Cant access old backups

i have recently had to reinstal leopard on my imac,the problem i have is i can now only access time machine backups from after the new instalation.I remember that i changed my user name from my original one and deleted the old one can anyone tell me how to access the old backups or tell me how to delete them so i can regain the space.most of my backup space is used by the old backups and i have very little space left, thanks in advance jamie.

rellmac wrote:
hi thanks for your advice.Ive tried what you told me to do but i still cant get access to anything before may 2009.Theres nothing showing up as if it dident exist.
How do you know there are older backups? TM does delete your oldest backups when it needs room for new ones.
I know that i changed the name of the computer after i reinstaled leopard and there was two user names before, there not there now,
Try the Browse option while signed-on as an Admin user. You should see all the backups.
its like theres 80 gigs of time machine space that cant be read or accessed.
How do you know this? Where are you getting the 80 gb number?
Depending on what you did earlier, such as deleting backups, or parts of backups, via the Finder, it's possible the backups are corrupted. If in doubt, do a +*Repair Disk+* (not permissions) on your TM drive via the Disk Utility app (in your Applications/Utilities folder).

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Time machine cant see old backups with New Macbook

Hello, I recently migrated from an iMac to a MacBookPro6. I plugged in my externals hard drive into my Macbook and was accessing old backups from my iMac without a problem. THEN I used the hard drive to backup with time machine and now I cannot access any of my iMac files. I no longer have permissions. I no longer have the iMac. Is there any way to access these old files or retrieve permissions with my new Macbook?
Thanks in advance

Thanks ClayG, thanks Rodrigo
I work at a university so will take Clay's suggestion to my IT guy (he suggested I post here). Im sure it will make more sense to him than me:)
To answer your querey, yes I can use the hard drive with my new computer, that wasnt the issue, it was only retreiving the old files.
Thanks again to both of you for taking the time
A

Permissions issue accessing old backups

Hi - I've recently upgraded to a new Macbook Pro and updated to Mountain Lion Presently on 10.8.3
I've been backing up via Time machine and earlier today I tried accessing older folder which, when I clicked on them, advised that I didnt have permission to access. I did a few searches and tried looking in and achanging permissions by right clicking Get Info, which I was unable to do (the options were greyed).
I just did a back up and thought I'd try again - now I can even check the earlier backups beyond 2 back ups prior, even though i see the purple back up dates listed on the right hand side - i click and nothing happens
Hmmm - very frustrated

No, I can see all the folders and dates there, but it wont allow me to access them saying that I dont have permission to view. I can scroll thru and see all the revious backup finder windows but certain folders (like documents and desktop are greyed) and when I go via my computer to users, movies, library and pictures have the red circle / white line icon
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Can't access old backups, but are still there!

So i tried today to access some old backups, and lo and behold, when i open time machine, the only ones i could get to were the ones from today. I looked in sys.prefs. and it said that the oldest backup i had was, in fact what it should be, but i can't access anything older than today! How can I access my older archives?

Confirm that an entirely new backup has not been created. If only one backup folder exists, perhaps the Time Machine interface view is slow in bringing up previous backups to view.

Time Machine: Cannot access old backups after migrating to a new mac

Hello,
I have bought a new Mac (With Snow Leopard installed on it). I have used it for about half an hour to have fun with it.
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Is there an way to fix this? I would like to be able to access these old files.

I am having a similar problem and do not understand the solution. I have a new Macbook and transferred my data from my Powerbook G4. However, I cannot access anything! There is a no entry sign on the folders and if I click them I get this message: 'The folder “Pictures” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents.'
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Accessing old backups

Evening all..
Recently purchased new Time Capsule (4th gen) to replace my old Time Capsule (1st gen).
Followed the instructions on this site to copy all of the backups from old TC to new TC (which took nearly 3 days) and now need to access those old backups which have been copied to the new TC.
Am not able to see them via Time Machine, only the backups created since installing new TC.
Any ideas ?

In addition to the above info..
I've looked at the new Time Capsule in Finder and have 2 Sparsebundle files on it..
One is the current set of backups (approx 210gb) and the other is what's been copied from the old TC (approx 970gb)..
So, the data is there, but I can't see a way to access it through Time Machine.

Cannot access old backups

So here's the problem from start to finish:
A while back I was experiencing some trouble with my Time Machine backups - they just kept failing. So I turned off time machine on my machine, de-selected the Time Capsule as my backup point, and rebooted the time capsule. Popped on time machine again, reselected "data" and then away we went with the backup. I was a bit concerned by the fact that it said "oldest backup: none" but then discovered that when it started backing up it wasn't doing my whole hard drive just a block of close to 50 gigs or so -- seemed within reason.
Today I went to try and grab a file from a few months back only to discover I could only go back as far as Feb 8th (around the time when I re-setup time machine). There were entries dating back almost a year, which I expected but all of the items were "faded". They had dates - I could jump to March 17th for example, but when I got there I was greeted by a black box and no ability to pull anything down from time machine.
I thought maybe it was this folder - but nope, tried a couple others and they were all the same.
I only have one sparse bundle for this computer on the time capsule "data" drive, and it's ~1.5 TB in size. When I open up the sparse bundle and look there are lots and lots of folders (granted if I try to open any finder just shows the pinwheel in the lower right corner and does nothing) so I'm guessing that things are still there... but for some reason I cannot access them.
Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? Are my files still there? Is my sparse bundle corrupt? Is it because this is all over the network? Is there a way to copy the contents of the time capsule over to another harddrive which I can then use in it's place?
This is for my "old" computer, that has recently been replaced. My new computer is currently not being backed up at all because there's no room left on the time capsule because of the giant backup for my old computer, a backup I'm now not even sure really exists. If that's the case I'll just re-format the harddrive and away we go.
Any insight that could be offered would be greatly appreciated.

Are you on Mavericks now??
Did the problem start when you upgraded to Mavericks?? If so you are one amongst many.
Mavericks does something terrible to the old backups. If you can get access to them is unknown.
Firstly mount the sparsebundle and do a verify via disk utility.
See A5 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Try some of the solutions in the E section.. eg E2-E4
I hope you do realise if you deleted the file from the computer.. then TM will delete it from the backup.. not immediately but eventually it will. TM is not a good way to keep history of backups.. It is a current snapshot.
It sounds like you have tried correctly to open the sparsebundle in finder and locate the file.. This is worth while continuing but you just have to persevere .. open many dates around when you know the file was there. If it is gone.. well sorry it is gone.
TM is not particularly reliable now since Mavericks. you haven't told me you are on Mavericks but the issues smell like that.

How to access old backup

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I took a look at their site, it has no information about the product or product support at all. From what is there it seems that it works on the iPhone itself not on iCloud. But you'll need to seek help from Keep Safe.
On the App Store this product has 3 reviews, all bad. What made you buy it (every month )
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Can't access old backups after disk move?

I've moved my TM backup from a locally attached drive to a drive attached to the Airport Extreme. I followed the instructions in several fora on how to do this by using the Disk Utility to do a block copy restore. However, after pointing TM at the new drive, it seems to have created a complete new backup. When I view in the TM timeline, it won't let me navigate back in time beyond the 1st backup after the disk move (though it seems to know they are there as there are a stack of folders marching off into the far distance). However, if I navigate to the drive, all the daily and weekly folders for all the previous backups still appear to be present.
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Unfortunately, you can't combine wired and wireless backups, as Time Machine stores them differently.
It may not have been apparent, but the instructions for copying to a new disk are for wired-to-wired only.
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Can't access old backups after reinstalling Lion and restoring with Migration Assistant

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My new merged main user appears as "carlos 1" when it should have been just "carlos".
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My TC is a 1TB 2009 one.

Carlos. wrote:
As my new main account and my old one (coming from Mig Assist) had the same name, MigAssist asked if I wanted to merge them.
No, there is no "merge" option:
You can rename or replace, not merge.
Unfortunately, the purple bars before the moment of reinstall are all faded and I can't retrieve any information from them. Nothing before that moment is available, not from the Finder or from withing any other application.
My new merged main user appears as "carlos 1" when it should have been just "carlos".
You have two separate accounts now.
See Problems after using Migration Assistant for an explanation of what's happened (the blue and pink boxes) and a possible fix in the tan box -- but that won't work if you've done any backups since using Migration Assistant.
If you have done backups, your best bet is to do a full system restore, selecting the last backup from before you did the Migration. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #14.

Can't access old backup file on iCloud

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You can see any of the content of the backup without restoring it to your device, and as you indicated, the only option in settings is to delete it. It should contain your camera roll photos, which are included by default. If they didn't restore, about all you can do is try restoring the backup again.

I cannot syn my iphone as it says backup corrupt for phone delete but cant find it and cant access via backup as none shown

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i also face the same problem. i have updated my i phone 4 to ios 7.0.4 and i tune 11.1 .when i start back up now on i tunes though it started to back up some apps but it shows the msg that back up is corrupt

I cant access any of the content that was in my music library that was set up on my old destroyed laptop. so Home Share cant be used. Is there a way to pull all of the music content, not just iTune purchased music from my 4th Gen Nano back into iTuunes?

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It has always been very basic to always maintain a backup copy of your computer.
Use your backup copy to put everything back.
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How do I get my new iphone restored with my old backup? my old iphone had ios5 and the replacement phone i got has ios4 and it wont let me backup my phone because it doesnt have ios4... i cant get ios5 without restoring my iphone and backing it uo

Basically, i need all my old stuff from my iphone 4 with ios5 onto my new iphone 4. The new phone i received only had ios4. I went to get all my contacts and backup from my old phone onto my new phone and it wont let me because my new phone is only ios4 and my backup from my old phone was in ios5. I cant get ios5 on my phone without creating a new backup of my new phone, which has nothing on it. If i restore it as a new phone and backup virtually nothing from my new phone, will that get rid of all my old backup stuff from my old iphone?

Bottom line is you CANNOT restore to a phone from a backup that has a more recent iOS which is what you're trying to do. Just can't be done.

How do I access old iCloud backups?

Hi,
This forum interface is not exactly user intuitive, so I apologize beforehand if this question has been asked hundreds of times already.
I lost my iPhone 4 near the end last year, and purchased a new iPhone 4S to replace it. After using the new iPhone for a couple of months, I've started getting notifications that my iCLoud storage is full, and that I should purchase more storage. When I enter 'Manage Backups' for iCloud, I see that I have two backups - one recent backup that is 1.5GB large, and an old backup that is 3.1GB large. This larger backup was made before I lost my phone, and therefore this is great news - it means I might get back all my old photos and whatever else might be on there. Also, if I can get back those files I want, I can delete the old backup and won't have any problems with running out of storage for a while. Therefore, some questions arise:
1. How do I actually access the old backup? I don't seem to be able to open it in the iCloud site, download it to my hard-drive, or open it with the iCloud utility for Windows. All I want to do is to see which files and materials from the old backup that I would want to salvage, and throw away the rest, but how do I do this? I do not want to overwrite my current phone settings or files, since I've been using the new phone for a few months now and have a lot of new settings, contacts, etc, that I do not want to overwrite. Mostly I'm interested in getting my photos back.
2. If it is not possible to actually access the old backups, why is this? Is there a policy that anyone knows of from Apple? I can't imagine actually buying more storage space in the cloud, as my phone keeps suggesting, if I'm not even given access to the data I back up.
Thanks a lot, and again - sorry if I've restated a question that has already been resolved here.
(I'm running a Windows 7 computer if that's relevant, and the latest iOS on my iPhone 4S)
Thanks,
Henrik

Although more recent, and with newer devices, I have been trying to find this same information. Please help!

Cant access old backups

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