Enable Time Machine after a full restore of the OS

Hi
I e restored my computer and used TimeMachine as Restore Source. Now when I enable TimeMachine on the fresh installed OS, and use the existing hard drive with Saves from the past. Time Machine is not able to see the existing Backup History it and go from there. It was a blank disk.
Is there a way Around? So I can go as there would never happen a full restore?
Thanks regards

Bradley Wagner wrote:
I ran into the same issue. Usually backups are incremental so that two backups of the system don't take up 2 x [the size of the system].
Is there a reason why after a restore it wants to backup my system completely fresh now? I don't have another place to keep the backups during a reformat of the Time Machine external drive so I'm a little hesitant to do this.
You don't have much choice, unfortunately. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338
This seems to be related to the fact that erasing a drive gives it a new UUID. Time Machine thinks it's a new drive (new to Time Machine, anyway), so it does a full backup. There were statements by at least one of the Apple software engineers that it wouldn't happen on Snow Leopard, but it still does.
By all means, add your voice about this here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html

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Time Machine after Migration Assistant restore

During vacation, my MacBook pro’s hard disk suffered directory corruption so bad that neither Disk Utility nor DiskWarrior could repair it. I knew I had a recent Time Machine backup at the office, so I just reformatted my hard disk, reinstalled, and was up in running again in a few hours.
When I returned from my holidays, I used Migration Assistant to restore everything from the Time Machine backup, including users, applications, preferences, and other data.
I experienced several problems:
1. The Mac is bound to an Active Directory domain. After restoring users using Migration Assistant, domain users could no longer log in. I had to unbind and re-bind the Mac to the domain before domain logins worked again.
2. The newly re-installed and restored Mac no longer recognized the Time Machine backup as being a backup of itself. This caused additional problems because when I enabled Time Machine again, it tried to make a full backup, saw that there wasn’t enough space on the disk, and deleted all but the most recent backup from the Time Machine volume.
3. Migration Assistant failed to restore several very important files, including:
a. Finder preferences and desktop layout
b. Mail preferences, including accounts and signatures
c. Keychains, including passwords to WiFi access points and web sites
d. VPN settings
e. The Stickies database
f. Some Address Book contacts
g. The iTerm.plist file (from ~/Library/Preferences)
h. Lotus Notes Data (from ~/Library/Application Support)
i. Other application preferences & data
I was able to locate some of these files in the single remaining backup on my Time Machine volume. However, some were simply gone. The iTerm.plist file, for example, was nowhere to be found. This file contained several dozen customized iTerm commands that I will have to reconstruct from scratch.
4. Ever since restoring from backup, Mail has exhibited a problem wherein it sometimes displays the wrong message. It doesn’t do this with all messages; only some. For example, if I select the most recent message in my inbox right now, a message received in June is displayed in the preview pane instead.
Has anyone else observed problems like these? Is there any hope of recovering the backups that Time Machine saw fit to delete?

Pondini wrote:
Michael Lowry wrote:
2. Time Machine does not recognize old backups as being from the same computer if the Migration Assistant method was used to restore the computer.
Not exactly, but the result is nearly the same. When you erased the internal HD, it got a new UUID, so to OSX it's a different drive, and everything put back on it was considered as new, and Time Machine backed it up.
Ah, ok. So if I understand correctly, it was the fact that I reformatted the drive, and not the particular method I used to restore, that led to Time Machine deleting most of the backups. Is that right? I still find it very odd that right after restoring from a backup, the system doesn’t recognize that very same backup.
I suppose if I had investigated the matter more carefully and spent a few hours reading on the web, I might have learned about some properties file inside the backupdb where I could have manually tweaked the UUID after reformatting. But honestly, how would I have known this? I thought I did things according the proper procedure. When Disk Utility was unable to repair the drive, it displayed specific instructions to back up my files (done), reformat, reinstall, and then restore from backup. When I followed these instructions provided by Disk Utility, my Time Machine backup was rendered unrecognizable, and most of my backups were deleted without warning.
Moreover, I wonder again: how would a less knowledgeable user experience this?
I gotta say, this process could be made more user-friendly and the instructions & warnings clearer.
The iTunes Library was not restored.
Was it in the default location (the +<your home folder>/Music+ folder)?
I found the original iTunes Library on the backup disk; I restored these files manually and that fixed iTunes. All of the music had already been restored successfully. And yes, my library was in the ~Music directory.
Once I’d made iTunes happy, I was able to sync my iPhone. This brought back the missing Address Book contacts, because they were on the phone.
The Mail database appears to be irretrievably corrupted. I have no confidence any more that clicking on an item in the list will actually display that item.
Have you tried +Mailbox > Rebuild+ from the Mail menubar?
I hadn’t seen that option. That fixed it. Thanks!
This was my first time relying on my Time Machine backup, and I must say I am not satisfied. I work in IT and consider myself a power user; I hate to think how a less expert user would experience this situation. So much for “it just works.”
Ordinarily it does; this is quite unusual.
I'm a retired IT guy, and learned many years ago that all hardware fails, sooner or later, and no backup app is perfect, so I always recommend keeping (at least) secondary backups. It's not any help now, of course, but you might want to check out #27 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for some suggestions.
I’m not sure I will continue using Time Machine. I like the advantages (multiple versions, integration into some apps, nice UI); but I don’t know if they’re worth much if the backup is not reliable as a system backup. I wonder if an incremental Carbon Copy Cloner backup wouldn’t be better for my needs. A CCC backup would also give me one additional benefit: it would be bootable, virtually eliminating downtime and facilitating quick repair and restoration.
Thanks again for your suggestions. They have been informative and helpful.

Ho do i restore my files from time machine after a full system restore?

I have just had a full system restore on my MAC, thanks to the genious bar in Bondi, prior to doing this i backed everything on my external hard drive using time machine, i now want to put everything back on to my MAC, including emails, music, photos, movies and important docs etc. what is the best way to do this?
cheers Colin,

See Here > How do I restore my entire system?
From Here > http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
More Info Here > http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

HT201250 When restoring Time Machine after a failure, does it also restore the files to the same order, for example - within iPhoto I have pics/ videos in folders and sub folders organised as family/events etc - will it go back to this exact order after a

When restoring Time Machine after a failure, does it also restore the files to the same order, for example - within iPhoto I have pics/ videos in folders and sub folders organised as family/events etc - will it go back to this exact order after a restore?

Hi Stavros0203,
When restoring your entire system from a Time Machine backup, it is restored to the state it was when that backup was made. See this article for reference -
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Time Machine loses backups after a full restore.

Greetings
(Possibly due to parallels, my Imac was running so slow or hanging. As a result,) I ran a full system restore from Time Machine. It worked well. Then I thought I would try a better restore date and used that. After this successful restore, I now notice that all earlier backups have been deleted/lost - or at least they are not available on the Time Machine,
The only event in between was to add to the time machine a windows based account file.
Imac seems to run OK now, but files from around July to now are missing.

After a full restore, Time Machine may start a new backup. You can ctrl-click the TM icon and +Browse Other Time Machine Disks+ to view your old backups. I can't be sure, but you could try to go to TM Preferences and Change Disks to see if you can continue to back up to your old TM folder/sparsebundle. Otherwise, you will have 2 backups now, the old one being dormant, but accessible.

Time Machine forces a Full backup (173GB) after System restore.

Hi,
Just restored my system from the latest backup in Time Capsule. Now Time Machine want to backup the whole disk again (173GB) although the changes between the current status and the latest backup should be minimal.
Is this the normal behavior?, I would rather avoid the full back up if there any way to do it.
These are the logs. First it says that the "Event Store UUIDs don't match". I'm not sure this is really normal, because I didn't swap hard drives or anything so I assume that the Event Store UUIDs should match.
Then it says that the size of the backup is 173.86 GB.
[October10] [October 10] 10:37:18 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Starting standard backup
[October10] [October 10] 10:37:35 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Time Capsule
[October10] [October 10] 10:37:45 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/Rubén Laguna Macías’s MacBook Pro_001ff3524896.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of Rubén Laguna Macías’s MacBook Pro
[October10] [October 10] 10:37:45 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of Rubén Laguna Macías’s MacBook Pro/Backups.backupdb
[October10] [October 10] 10:37:57 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
[October10] [October 10] 10:38:00 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
[October10] [October 10] 11:32:39 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] No pre-backup thinning needed: 173.86 GB requested (including padding), 380.26 GB available
[October10] [October 10] 11:37:57 AM com.apple.backupd[1196] Copied 83.6 MB of 143.7 GB, 3581 of 285647 items
[October10] [October 10] 12:57:59 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
[October10] [October 10] 12:58:24 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] Copied 95.2 MB of 143.7 GB, 101822 of 285647 items
[October10] [October 10] 1:58:30 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] Copied 8.9 GB of 143.7 GB, 289125 of 289125 items
[October10] [October 10] 2:02:32 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] Copied 291414 files (8.9 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
[October10] [October 10] 2:03:26 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.22 GB requested (including padding), 371.79 GB available
[October10] [October 10] 2:07:38 PM com.apple.backupd[1196] Copied 3601 files (626.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Matthew Connolly3 wrote:
Same problem here. Same machine. Restored from TM drive back to computer - worked fine doing incremental backups immediately after the restore, but now 2 days later, it wants to do a full backup and has gone and deleted all the older incrementals
Not quite the same problem, as your full backup wasn't the first one after a full restore. Whether it's related or not is anybody's guess.
Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Navigate to the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here. They may contain a clue.
Also see #D3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum for the main known reasons TM will do a full backup.

Restore from time machine after clean install of Mavericks

I decided to do a clean install of Mavericks to get rid of all the very old files hiding in my system folders. I made a startup disk following online instructions, rebooted from the USB drive and wiped the drive and reinstalled Mavericks. Then I plugged in my Time machine backup drive and tried to recover particular folders from the latest backup. However, I am getting a permission error that prevents me from going into the old user folder from that backup. It has a red circle/line icon on the folder. How do I get around this so I can select what to restore?

You might be able to view in System Preferences > Users & Groups.
Time Machine - Troubleshooting by James Pond is the best source around for Time Machine help.
I'm not seeing your issue listed. It's possible you will need to do a full Time Machine restore to another drive so you can actually boot from the drive then log into the user. If you have enough space on internal you could partition to restore there without polluting your current new install.
Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions 18. How can I copy my TM backups to a different location?
I backup to Time Machine but I also use a clone and use it over Time Machine when I'm trying to restore a User like youare trying to do. Hopefully someone else will have a better suggestion other than doing a full restore.

Time Machine after Restore

My mid-2011 21.5 inch iMac running OS 10.9.5 had been running very slow (all 4GB of RAM was constantly in use) so I dropped it off at an Apple Store Genius Bar for a week of diagnostics. The tests showed all the hardware was fine so they wiped the drive and suggested I rebuild it from my Time Machine backup excepting do not load the “settings” portion. I did that and I don’t think that helped the memory or speed issue much, but now I cannot run a Time Machine backup. TM thinks there is an archive from a different machine on my back up drive and there is not room for another.
How do I tell Time Machine to use the existing archive?
Thanks,
Mike M.

Eric - thanks for those links, and I actually did see them before I posted. But those instructions include having transferred "Settings" when restoring (from my original Time Machine backup) but the Apple Genius Bar folks suggested not to copy that portion since it may have been the cause of my problem. (Time Machine never asked whether I wanted to create a new backup...) So I don't know if that messes up the solutions on your links. After reading it a couple of times, it sounds like my solution would be to follow the "pink box" steps in B6 but frankly I'm not 100% sure (because I did not transfer "settings") .
In any case, I may just start a new archive on another hard drive and eventually delete the current one when it gets old enough.
Thanks,
Mike M

How to restore files from Time Machine after Clean Install of Mavericks

How to restore files from Time Machine after Clean Install of Mavericks. I know the data is there but seems unaccessable because I may have changed the Computer or Owner name. Is there any way to fix that now?

Hi Linc,
my back-up data is managed by Time Machine; the actual data is on a second internal Hard Drive with a capacity of 1TB - not partitioned. I am using Time Machine and have access to all data backed up since Mavericks Clean Install but not the data prior to this date.
When I open the 1TB drive in Finder I can see a folder "Backups.backupdb/Sigi's Mac Pro/ followed by many folders of backup dates going back to 2010-09-20-103441 and up to 2014-02-07-142414 all followed with folder Macintosh HD. February 7th 2014 was the date of the clean install.
These Backups are followed by backup date folder 2014-02-08-075554 with a subfolder of MacPro-320GB (this is the name I assigned to my Boot Drive during formatting; I suspect I should have assigned the same name as before ie. Macintosh HD) and 2014-02-11 with a subfolder Macintosh HD, these are the ones I get access to by way of Time Machine > Restore.
Weird thing is on Febr 11 when I relised my possible mistake and renamed the Bootdrive back to what it was initially ie. Macintosh HD despite this I have access to all backup data since the Clean Install in both folders MacPro-320GB as well as Macintosh HD but not to any data prior to the Clean Install.
Is there something that Time Machine knows and prevents access or is it simply a matter of renaming the subfolder 2014-02-08-07554/MacPro-320GB to ........./Macintosh HD?
I like to restore selectively and not everything - It was hard work reinstalling apps that were supposed to be the troublemakers (ref my discussion on Maverick problems) but I now need to get onto data specific to some of these apps as well as other data I may have missed. Long story? Yes and sorry.
Sigi

How to set-up Time Machine after Restore

After having restored an entire system back from Time Machine, it looks to me as Time Machines wants to completely backup all data already held on the hard-disk. With this effect, the harddisk is not big enough. I do not want to buy another disk. Is there any way how to persuade Time Machine that it should use the existing data on the disk?

Hi Aulia,
I don't believe that you will be able to have Time Machine understand that you only want it to continue with the same data : once it has detected that a file changed, it makes another copy, even if you know that it's the same file : it's based on messages telling it that a file has changed, not on files comparison.
I think that the "inprogress" file will be replaced by another one if you let TM do it's job : it won't make a third copy of your data. If there is enough space on the disk, you can let TM continue, and try to manage with the following trick, with patience and much care.
Make sure that the "Action" menu is visible in a Finder's window (it is if you did not customize the toolbar to remove it), and dive into Time Machine. Select a item in the window : the Action menu now has an item that should read "delete all backups of this element" (or something like that : I'm translating my French version). Take care that "all" here really means ALL versions in the backup : the only copy left would be on your main disk.
The next backup may not make a fresh copy unless you help it a little : after all, there was no message telling TM that the original was changed, since it was not ! Just do anything in the folder containing the item that you deleted from the backup (like creating and immediately deleting a folder there) : this will tell TM that something has happened there, the next backup will check the folder, detect the missing element and make a fresh copy.
Having only one copy of a really important folder may not suit you, even if it's only for the short delay until the next backup. You can make a copy of it, and run TM to backup the copy (a right click on the icon in the dock shows a "backup now" item). You now have a backed up version, you can delete the original, and all the backup copies of the original with the previous method. But if you rename the copy back to it's original name, it will be saved again... just iterate one more time !
I hope that this can help you, but please do not hesitate to try and validate your method on small copies before you delete something in your backup !
PS : I just tested my proposals with my 33Gb iMovie Events folder : a new copy of an event folder is created in the backup each time you rename an event, and I gained more than 40 Gb by deleting all previous redundant versions.
At least, it works for me !

Selectively restore from Time Machine after reformatting

I just reformatted my drive and reinstalled Mountain Lion and then upgraded to Mavericks. I backed up to Time Machine just before the reinstall. Time Machine did combine my first new backup with the ones before the reinstall, which I can see when I browse through the Time Capsule.
I would like to restore some things from the Time Machine timeline, however when I enter the timeline, the backups prior to the reinstall are named in purple on the dateline and the Finder windows are black and inaccessible. I suspect this is because after the reinstall the computer has a new account name, so the permissions are different on the previous backups with the old account name.
Does anyone know how to get the older backups to be accessible in the timeline? I would like to just selectively restore a few things as needed, and would like to do the "restore from Time Machine" rather than drag copying files from the mounted backup.

I would like to just selectively restore a few things as needed, and would like to do the "restore from Time Machine" rather than drag copying files from the mounted backup.
For this type of activity, you might want to take a look at Migration Assistant on your Mac, located as follows:
Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Migration Assistant
More info here: OS X: How to migrate data from another Mac using Mavericks

I have Photoshop Elements 10 on a new Mac, using Yosemite 10.1.1 - PE locks up every time I try to sign in. This software was restored to this computer from Time Machine after a theft of my old Mac. How can I fix this?

I have Photoshop Elements 10 on a new Mac, using Yosemite 10.1.1 - PE locks up every time I try to sign in. This software was restored to this computer from Time Machine after a theft of my old Mac. How can I fix this? It keeps telling me that there are missing files, too. If I upgrade to Elements 12 or beyond, will this fix the problem?

You can't sign in because there is nothing to sign in to. For PSE 10 the only sign in was to photoshop.com, which has been dead and gone for a year and half. Just skip the sign in. Reinstalling will not change this.
PSE 8, 9, 10 Can’t Sign In, Error 404 | Barbara's Sort-of-Tech Blog
PSE is locking up because it's looking interminably for the non-existent photoshop.com server.

Could not restore CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3

Could not restore Photoshop CS5 using Time Machine after changing to Mac OS8.3 - the change was dictated by a power supply problem (now fixed) in my Macbook Pro - that has been fixed.

Restoring the Adobe application via Time machine is not a good practise and may cause other issues as well.
Please install the application properly rather restoring.

How to get back into Time Machine after restore?

I have a MacBook. I had to take it in for repairs. Fry's gave me a loaner Macbook. I successfully used the Migration Assistant to copy all my backups onto the loaner Macbook. All my apps and docs seem to be here.
But now I want to be able to "mount" to my old Time Machine backup "stream". I tried the control-click on Time Machine in the dock to connect to a previous backup, but when I enter Time Machine I can't find any history. I should have like 2 years worth of backups.
Any hints on how to "get back on" an old time machine sequence after a restore?

RichieW13 wrote:
I have a MacBook. I had to take it in for repairs. Fry's gave me a loaner Macbook. I successfully used the Migration Assistant to copy all my backups onto the loaner Macbook. All my apps and docs seem to be here.
But now I want to be able to "mount" to my old Time Machine backup "stream". I tried the control-click on Time Machine in the dock to connect to a previous backup, but when I enter Time Machine I can't find any history. I should have like 2 years worth of backups.
Any hints on how to "get back on" an old time machine sequence after a restore?
TM keeps the backups for each Mac separate, and normally only shows the ones for the Mac it's running on, even if there are other Macs' backups on the same disk/partition.
Also, sometimes TM will start a new "sequence" of backups, as if they were from a different Mac.
To see these "other" backups, you need the (badly named) +Browse Other Time Machine Disks+ option. It's available by holding down the Option key while selecting the TM icon in your Menubar, or by control-clicking (right-clicking) the TM icon in your Dock.
You'll see a selection screen showing all the disks/partitions that have TM backups on them. Select the one you want, and you'll be taken to the normal TM "Star Wars" interface, where you should see all the backups on that disk/partition.

Updating Time Machine after restoring from backup

Hello,
I use both SuperDuper and Time Machine to back up my MacBook Pro to an external drive. My computer's internal hard drive recently died, and my most recent backup was from SuperDuper, so after I replaced the internal drive, I restored my system using SuperDuper.
With the new internal drive, Time Machine still recognizes my previous backups and lets me access my old files -- but when I try to create a new backup, it wants to delete nearly one year and 100 GB of old backups from the external drive to make room for new ones. I'm not sure why it feels the need to do that; all the Created and Modified dates on my files appear to have been preserved, so only the usual incremental update should be needed, and I have over 50 GB of free space on my backup drive for it.
I'd prefer not to lose that archived content. Any idea how I can continue using Time Machine without starting from scratch?
-Ken

kengagne wrote:
With the new internal drive, Time Machine still recognizes my previous backups and lets me access my old files -- but when I try to create a new backup, it wants to delete nearly one year and 100 GB of old backups from the external drive to make room for new ones. I'm not sure why it feels the need to do that; all the Created and Modified dates on my files appear to have been preserved
That's not what it uses to determine what needs to be backed-up (since they can be changed), but it doesn't apply to this case anyway.
Since you have a new drive, even if it has the same name as the old one, Time Machine knows it's a different drive and will back it up completely. You cannot prevent it.
This is actually for your protection; if you had a drive named "Music" and replaced it with a different drive, with different content but also named "Music," surely you'd want Time Machine to know it was different and back it up?
In fact, you can have two or more drives on the same Mac with the identical names; OSX (and Time Machine) know they're different, and can keep them separate without a problem.
If you really need backups kept that long, you need a bigger drive for Time Machine. Your best bet is to let it start fresh on the new one, and keep the old one "on the shelf" until you're sure you don't need it anymore. You can always view and restore from the old one, via the +*Browse ...+* option, per #17 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Or, if you really want to, you can copy the backups from the existing drive to a larger one, then continue backing-up to them. See #18 in the FAQ.

Enable Time Machine after a full restore of the OS

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