I cannot access my time machine folder created by my previous gen macbook

Guys, I created a time machine back form my previous MB Pro (mid 2010) and now I am not able to restore my new MB Pro (2012) from the previous time machine backup. Nonetheless, I was able to use migration assistant to trans files and use settings. But I am still having issues access the folders in the time machine back up. For exampe, I meed to get into the 'Downloads' folder of my previous back up, but it says I 'don't have premissions to see the contents;. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!!

Well, maybe damp.
You should have an external HD, or Time Capsule, or other destination separate from your Mac to store your backups, so when (not if) your internal HD fails, or something else awful happens, you won't lose everything.
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial and perhaps browse Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

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My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

My Final Cut Projects folder were missing some files, I went to my time machine backup to restore and it said I don't have permission to access the time machine folder "Final Cut Projects". Why?

Yes, I've done all "the ususal suspects.." repaired permissions, zapped pram, "reintroduced Time Machine to the backup drive by turning it off and on... etc

Cannot access old time machine backup

Dear Community,
as you can see in the image below, Time Machine preferences shows that my oldest backup is from August 25, 2012.
However, if I access the Time Machine, the oldes backup I can access is only 2 days old. All the remaining backups cannot be accessed from the GUI! They can be accessed if I manually mount the time machine, though.
Any idea why this is happening?
Thank you for your suggestions.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know about the option+clik.
Unfortunately the option is grayed out and I cannot select it.
However, if I select "Broswe other backup disks" I am presented with a list in which all items (about 10) except the first one and the last one are like this:
i.e. the drive name is empty. The first option is the name of an old backup (not used anymore), and the last one is the name of the current backup. I tried selecting any of them but the result does not change.
The time machines are correctly mounted, but I still cannot access the data from the TM interface.

Cannot access old time machine backups

Hi,
I recently had some issues regarding my MacBook Pro and decided the best course of action would be to ensure it was completely backed up; reinstall OS X Yosemite and pick the old backup for useful files.
Unfortunately, when it came to resetting up Time Machine, it asked me if I wanted to use the existing backup. I imagined the safe answer would've been "Yes" and that it would've been smart enough to create a clean backup at the date of restore.
It seems that this is not the case...
Any backup, despite being listed on the Time Machine interface, prior to the date of restore was "greyed out" and could not be accessible. Unfortunately, the "Browse other Backup Disks" option didn't work (are there issues with this option for NAS backups?), and unfortunately, a repair disk doesn't seem to either.
I have only managed to get the .sparsebundle (encrypted) drive to mount once by using a repair disk; every other time I attempt to remount using repair disk, the button is greyed out. :/
The time I did get into the "Time Machine Backups" volume; only once backup was listed for ".inProgress" – a 70GB file (the sparsebundle is ~500GB+).
Any ideas on steps I can try to find these phantom files?
At present, Disk Utility doesn't have the "Repair Disk" option available and DiskWarrior 4.4 is throwing up error 2154; low memory; on a 16GB RAM rMBP.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Jamie

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.'
Help - but please, in simple language
Thanks

Cannot access my time machine data

I always backup my data using Time machine. I recently had to replace my Hard drive and tried to access my data from the Time Machine Disk and I cannot do it. Any ideas?

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

Cannot access older time machine backups

I recently installed a new SSD in my MacBook and after reinstalling OSX Mountain Lion I chose to restore from a time machine backup. Everything went smoothly and all my files were restored. However, I tried to access a backup from before my restore but it's not showing it as being available even though the Time Machine preferences confirm that my oldest backup is from June 2011 and I can still access the folders that far back via finder. But I've never had this happen. Why it because its a new hard drive? Was it because of the recent 10.8.3 software update? Was it because of the "restore from time machine backup"? Every time I had done a clean install I just copied over the critical folders such as documents and itunes from my drive, never used the restore feature. My files clearly aren't gone, but I'm curious as to why this happened. Please help. Thanks in advance.

Have you done a new backup yet? If not, yes, Time Machine is looking for the backups on a different disk. As mende1 says, the procedure in #E3 should let you see them.
Once you start a new backup, Time Machine should automatically "associate" the new drive with the old backups, only do an "incremental" backup of the changes, and treat the old backups as if they'd been made from the new drive.
If not (ie, if it starts doing a full backup), you may be able to cancel the backup and do the "associatedisk" yourself, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, especially the pink box there.

Cannot Access Earlier Time Machine Backups After Upgrade To Mountain lion

I went into Time Machine to recover some past emails. It shows that it had backed up my emails for the last year, however it will not let me recover anything before my upgrade to mountain lion. Does anyone know of a workaround for this problem. Thank you.

Christopher Sant wrote:
Once it does finally recognize (after a good while) it simply says "Error, time machine could not complete the backup"
There should be more to that message. See #C2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup, what you've done, and the results.

Cannot access prior time capsule backup

Hi,
About 2 weeks ago I ran into a problem with my iPhoto library. I was trying to import photos from a camera and it took forever. After watching iPhoto being non-responsive for several hours I decided to force it to quit via the Activity Monitor. After I re-launched iPhoto, I noticed that there were many photos missing (shown as grey boxes) in my iPhoto library, but I can still locate the original photos through the finder. I did a rebuild in iPhoto but that did not fix the problem. In the meantime, my Time Capsule was running and did several backups. After tinkering with the iPhoto problem for another day without much success, I decided to restore from Time Capsule the version of the iPhoto library before I ran into the import problem.
The first time I tried to restore from Time Machine, it failed because I didn't have enough disk space left on my MBP. My old iPhoto library was 150 GB but I only had 10 GB of free space left on my MBP. So I decided to erase the rebuilt iPhoto library (around 120 GB) and other large files on my MBP to free up some space. When I tried to empty the trach can, it took hours and eventually became stuck with little activity going on. After waiting patiently for a few more hours, I decided to re-launch the Finder but could not and had to force it to quit. Then I rebooted. Afterwards, I took everything out of the trach can and placed files into the trash can one at a time and emptying it with only one item in the trash can. I was able to delete and empty the trash can this way, but a new problem appeared. In both the Activity Monitor and Finder's Get Info, the space free number stopped changing regardless of how many files I deleted and emptied on my MBP. By my own estimate I should have at least 180 GB of free space but the system seemed to think that there was only 140 GB of free space and I still could not restore the original iPhoto library.
I thought perhaps by forcing the Finder to quit while it was trying to empty the trash can had somehow corrupted the file system. So I re-installed Lion from the recovery disk assistant. When Lion was installed and going through its initial set-up procedures, I made the mistake of not choosing "restore from time machine backup" because I was afraid doing so would also restore the corrupted file system. I also made the mistake of accepting the default name for my MBP instead of using the name I had before. Fortunately re-installing Lion did resolve the free disk space issue. Next I rebooted with Lion's recovery disk assistant and chose "restore from time machine backup". The restore took a long time and did work, but it restored to the snapshot of my system without the iPhoto library. Because the restore took a long time, I wasn't sitting at my desk the entire time. After the restore was completed, Time Machine did a backup under the name machine name. Now I cannot find my old Time Machine backup from which to restore my original iPhoto library.
I have tried holding down the control key while clicking on the Time Machine icon to invoke the "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" option, but it found nothing. From a Finder window, I can connect to my Time Capsule. It shows that there is a disk called Data-1. When I open Data-1, there is a MBP13.sparsebundle, which is not the original sparsebundle. Is there a way to re-access my old Time Machine backup?
From the Time Machine panel in systems preferences, it shows that there is only 20 GB of space left in Time Capsule (out of 500 GB). I think my old backup is still there. I've read Pondini's Time Machine Troubleshooting but still cannot resolve this problem. What am I missing? Any insight is greatly appreciated!

enterprise_in_ca wrote:
I had to have my Time Capsule repaired a few years ago.
By Apple? I've never heard of them repairing one; they just replace them. Any idea what they did?
Since then, the backup disk was always labeled Data-1. I have restarted my Time Capsule a few times and the result is the same each time.
What do you see via the Finder? In Column View, it should be something like this:
I also tried to use TechTool Pro to check the Time Capsule but couldn't do so because connecting my MBP to the Time Capsule's USB port does not seem to give it access. (Is there a way?)
No, the USB port is for connecting a disk or printer only, not a Mac. Disk Utility or similar 3rd-party apps can't see the TC's disk; they can see, and may be able to repair, a sparse bundle if you can mount it via the Finder. See #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
I suspect that my old backups are still in the Time Capsule but because my computer name has changed it is not allowing me access to the old backup.
Changing the computer name won't cause that. Replacing the logic board in your Mac will, or sometimes if the sparse bundle is damaged, Time Machine will create a new one.

Time machine has created a new sparse bundle

I have booted my new Macbook from my time machine back up. Time machine has created a new sparse bundle and I cannot access the previous backups. Is there any way to make time machine to use the previous sparse bundle? Thanks, Karl

Use the old backups to continue backups or use them for migration etc..
If you have a new Mac then continuing to use the same backup is not recommended..
Info you can see here..
B5 and B6 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
I do not think it is good idea.. however you can access the old backup to get files if you need them.
See Q17 here.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

How to share more than one Time Machine folder

Hi,
With Snow Leo Server I found how to find how to share more than one Time Machine Folder but I can't see how to do the same with Lion Server, could you help me with that ?
The goal of that is to offer one TM folder per user which is located on a dedicated partition in order to limit the size of TM backups per user (150Gig).
In Lion, in can only share one TM folder for everybody and I didn'tfind if I can set a limit size per user...
Thank you in advance,

I have figured out a way to enable multiple backup targets.
However, it's one of these things I wouldn't want to describe to anyone except true programmer types, because everyone else has a 90%+ chance of messing up their system if they do something wrong.
It involves turning off file sharing, and then editing the plist files in /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/sharepoints/
The gist of it is this:
a) first create all the share points you later want to use for TimeMachine, and set them up for afp-only file sharing, also create one TM target, which you can either use later, or have there so the system has one entry it knows how to handle. I just made a bogus one that I'm not actively using.
b) turn off file sharing in Server.app
c) turn off TimeMachine in Server.app
d) now you can edit the files, the easiest is with Xcode, so you may want to install that first
e) for each sharpoint you made in a) there will be a corresponding .plist file in the location indicated, these are the files that need to be edited.
f) for each of these files
     1) the item0 string property in the timeMachineBackup array must be switched from 0 to 1
     2) a new key of type array with the name timeMachineBackupUUID must be created
     3) in the newly created array an item of type string must be placed with the value of a UUID, which can be created with the shell command uuidgen
g) make sure all the edited plist files are saved
h) turn on TimeMachine in the Server.app again
If all went well, you now should be able to go to one of your networked client computers and see all the time machine share points just created as options for being a time machine target.
Anyway, if you go that route: be careful, don't blame me if you muck things up...

"....To Improve Reliability, Time Machine Must Create a New Backup for You"

I bought the new Apple 2 TB Time Capsule thinking it would be a great way to get a powerful wireless router and handle file backup for both me and my wife's iMacs. She is running an up-to-date version of Snow Leopard and I am on the most recent update of Mountain Lion. The Time Capsule was installed and running by the first of August and we had no problems until this monday (7 weeks later) when I got the message that "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability Time Machinge must create a new backup" My wife's back up was still ok but I had to go though the 5-6 hour process of re-copying all my files(using an ethernet connection) to the device. All went smoothly for a few days until I got the same message again about creating a new backup. Also my wife cannot enter her time machine files even though the computer is still being backed up. We have a stable internet service and both computers recieve a strong signal from the router. Is it possible that the Time Capsule Drive is defective? Is there any sort of maintenance such as zpping the PRAM that would help? This is really frustrating as it looks like the timemachine backup is totally unreliable and not worth fooling with. Is there any way to use the storage capability of the time capsule without going through time machine?
Thanks,
Reid McCallister

hi
rest assured you are not alone. i have the same problem and i hate it with a passion. in fact, i am the victim of this message as of 20 minutes ago and doing a full backup as I am typing this. I am so overly ****** that I actually posted here and will be calling or emailing apple next because I cannot take this anymore. the problem lies in time machine and unfortunately, there is no fix for that. time machine is the best idea of apple with the worst implementation ever. you have no obligation to use time capsule to benefit from time machine as this would not be legal anyway. i will give you 2 temporary solutions and let you decide which one works best for you:
1) open time machine preferences and turn automatic backups off. create a new full backup from scratch and only backup manually whenever you remember, preferably every day. the automation process is the problem that lies within time machine. also make sure that your system does not go to standy or sleep whatever that may be called. Power nap, despite all claims, is not compatible with time machine. install CAFFEINE, an app that keeps your mac awake and prevents from going to sleep while back up is in progress. use it like this and pray it will all go fine for a long time. you may wish to duplicate the first full backup to save time in case this should happen again so you have a base to start on
2) install CCC (carbon copy cleaner) I have not used it myself yet, but probably will be installing it after finishing this post. it is claimed to be better, yet it is yet to be seen by me personally.
unless time machine can be trained without any addons to use a specific wifi only for backup, these issues will persist.

Time Machine Folder

After installing Yosemite my entire Time Machine Folder is now in the trash. I tried to return this to my new Time Machine DB folder, but I get a message that it cannot be changed. OK, so how do I return my backups to my backup drive. I cannot afford to loose the backups.

Click here and follow the instructions.
(111523)

Can't get access in Time Machine to certain folders for any date earlier than current date/time.

Can't get access in Time Machine to certain folders for any date earlier than current date/time, even when entering as Admin. Why do certain folders have small red "-" badge in lower right corner of folder icon? Here's a picture of the dilemma:
I've tried monkeying with priveleges using Command I, and changing users, but to no avail. Can anyone help?

Right. Here's what the permissions look like from the Finder Command I:
I'm not sure what "Custom" means, but when I then try to change it to "Read & Write", it doesn't take.... just comes back as Custom. Interesting to note that not only am I logged into Joan's account where the data folder and file lives) to do this, but when I do it from my own account as Admin (dunc...mpster) I get the same result.

MAC OS 10.7 Trying to Delete from TRASH Time Machine FOLDER (file)

Trying to delete time machine Folder(files) from TRASH. even used secure option, goes through ok. but will not delete from TRASH. files delete from
Time Machine Drive ok, deletion gives you more space on TM DRIVE Time Machine runs ok, How to Delete the Folder (Files) From TRASH?

Hello Mtaff,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information, take a look at:
You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1526
press Shift-Option or Option key combination while emptying the Trash
Have a nice day,
Mario

Time Machine backup created on Mac with a large hard disk. What happens when restore to MacBook Air with small SSD drive?

What if a Time Machine backup was created on a Mac with a large hard disk, e.g. 500GB iMac - and I buy a new MacBook Air with a small SSD hard disk e.g 128GB. What happens when I need to use the larger Time Machine file to set up the new MacBook Air? What happens to all those files that can't fit on the smaller SSD drive?

It is not the HD size, but rather the size of the data it contains. If you right-click your 500GB drive and select "Get Info" you can see how much is actually being used.
Naturally if you are using more space than the new drive has, then you have to make some choices about what you want to keep and what you want to keep archived.
I don't know what options are available but you may simply have to do a manual restore of files you want, in groups.

I cannot access my time machine folder created by my previous gen macbook

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