Migrating content from an encrypted Time Machine external disk (will not easily work)

I recently purchased an SSHD to upgrade my Mac. I preferred not to completely restore from Time Machine, but rather to install a new copy of Mavericks on the new disk and then migrate my TM content afterwards. At the end of installation, Mavericks proposed the option to migrate data from a TM backup, which I chose.
It turns out that the Migration Assistant did not recognize any disk, perhaps because it was encrypted, nor displayed any way to select the volume and unlock it by entering its password. Despite what Pondini says the Time Machine backups disk was not seen by the Mac: as workaround I had to create a fictitious user, log in, unlock the disk (that was immediately recognized by the system) and then run the Migration Assistant from there (by the way, after 4 hours I finally logged into my migrated account and found out that apps were not imported at all!)
I find all this quite not…applish! I could have preferred to unencrypt the TM disk rather than
Is there anyone facing this same experience? Hope that this, if it's a bug, will be fixed, otherwise I'll have to make a TM backup on a secondary disk (which I don't own so big).

Well a google search would appear that disk utility will show you the disk regardless if it's mounted or unmounted. you're best bet would be to unmount the disk in finder, shut down the computer completely, unplug it from a power source, and then unplug the firewire...
I think this is your safest bet but then again, I'm not that worried about ejecting my disks.
you get no error messages when you right click and eject the disk in in disk utilty? you said you have a my disk, do you mean My Book by western digital? I know that they load software onto the machine for encryption purposes. have you tried ejecting the disk from there? I uninstalled said software so I can't tell you if there is an option for that or not.

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I cannot load Maverick on my iMac HD. It reports that my HD is used for Time Machine backups and will not load to that drive. I do not use this drive for backups. Help.

I cannot load Maverick on my iMac HD. It reports that my HD is used for Time Machine backups and will not load to that drive. I do not use this drive for backups. I use an external 1 TB WD My Book for backups as well as Super Duper Backups. Can anyone offer advice. Thanks.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You have got the "Backups.backupdb" folder in the root level of your hard drive. This is the folder used by Time Machine to save backups to, and the OS X Mavericks installer thought that your hard drive is being used to store Time Machine backups
To fix this, open a Finder window, select the Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type:
Then, delete "Backups.backupdb" and empty the Trash. Finally, open the Mavericks installer from the Applications folder and follow the steps

TS3423 Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not s

Mac book pro stops responding after Maverick OS restart. Currently have a circle with a line through it after 20+ hours. Tried to shut it down and use the Time Machine to restore but no response. How can I restore with Time Machine if it will not start?

sonjadg,
you can purchase a replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for your MacBook Pro from either Apple or iFixit. If Startup Manager is only showing an OS X Installer volume, then it sounds like the Mavericks installer had a problem midway through its installation process. To fix this, you’re going to need to erase your internal disk and reïnstall your original version of OS X from the grey Mac OS X Install DVD, use Software Update to get it back to 10.6.8 (presuming that your MacBook Pro originally came with Snow Leopard), and then restore from Time Machine.

I need to restore my music via time machine but it will not as my mac mini says I don't have permission access iTunes. Any help would be great. Thanks

I need to restore my music via time machine but it will not as my mac mini says I don't have permission access iTunes. Any help would be great. Thanks

Have you looked at the previous discussions listed on the right side of this page under the heading "More Like This"?

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Have a read here https://discussions.apple.com/message/15701309#15701309
Seems that you have to update Logic to the latest version (9.0.15) to get it to work in Lion.
Stefan

Data Recovery from an encrypted Time Machine HD

Does anyone have eny experience with having data retrieved from a time machine hard drive that is encrypted? I've clean installed Mountain Lion and now can't get at my time machine to restore files.
Apple support recommended I posted here and explore 3rd party recovery servies.
Please please anyone!

v8r wrote:
It was my first time machine back up. Mid way I felt that it is stuck so I powered down my mac book pro. Now its not booting. I gave the details in a simultaneous thread "Gray screen, spinning cog and midway to first back up of time machine". I am assuming that if I have lost all the data on my harddrive, can I at least get some from the incomplete time machine back up.
well, it might be possible but it won't be in any form that you can retrieve automatically. so your first priority should be to get your computer to boot and after what you can start worrying about getting your data from an incomplete TM backup. I've done that it the past and it works sometimes but it really depends on the situation. I had to do it from terminal too as it didn't work from finder.
but it need not be that you lost all data on the main drive. boot from the SL install dvd and see if disk utility sees the drive. if so, repair the drive and try booting from it. if you have disk warrior it might help too if disk utility can not fix some errors.
Thanks,
v8r.

How do I get back iphone app information from a DELETED Time Machine Backup disk

Hi People,
here is what happened:
I have been using an iPhone App (Audio Memos Free - The Voice Recorder) to record song ideas (I am a songwriter). I have been using it for years.
I backed up my iphone to itunes, and backed up my mac on Time Machine. After a month or so I did a fresh OSX install on my mac, copied all of my files back from Time Machine into my mac, and tried to set up Time Machine. I was not able to do so, so I had to format the Time Machine Backup disk and doing a "fresh" mac Time Machine Backup.
After a week or so, my iphone asks me something like "you do not possess the rights for one or more applications". do not know what i did, but after 1 minute my iPhone was wiped out of all my apps and app contents. I had also the icloud app sync, so i did not worry, recovered from icloud notes, contacts, and all other things. so i did another backup to itunes.
Now i discover icloud did not recover or save the "Audio Memos Free" app content. I know the data are hidden into the Time machine Backup HD, but i do not know where to search for the itunes backup in it.
I know it is in library, but library won't show up.
Any help would be much appreciated.
PS there is a chance that, even without a data recovery, my latest itunes backup was containing these songs, but i do not know how to fish that out of the Time machine drive.
Thank you in advance.

I would email iTunes Customer Service:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/
CG

Backup with time machine. external disk is now full and can't reopened!

Last weekend I tried to do my first backup with the time machine software. For this purpose, I used a external disk containing different kind of documents, pictures and songs. This external disk was used before on a HP (software: windows vista). Unfortunately, during the backup process, I disrupeted the connection and the backup couln't finished. Now, my macbook pro can't recognise the external disk and also on my old HP the external disk is not recognised and no docment can't be opend!! When I look at the properties of this disk, then I see that the external disk is almost full. Does this cause all the problem?
How do I proceed in order to get back all my documents on this disk?

You and your wife share one drive for backup? Do you backup over wifi or move it around?
Time machine is generally a rock solid tool but you can use it in ways that make it unstable. I have dedicated drives on 3 macs which run very solid. I also have one drive on a airport extreme base station (older model which is not supported but does work) that I use with a macbook air. The macbook air wifi based backup runs into problems a few times a year. One of my iMacs with a dedicated drive also runs into problems but only when the drive is nearly full.
It sounds like your drive is nearly full and your using multiple notebooks and possibily wifi......If this is the case, you may be way less frustrated by buying dedicated drives sufficiently big for each computer. That is the experience I can share with you.
Good luck.

A week or so ago I upgraded some apple software and now Safari drops my news bookmarks folder. I can restore it from Time Machine but it will not stay in place. Suggestions?

My iMac, running 10.10.3 seems to have an interesting issue. Since the last round of apple updates[ including photos 1.0]safari has been dropping my "News" bookmarks folder. It disappears on restart or when trying to add a bookmark to any folder. I am able to restore it with time machine and it will stay in place until all of a sudden .I notice it is once again gone. Restore and its back. Quite a pain in the butt. Any suggestions on a more permanent fix would be appreciated.

Thanks, wife has iPad on holiday so I could not check it. iCloud occurred to me but I am fairly new to it as prior to iPad we had no need of it. Thanks again Linc, I've tried it a couple of times this afternoon and it seems to be sticking around. Hugh

Time Machine & external hard drives not used daily

I have a question about Time Machine and external hard drives that I used for storing digital files. I do not need to turn on these drives every day. Or even every week. Is Time Machine going to "forget" them (delete their files from backups) if I don't turn them on regularly? What do I do to make sure they are safely backed up and that they stay backed up even if they aren't turned on every day?

As I said, then, "Time Machine will simply pick up wherever it left off." Just be sure to properly eject the drive before disconnecting or shutting off.
The "speed" question is a new one not present in your original post. You can address that in the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions About Mac Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utility is: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption. Drive Genius provides additional tools not found in Disk Warrior for defragmentation of older drives, disk repair, disk scans, formatting, partitioning, disk copy, and benchmarking.
Four outstanding sources of information on Mac maintenance are:
1. OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney.
2. Mac maintenance Quick Assist
3. Maintaining Mac OS X
4. Mac Maintenance Guide
Periodic Maintenance
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) See Mac OS X- About background maintenance tasks. If you are running Leopard or later these tasks are run automatically, so there is no need to use any third-party software to force running these tasks.
If you are using a pre-Leopard version of OS X, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced after Tiger. (These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion and should not be installed.)
Defragmentation
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive except when trying to install Boot Camp on a fragmented drive. But you don't need to buy third-party software. All you need is a spare external hard drive and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Cheap and Easy Defragmentation
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive. You will use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the backup and to restore it.
1. Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the
       external one.
2. Boot from the external hard drive.
3. Erase the internal hard drive.
4. Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not depressed or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the upward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the
       mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the
       drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is
       failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be
       reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the
       DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the
       drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended
       (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to
       GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait
       until the process has completed.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not selected or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.
Malware Protection
As for malware protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. Starting with Lion, Apple has included built-in malware protection that is automatically updated as necessary. To assure proper protection, update your system software when Apple releases new OS X updates for your computer.
Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection:
1. Mac Malware Guide.
2. Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware
3. Macintosh Virus Guide
For general anti-virus protection I recommend only using ClamXav, but it is not necessary if you are keeping your computer's operating system software up to date. You should avoid any other third-party software advertised as providing anti-malware/virus protection. They are not required and could cause the performance of your computer to drop.
Cache Clearing
I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, Mountain Lion Cache Cleaner 7.0.9, Maintenance 1.6.8, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache files can cause slowness, kernel panics, and other issues. Although this is not a frequent nor a recurring problem, when it does happen there are tools such as those above to fix the problem.
If you are using Snow Leopard or earlier, then for emergency cleaning install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. (AppleJack works with Snow Leopard or earlier.)
Installing System Updates or Upgrades
Repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand.
Update your backups in case an update goes bad.
Backup and Restore
Having a backup and restore strategy is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your computer. Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. You can never have too many backups. Don't rely on just one. Make several using different backup utilities. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
     1. Carbon Copy Cloner
     2. Get Backup
     3. Deja Vu
     4. SuperDuper!
     5. Synk Pro
     6. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance and backup and restore.
Always have a current backup before performing any system updates or upgrades.
Final Suggestions
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity or 20 GBs, whichever is greater, as free space. Avoid installing utilities that rely on Haxies, SIMBL, or that alter the OS appearance, add features you will rarely if ever need, etc. The more extras you install the greater the probability of having problems. If you install software be sure you know how to uninstall it. Avoid installing multiple new software at the same time. Install one at a time and use it for a while to be sure it's compatible.
Additional reading may be found in:
1. Mac OS X speed FAQ
2. Speeding up Macs
3. Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
4. Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up
5. Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines
6. Five Mac maintenance myths
7. How to Speed up Macs
8. Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.
Most if not all maintenance is for troubleshooting problems. If your computer is running OK, then there isn't really a thing you need to do except repair the hard drive and permissions before installing any new system updates.

Time Machine external hard drive not recognized

I connected an Iomega Ultramax 500GB Hard Drive to my imac to set up time machine. It has worked well for years but now has disappeared and time machine no longer backs up to the hard drive. The drive is recognized in the system profiler and I have tried Repair Disk with the Disk Utility but get the message:
Invalid record count
Volume check failed
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Can someone give me some guidance? Thanks!

If you don't have backups, and the drive doesn't work, you may have lost all the data. There are ways to try to recover data from a failed drive, but I have no experience with that and can't help. If the data is valuable to you, your best chance is to send the drive to a data-recovery service such as DriveSavers, but that will be very expensive.

Cannot connect Time machine external disk

My Mac with OS 10.9.5 (Mavericks?) time machine disk keeps loosing the connection to the disk and I cannot figure out how to reconnec the disk.

If Disk Utility does not recognize the external device, it's probably broken and needs to be replaced. Try a different USB cable and different USB port on your Mac before drawing that final conclusion.
An OS X upgrade itself won't directly cause hardware failure. What might have occurred is that the extensive backup subsequent to upgrading OS X may have accelerated its eventual demise.
Also, if you had been using particular Western Digital "utility" software known as "drive manager", "SmartWare", or words to that effect, it was known to cause external hard disks to become unusable, chronicled here. WD allegedly fixed that problem a long time ago. All software similar to it should be avoided.

Time Machine external USB drive not available at boot

I have a late 2012 iMac running Mavericks 10.4.9. I use Time Machine with a Toshiba 3TB external drive. The Toshiba drive is usually left powered up. Every time I boot the iMac and try to force a backup, Time Machine reports the Toshiba disk is not available. When I open Time Machine preferences, the Toshiba drive does not show until I power-cycle it and re-select it. Also occasionally it reports that I did not eject it properly. But it NEVER shows in Devices or on my desk top (like a thumb-drive does for example) so I wouldn't know how to eject it anyway.
Any ideas on where I am going wrong?
Thanks!

I also have a MacBook Pro with Leopard. I have a new 500GB Lacie d2 safe external drive that my computer recognizes but Time machine does not. Formating the disk in journaled Mac OS Extended format does not solve the problem. Lacie says they are working on it. Anyone have any ideas?

Time Machine External Hard Drive not visible

I use a hard disc attached to a new mac mini (2014) for my time machine backups. I have an apple airport extreme base station. I have two macbook pros on the network. One of the machines accesses the hard drive attached to the mini with no problems when doing a time machine back up.
The other does not see or recognize the hard disc. The only icon available in the time machine preferences is a generic "Other Time Capsule."
I have tried all the suggestions found here, OS X Mountain Lion: If Time Machine can’t find your backup disk, with no luck.
I have also gone to the library preferences and deleted the preference file for time machine. Again no luck.
The macbook pro that cannot access the hard disc used for time machine back ups is running the latest Mac OS (10.9.4).
I'm stumped. Any ideas? Thank you.

See Pondini's TM FAQs.
iMac refurb (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), SL & ML, G4 450 MP w/Leopard, 9.2.2

Time Machine- external hard drive not appearing

I'm trying to set up Time Machine. However, the Maxtor one touch 4 plus drive is not appearing as an option to choose to set as back up drive?
Any suggestions?

Make sure it's not formatted as FAT32?

Migrating content from an encrypted Time Machine external disk (will not easily work)

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