back to the backup it does not let me go back to the previous backupprobably because the last backup was Lion and I am on Mt. Lion now. don't what to do another backup if that is going to mess up the old one. I can access it though by just going to it. So i am putting that one on my desktop and I am going to rename it and see if I can open in Iphoto.

I can't access my wireless time machine backup.

When I try to access my backup files wirelessly it says enter your name and password for the server "Base Station ddb9a1". I do not know my name and password. I had did a clean install to upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion. I used the migration assistant, but I can't access my wireless time machine backup. Please someone help.

Hello,
I would like an answer to this question as well. As this is a time capsule and not a Airport extreme question I think here is a better start.
I'm planning on getting a Time Capsule but have been backing up to a 500GB USB drive connected directly to my MacBook. It's probably only a month or 2 worth of back ups and not that big of a deal but if i get a Time Capsule and want to access the old back ups it would be nice to know if that is possible and if so how it can be done. I was thinking it might be possible to use something like Carbon Copy Cloner and move the back up file to the Time Capsule drive and erase the external that I have now, and have Time Machine use that file like it has been doing from the wired drive.
I will look around the posts and see if I can find anything. In the mean time if someone finds something it would be nice if you could put the link in this discussion.
Cheers,
Shadowrider

Cannot retrieve files from Time Machine.

I cannot retrieve files from Time Machine. I can enter it, but the arrows don't seem to function and when I click on a date/time, nothing happens.

I don't know what you mean by "arrows". After Entering TM, put your pointer over one of the coloured (usually purple) dated bars at the right of the screen. That will bring (usually the desktop) for that date to the front. Navigate in the usual way to find the old file, select it, and press the big Restore button on the bottom left of your screen. As I remember it, a copy of that file will appear beside the current original with something like "Restored" added to is title. When you quit TM (Cancel) that restored file should appear beside its current version. (Or, if it's host folder has been deleted, smewhere else but I can't remember where - search for it.)

Select certain files for Time Machine backup?

Is it possible to select only certain files for Time Machine backup? Or does it automatically backup everything, including what you don't want saved?

Time Machine will backup all user files unless you select the ones you do not wish to have backed up. see the attached from System Preferences:
Ciao.

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

How do I restore files from time machine backups made before reformatting macbook air?

The section titled "Restoring data from Time Machine backups" in the following may help: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427

Help: cannot retrieve old files from Time Machine backup on new computer!

I backed up my old Macbook Pro for several months. I've got a new Macbook Pro and I succeeded to restore the last content of the old one using the migration assistant.
However, now I need some older files that I know are in the backup, but I can't restore them because you apparently can only do that with the computer from which you made the backups... a Time Machine backup is 'tied' to the sparsebundle using the MAC-address of the computer...
I don't have my old computer anymore, does this really mean that all the old file in the backup are lost for me? Or is there an other way?
Please help.
Wim

Wimek,
According to this KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760)
"When upgrading from one Leopard-based Mac to a new Leopard-based Mac, and you wish to use Time Machine backups from the previous Mac, make sure the computer name of the new Mac (in Sharing preferences) is the same as your previous Mac's computer name was when its Time Machine backups were made. Afterwards, if the previous Mac is still on your network, give it a different computer name."

Can't restore files from Time machine backup?

I kinda successfully restored my files from Time Machine after a clean re-install of Snow Leopard (Time Machine thought they were new files, though, so backed up the 26 GB... waste of space), but now I'm trying to restore the files of the other user on the computer. In her pictures folder, I can't copy the iPhoto Library because I don't have permission to access it! The same problem occurred on my account too, but I was able to go to my Time Machine drive and manually change the permissions for the files I wanted, which doesn't work on her account.
I have made a Youtube video of the error:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__PdyAetVg
Can anyone assist me in restoring the files? That's all I need help in. Thanks

wrongusername wrote:
But if I transfer everything with the Setup Assistant, won't I once again be experiencing the problems I had?
If the problems were caused by your data. But that's extremely unlikely. It may have been an app, or, much more likely from your description, something corrupted in the Leopard OS. That's one of the problems with upgrading a sick system without knowing what or where the causes are. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself: if he isn't in tip-top shape to start with, his condition is likely to change, and not for the better.
Most of us would have recommended first simply doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your internal HD; if that didn't help, installing the "combo" Leopard update; if that didn't work, doing an +Archive and Install+ and re-installing the "combo."
After a clean re-install of Snow Leopard, my Mac worked fine again (except for the TM trouble). So it probably had something to do with my old files.
Probably not. Much more likely OSX was somehow damaged. And you got a whole new one.
How come I could read the files on my external HD and yet not be able to copy the files?
Time Machine uses special "deny everybody everything" permissions on it's backups, among other things, in an attempt to keep us mere mortals from moving, changing, or deleting things and corrupting them.

Cannot access users in Time Machine

Forgive the titling; I wasn't sure how to title this issue. Here's the problem:
1) I had a MBP that was running Mountain Lion, that routinely was backed up to a time capsule. Since my last backup of that machine (May 2013), I had upgraded to 10.9 Mavericks, and then subsequently upgraded machines to a new 15" MBP.
2) In the migration to my new 15", I realized that the aperture library had not transferred over (unfortunately after I had clean installed on the old computer).
3) Fear not, I'll just go and restore from the TM backup, right? However, I'm running into the following issues. When I enter TM, I cannot see any users at all inside the folder. However, if I try to restore the user account via migration assistant, it will find my user folder that was backed up. When I do attempt restoration however, migration assistant tells me "this user account does not need transferred" under the user account containing the aperture library.
My end goal: access my aperture library (and actually, anything that would've been contained in the user folder) somehow from the time machine backups, which I cannot seem to do for the life of me. Thoughts??

Opening iPhoto libraries directly in Time Machine was never intended.
It was the upgrade to iPhoto 9 (11) that removed the option to Browse Backups as shown in the following screenshot:
With iPhoto 8 (09) we had the following menu:
That option was removed with iPhoto 9 (11). So now all we can do is restore the entire library as follows:
1 - go to your Pictures folder.
2 - enter Time Machine.
3 - go back in time to get the copy you need.
4 - select it and click on the Restore button.
Do not try to open a library in the Time Machine folder with iPhoto. That's not what is intended use of Time Machine.
OT

Pulling Files From Time Machine Backup?

I want to do clean install of Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro because it's becoming overly cluttered with files that have been over the years first put on my Powerbook then my Macbook and then this computer. Currently everything is backed up to a hard drive with Time Machine. Would it be possible to do a clean install and then just pull the files I want from the Time Machine backup without just restoring the entire thing?

capnamazing wrote:
When I went to the Apple store they told me to run a fresh install and rather than use Migration Assistant (I'm assuming that is the same thing as Setup Assistant, correct?)
No. They have similar screens and "works" but are different. +Setup Assistant+ runs when a new Mac first starts up (or after installing OSX on an empty volume), and can transfer everything from another Mac or its backups "as is." It's used mostly to set up a new Mac exactly like an old one.
+Migration Assistant+ is an app in your Applications/Utilities folder, and runs only after at least one user account has been set up. It's used mostly to add a user account from one Mac to a different one that already has one or more. Depending on the circumstances, accounts transferred this way can lose their permissions to files on other volumes, such as backups.
Unfortunately, may folks, including some Apple folks, don't distinguish between the two, causing problems.
I went home to do this, plugged in my time machine backup to my MacBook Pro which has a fresh Snow Leopard OS X installed, and tried to drag and drop files from the time machine backup to my hard drive. It kept asking for my password when transferring, which is no big deal. But now when I move some of these files around or edit them on my hard drive, it keeps asking for the password again. Is there a way around that so I can just put the files and applications that I want onto my Mac without it requiring a password every time?
That's because the account you set up on the fresh install of OSX wasn't recognized as being the same one as on your backups. One user, even an Admin user, doesn't normally have access to a different user's files, and that's also enforced on backups.
If you really want to do it that way, you'll have to change the permissions on those files, via +Get Info.+ But be careful; do not use the +Apply to enclosed items+ to your entire home folder or the default folders (Desktop, Documents, etc.) inside it.

Cannot access files in time machine backups

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