HT1338 HELP! iMac won't recognize time machine backup!

My hard drive failed in my iMac 2.8 Intel Core i5. Luckily, I had a time machine backup on a usb hard drive. Also luckily, there was a free replacement available for my iMac because the Seagate hard drive in my iMac was prone to failure. I brought it to the Apple Store for a replacement, which took about a week. When I got home to restore my system from the backup, it won't see the time machine backup. It sees the drive but no backup is selectable. I know it is there because I updated my System software to the latest Mountain Lion and you can see the files on the backup drive, with dates for the backups and everything. It won't allow me to restore in Migration assistant or Recovery Mode or anything.
HELP!!

Most likely, some files were inadvertently excluded from your backups, and as a result you won't be able to restore your data in Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant.
Starting from a fresh installation of OS X, set up a new administrator account and log in. Follow the instructions on this page to associate your existing backups with the new installation.
You should now be able to enter Time Machine and restore your user data from a snapshot.* I suggest you do this in two stages. Quit all applications except the Finder before you begin.
Restore all the visible items at the top level of your home folder.
Hold down the option key and select Go ▹ Library from the Finder menu bar. Enter Time Machine and restore all items in the Library folder. Log out and log back in as soon as the restore is complete.
Any other invisible folders or files at the top level of your home folder that you want to preserve will have to be restored separately. For most users, that isn't necessary.
You'll have to reinstall all third-party applications from scratch, or restore them from another kind of backup, if you have one.
*If you don't see any snapshots in Time Machine, exit the time-travel view and then hold down the option key while selecting
Browse Other Backup Disks...
from the Time Machine menu, which has an icon that looks like a clock running backwards. Select the backups of your computer by its previous name. If you don't have the Time Machine menu, open the Time Machine preference pane in System Preferences and check the box marked
Show Time Machine in menu bar

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Migration Assistant in Lion won't recognize Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard

I just got an iMac with Lion. I am trying to use the Migration Assistant to move my files/apps etc from a Time Machine backup to the new computer. The MA will not recognize the backup drive - (external firewire 800). I can see the backup drive on my desktop but it does not show up as an option to choose in the Migration Assistant. Any idea what might be wrong. The backup is from an iMac running Snow Leopard and all the system software was last updated on Dec 9th. It think it is as current as I could get with Snow Leopard. Any ideas what is wrong?
Thanks,
Chad

This happened to me after hard drive replacement under the Seagate Drive Recall at the local Apple Store. Here's what I learned from the process:
I Wagged the Mac home, fired it up (with naked OS installed at the Apple Store), and it wouldn't see my Time Machine drive with Setup Assistant - not on firewire 800 nor USB. Just a grey spinner that lasts forever. When I try just continuing anyway, it offers me something that looks plausible, but then puts up a dialog about duplicate user name, and no matter what I enter, it always says "that user already exists". So I think - maybe Migration Assistant. Complete the setup, create an account, watch the nice welcome movie. BAM - there's my Time Machine drive on the desktop. OK - it has to work . . . but no. Same behavior in Migration Assistant, plus the new OS offers to start making backups on my Time Machine disk - it's not recognizing it at all.
So - back to the Apple Store - let the genius figure it out. It turns out there are multiple problems. First, the "genius" who imaged my new machine picked 10.7.2 but my machine had 10.7.5 - turns out, it's not enough just to have right cat. Even a point release older OS may not recognize a newer Time Machine drive. The guy at the desk said "We have images of everything but the 10.7.2 has free iLife in it, so they like to use that one". What the heck? They don't image what you had originally as a matter of sane process?
Having figured that out, we re-image 10.7.5 at the store thinking we've fixed it. But no - Setup Assistant still won't see the Time Machine drive. Not on USB, not on Firewire. Not in a box, not with a fox.
So here's the second trick - newer machines have a recovery partion. see: http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/ Boot with the option key held down, pick that partition, then you'll get a "system restore" option, to restore your whole system from a Time Machine backup. My drive was recognized by the recovery partition restore process when neither Setup nor Migration Assistant would. Obviously, there's something broken in Setup/Migration Assistant.
Takeaway:
- if you're getting a drive replaced by Apple, make sure they image *exactly* the same OS
- if Setup Assistant fails, use the recovery partition for system restore
- Use Recovery Disk Assistant http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 NOW to make yourself a recovery thumb drive just in case. With Apple's new "no media" approach to the OS, you're hosed without it.

Migration Assistant won't recognize Time Machine Backup

I recenly got my old thunderbolt-less macbook pro back from a repair and I can't seem to resotre my data. My external drive it reconized in finder, but not in Migration Assistant. I have updated to the newest OS and still nothing. I was tunning mavrics before the repair so this should be working right? Thanks for any help you can offer.

A possible reason for backups not to be available in Migration Assistant is that the computer doesn't have a name, or the name is corrupt. Open the Sharing preference pane and check the name. If you can't do that, reset the PRAM. Credit to ASC member Csnote for this observation.
Most likely, some folders were excluded from your backups as the result of a failed or aborted software installation.
Starting from a clean installation of OS X, set up a new administrator account and log in. Enter Time Machine and press the key combination shift-command-C. The front window will show all mounted volumes. All snapshots should now be accessible.* Select the one you want and navigate to your home folder (in the Users folder at the top level of the old startup volume.)
You should now be able to restore your user data. I suggest you do this in two stages. Quit all applications except the Finder before you begin.
Restore all the visible items at the top level of your home folder.
Hold down the option key and select Go ▹ Library from the Finder menu bar. Enter Time Machine and restore all items in the Library folder. Log out and log back in as soon as the restore is complete.
Any other invisible folders or files at the top level of your home folder that you want to preserve will have to be restored separately. For most users, that isn't necessary.
You'll have to reinstall all third-party applications from scratch, or restore them from another kind of backup, if you have one.
You'll have another problem if this is a new computer, or if you erased the startup volume: The next time you back up, Time Machine won't recognize any files as being the same as they were before, and will make a full copy of all files. There might not be enough space on one or more of your backup volumes for that. There are different ways of dealing with that situation, depending on your needs. The easiest way is to set your backup drives aside, if possible, until you're sure you'll no longer need the data on them, then erase them and start over. Meanwhile start a new backup on one or more empty storage devices. If that solution isn't workable for you, ask for instructions.
*If you don't see any snapshots in Time Machine, exit the time-travel view and then hold down the option key while selecting
Browse Other Backup Disks...
from the Time Machine menu, which has an icon that looks like a clock running backwards. Select the backups of your computer by its previous name. If you don't have the Time Machine menu, open the Time Machine preference pane in System Preferences and check the box marked
Show Time Machine in menu bar

Migration Assistant Won't Recognize Time Machine Disk

Hi,
I'm trying to restore a Time Machine backup using migration assistant. The backup is on a USB disk connected directly to the computer. I can open the volume and browse the files. I used Disk Utility to check the volume and it found no errors.
When I run Migration Assistant, it sees no backup disks and instead tries to search the network for other computers, even though I said I had a disk.
This is very frustrating. What am I doing wrong?
Frank

You may have been bitten by a bug we've just identified.
See #D10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
If so, home folders are not affected, and there may be a way to recover them.
Post back with your results and we'll work on a recovery plan.

Force migration assistant to recognize time machine backup

I was trying to reformat Bootcamp partition and it reformated an attached external hard drive with my Time Machine backup on it and my internal hard drive that I boot from. I have professionally gotten the Time Machine backup recovered but it is not recognize by Migration Assistant or Time Machine so that it will restore my whole computer or at least transfer my account folder back to my reinstalled internal hard drive. I have 20 years of stuff locked in that Time machine backup and really need it back.

ahlquist wrote:
There are a lot of extra named files broken out in addition to the main folders (which look the same) that have 0-k in them and it looks like they were "links" or something like that.
Yup. Those are (or were) "hard links" (sort of like extra-fancy aliases) that are the key to how Time Machine can back up only changes, but still have every backup be, in effect, a full one. See How Time Machine works its Magic if you're interested in an overview of the details.
I'm very surprised you could see those via the Browse option.
You might try repairing the drive, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. I doubt it will help, but it's worth a shot.
I don't know if deleting the broken links will help or not.
is it safe to assume the links are messed up and I will have to recover the files manually?
It sure sounds like it.
If so, I'd put two Finder windows side-by-side; your current system and the most recent recovered backup, in List view, so you can see the contents more easily.
Start with /Users/<your home folder> unless you know you'd put stuff elsewhere.
Compare the two, and copy what's different/missing from the backups to your system. In some cases, you'll have to delete the (probably empty) folders on your system first. Note that you can't delete the "default" folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.), so you'll have to copy the contents instead. This will be quite tedious, I'm afraid.
Then, if you can tell that things are missing, look in the previous backup for them. You might have to go back several backups for some, and may not find all the missing items anywhere.
I am most interested in documents, pictures, movies, mail and quicken files.
Assuming you hadn't moved them, docs will be in your Documents folder, iPhoto in your Pictures folder, Movies in your movies folder. Be especially careful with your iPhoto Library. Copy it all at once; it's like a database, and can't be copied in pieces.
For Mail and some other common things, see #28 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
I don't use Quicken, and don't know where it puts things. For that or other apps whose data you can't find, either check with the maker, or start the app. See if it shows a default location; if not, create a bit of data, then go hunting for a file/folder with a name similar to the app and/or with a current creation or modified date. They'll probably be somewhere in your Documents folder, your /Library folder, or your /Library/Application Support folder.
When this is done, you'll have learned a whole lot about how OSX organizes things.
Keep us posted.

Migration assistant does not recognize time machine backup

Hi Guru,
I made a time machine backup today, 10.8.2, then made full reinstall of system in Apple store, in Berkeley, because my iMac experinced some unstability.
we installed new Mac OS, and now I face a problem: migration assistant does not recognize hard disk with buckup.
Finder sees this disk, it has Backups folder.
OS: 10.8.2
BackUp made: Time Machine 10.8.2
Hard Disk: Lacie 500MB
any ideas?
Thank you

I am conserned about restoring using setup assistant because I need to transfer personal files and applications only.
You can do that in Setup Assistant.
Migration Assistant doesn't accept Time Machine backups of the computer it's running on; it only accepts compatible backups of other computers. You can't migrate a system to itself. To restore files from the same computer, enter Time Machine in the usual way, or else boot into Recovery and either restore the whole startup volume or erase, reinstall OS X, and restore in Setup Assistant.

PSE 8 fails to run on new iMac hard drive following Time Machine backup

I had to have my iMac hard disk replaced last week as part of the Apple replacement programme. Following the installation of the new disk I restored the entire Time Machine backup onto the new disk. Most things work perfectly but I get an error message when I attempt to start up PSE 8. The error is Error 150:30 stating "Licence has stopped working". I have attempted a number of things to correct this as described in http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/error-licensing-stopped-mac-os.html, but found that much of the FlexNet data that the article refers to does not exist on my machine, so I am unable to complete the recommended steps (I have made hidden files visible). The Flexnet files also don't appear on the backup volume. When I attempt to reload the software with the original disks I just have the disk drive make a bit of noise and then eject the disk. All other CD/DVD's work as normal. Any ideas very welcome

Download PSE 8 from the trial download site and use your current serial number to activate it:
http://prodesigntools.com/direct-download-links-for-lightroom-3-and-photoshop-elements-8.h tml
Be sure to follow the steps outlined in the Note: Very Important Instructions section on the download pages at this site.

HT1199 I needed to restore my Imac (lion) from a Time Machine backup on a peripheral HD. Everything woirked fine except none of my Pictures showed up and my TM backups were all erased. Any way to recover??

I need to perform a complete restore of my IMac from a stand-alone HD Time Machine backup. The restore was to the internal HD in the IMac. The IMac is a new Intel i5 unit running Lion. The restore went fine except none of my picture files appeared. My external HD is partioned into a Time Machine Back Up and a Stoarge partion. All the TM back ups prior to the restore are gone and the external storage was wiped clean. 3000 photos from our African Safaris are gone. Any ideas on if they can be recovered from either the external storage drive or the internal HD?
Where did the older TM BUs go?
Thanks for any advise

Hello:
I don't know what you did, but there must have been some option to clear the external HD. To my knowledge, restoring from a Time Machine backup will NOT clear the external HD.
Since I was not there, I really cannot speculate on what happened:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4927
In any event, there are third party tools that will attempt to recover data from erased drives (the erase normally deletes pointers, not the actual data).
Barry

Bought a new iMac migrated from a time machine backup and it didn't load contacts music etc

my 4 year old imac died. So we got a new 1Tb intercore i5 imac. Migrated from the time machine backup and it didnt populate itunes or contacts or photos. Am I missing something?

You should have imported the data in Setup Assistant when you first booted the new machine. If you used Migration Assistant instead, you now have another user with all the data from the old machine.

PC won't recognize Time Machine ext. HD

Hi,
I have a ext usb HD that I'm using for TIme Machine. Problem is that when i plug it into any PC, it won't recognize it. How do i access my HD from a PC?
Kind Regards

It's been years, but Macopener was what I used once to read Mac files on a PC - swapping zip disks with a client - it worked pretty good. Worked good over the network at the ad agency too (caveat being this was years ago).
Found it (well, the newer version) here - http://www.dataviz.com/purchase/shopdvz/detail.html?prod_id=1136 -
There are likely others out there - but that was the one I used, and at the time (we're talking 2000? 2003? it worked well.
I can't comment on time machine - I mean, that even if the upgraded macopener or similar will connect the drive and show the contents - whether you can get any info out of TM on Win.

Migration Assistant Won't Recognize Time Machine Back Up

My old white macbook just died. I bought a new macbook air to replace it. I am trying to use the time machine back up in migration assistant but it won't work. Since the Air doesn't have firewire I am connecting the external drive to my AirPort Extreme. It recognizes the drive but when I click to use it I get a connection error message. I tried hooking up the drive by USB but it won't mount at all. What am I doing wrong? I don't really want to do a full Time Machine restore because the Air has iLife '11 and the macbook only had iLife '10 and I don't want to have to pay for it again.

First of all, Migration Assistant is smart enough to keep the newer version of iLife.
Second, your MacBook Air came with a restore drive (a little flash drive) that has iLife on it. You don't have to purchase it again.

Airdisk won't do Time Machine backup.

I just upgraged to the new AEBS (dual band). The network is up and running fine. I have attached a USB external hard drive to serve as networked storage and would alsdo like to use it for Time Machine (TM) backups of our various computers. The drive use to be connected to my old Mac via Firewire and already has some data on it but is formatted at HFS Extended (Journaled).
The external drive appears on the left side of the Finder window and I can navigate to the disk, add folders, etc. The disks are not mounted on my desktop. I looked for the disks in the server menu but don't see any way to address them and mount them. I don't know if this is an issue for TM. When I try to set up Time Machine preferences, TM sees the Airdisk and allows me to select it. I start TM and get the Prerparing.... message but after a couple of minutes, TM errors out and give a message that the disk could not be written to.
Is there an additional step to get TM to work on Airdisk? Does the disk have to be a dedicated disk in that there are no other folders on it?
I would appreciate any help and suggestions.
Thanks,
David

John:
Thanks for the link. I reviewed the tutorial and followed all of the steps. Time Capsule sees the Airdisk and recognizes it but when I started Time Machine, it ran for a few seconds and then failed and I get the message; "Time Machine Error The backup disk image could not be created"
I did a little more checking and found that the error message is caused, at least in part, by the local computer not having a machine name. I went into System preferences / Sharing and entered a machine name and now TM is working.
Thanks for your help.
David
David

Use drive on iMac for Macbook Air time machine backup

I have an external drive hooked up to my Imac and want to use it for backing up my Mac Air via time machine. Is it possible? I can see the drive and Imac in finder...

Yup.
See #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Lion won't mount Time Machine backup, but...

My Time Machine back up to an external drive seemed to have failed. It won't mount on Lion long enough to fix the problem. Other times it just locks up.
I dual boot with Vista and it sees the drive and all the files just fine. Any idea of what I can do to mount it on Lion. I'm tempted to just format it in Vista. Mount it in Lion, if it does at all, then format again for OS X. See if just a corrup files and not a failing hard drive.
Any suggestions are appreciated.

Robert Pena wrote:
My Time Machine back up to an external drive seemed to have failed. It won't mount on Lion long enough to fix the problem. Other times it just locks up.
Sounds like a problem with the drive itself, but might be corrupted data. See if you can Repair it, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I'm tempted to just format it in Vista. Mount it in Lion, if it does at all, then format again for OS X. See if just a corrup files and not a failing hard drive.
If you do that, format it again with Disk Utility. Among other things, be sure it has the GUID partiion map scheme, not MBR (the Windoze setup), or even a version of GUID set by Windoze.

Imac keeps crashing in time machine backup after upgrade to mountain lion

2008 imac kept crashing (shutdown and restart) during first backup after upgraded to mountain lion. The backup size was about 10GB but time machine crashed after a while (at most 2GB) and never completed backup. So, I don't have any backup since right before I upgraded from Lion. Any suggestion?

Something strange happened. I was able to get time machine to work by going out to the login screen (the account kept logged in) and let it run the backup with the screen off (screen auto off after a few min). I tried it on two different external drives and that did the trick on both. Since the initial Mountain Lion backup was huge (155 GB), I was quite surprise that it worked at all. I assume your MBP was a Lion to ML. I also just did a 2012 MBP upgrade but that one was smoother. I did not recall having crashing issue. One thing I did find during this was that my WD passport USB drive was corrupted. Not sure it was the cause or not. I had to erase and reformat to get it back to work. Maybe do a verify disk to confirm. Good luck.

HT1338 HELP! iMac won't recognize time machine backup!

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