Problem with Time Capsule full system restore

I just had a calamity....dropped my new MacBook Pro and it's inoperable. I had my old MacBook Pro and to get going again tried to do a system restore to that from Time Capsule. Followed the Install disc instructions. Restored form the last full Time Machine backup seemed to go OK but I was unable to login to my user account.....said that FileVault could not be accessed. I have tried everything I can think of...even using the Master password to try to change my login password...it won't take anything I put in as a new password although it recognizes the Master Password. It seems that the Keychain access is corrupted and I can't fix it. I've tried to do a full restore two more times with the same problem. Can't get access to my files. Any thoughts appreciated.

thamill,
Welcome to the Apple discussions!
You can't do a "Restore System From Backup..." from one Mac to another. You need to use your Mac OS DVD for the MacBook Pro and do an Erase & Install and during the installation you will be able to Migrate your user data over form the TC.
*Erase, Install, & Migrate*
A final option, reserved for last resort, is to erase the hard disk, install a fresh copy of the Mac OS, and then use Migration Assistant during the installation to restore your user accounts. This is the Mac equivalent of ‘Slash and Burn’, and really should only be necessary if you require a completely fresh start.
Procedure:
Verify that your Mac has uninterrupted AC power.
For faster migration of user data, Time Capsule/AirDisk users should connect their Macs directly to their Airport device via ethernet.
Insert your original Mac OS 10.5 Leopard DVD and reboot while holding down the “C” key.
At the “Welcome” screen click “Continue”.
Click “Agree” to the user agreement.
Select you Macs internal hard disk and click “Options”.
Select “Erase and Install”.
Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for disk format. (Avoid selecting “Case-sensitive” unless you know what you are doing.)
Click “OK”.
Click “Continue”.
At “Install Summary” click “Customize” if you would like to eliminate certain Print Drivers, Fonts, or Language packages from being installed. Otherwise, click “Install”.
If you wish, you can click “Skip” when the DVD integrity check begins.
After the initial installation completes, your Mac will restart and you will see the video introduction.
At “Welcome” select your country and then preferred keyboard.
At “Do You Already Own a Mac?” you are asked “Would you like to transfer your information?”
+from another Mac+
+from another volume on this Mac+
+from a Time Machine backup+
+Do not transfer my information now+
Select “from a Time Machine backup” and click “Continue”.
At “Select a Backup Volume” choose your Time Machine backup disk and click “Continue”. (If you are attempting the migration wirelessly, then click “Join...” and select your network first.)
At “Transfer Your Information” check all the categories you wish to migrate over. If you wish your Mac to be in the same state as your last backup, then check everything. Give the installer time to calculate sizes.
Once that is complete, the “Transfer” button will become active and you can click it.
After the install, verify the registration information, click “Connect” and you are done.
After logging in, immediately go to System Preferences --> Time Machine, and turn “OFF” backups, even if a backup attempted has begun.
Next, Launch Disk Utility, select your Macs’ internal disk on the left, and click “Repair Disk Permissions”.
Interestingly, no Spotlight indexing appears necessary, so, once the permission repair is complete, turn Time Machine back “ON” in the Preferences. Time Machine should continue to backup to the same set of backups that it did prior to the restore. However, due to event logs being out of sync, the first backup will require a lengthy session of “Preparing...” as Time Machine performs a “deep traversal”. Allow this to proceed uninterrupted. Naturally, the first backup after a significant installation like this will be quite large so don’t be alarmed.
Cheers!

Similar Messages

Unable to boot after Time Machine full system restore!!

I was having some serious slowdowns with my computer. I did multiple RAM and HD hardware tests, everything seemed to be working fine. I had recently deleted a bunch of files in order to free up some HD space, so I thought that may be the culprit. So I did a Time Machine backup and restored the Powerbook to it's original 10.3 software. All was fine. Then I upgraded back to 10.5 and all was fine. Then I did a Time Machine full system restore overnight and got the message "Your restore was successful, you must now restart your computer" (or something to that effect). Now I get the start-up chime and startup screen (apple logo) but then the computer shuts itself down. I have reset the PMU and PRAM to no effect. I have tried booting up in safe made, also no dice. I have tried starting it up with the time machine HD attached - doesn't help. I guess I'll need to hit the genius bar but wanted to ask the friendly discussion forum folks first. thanks in advance.

Hi coldengray
Did you try to start from your System-CD? Hold down C-key during startup, start DiskUtility from the menu and verify/repair disk and permissions there.
If the CD is not available you can also connect your TimeMachine-Disk, select it as startup volume in System Preferences/StartupDisk, restart and then run DiskUtility from folder Applications/Utilities
Good luck P

Hi, I have the following problem with Time Capsule: La imagen del disco de copia de seguridad "/Volumes/Data/MacBook Pro de Carlos.sparsebundle" ya está en uso. Please your comments to solve this problem, i can't made a backup. Thanks.

Hi, I have the following problem with Time Capsule: La imagen del disco de copia de seguridad “/Volumes/Data/MacBook Pro de Carlos.sparsebundle” ya está en uso. Please your comments to solve this problem, i can't made a backup. Thanks.

Try Here > http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Perhaps P 2 > Time Machine could not complete . . . sparsebundle could not be accessed. (Error 109).

Since I upgraded to 10.7.2 lion I have these problems with Time Capsule. What is the problem? thanks

since I upgraded to 10.7.2 lion I have these problems with Time Capsule. What is the problem? thanks

Unable to access disk image backup "/ Volumes / Time Capsule / iMac Admin. Sparsebundle" (error -1).
Then?????

Problem with Time Capsule after backup session

I have a problem with Time Capsule after a backup session. Our two Macs (on Maverick) loose connection with the station and the only thing that seems to help is unplugging the Time Capsule and starting it again! After the next backup session the same thing happens again. The Macs seem not to be able to hold on to the connection and continually loose it. The iPhones and iPads that we have (4 units) are not affected - it is the Mac Mini and Mac Powerbook that experiences this problem!
I would be grateful for your help!
Thor

This is standard Mac issues and has been a bug floating around since Lion.. it hits some people worse than others.. but once it starts it is awful hard to get rid of.
Just to confirm the connection to internet is not a problem?? Just the hard disk drops out?
I recommend you
1. Reset the TC to factory.. and start over with all new names.. short, no spaces pure alphanumeric.
TC name and wireless name/s should conform. By default the disk share name is data which is fine.
2. Mavericks has changed over from using AFP to SMB for network filesharing.. why Apple why??
This is unhelpful to say the least. Many many people are struggling with TC and being unable to mount the network drive.
So do it manually and force it back to AFP.
In Finder use top menu, Go, Connect to Server.
Type AFP://TCname or TCIPaddress (it must be the network name of actual TC.. or its IP address)
When the computer locates the resource it will ask for a password.. it is public by default.. supply your password or public and save it in the keychain.
3. Delete the existing TM setup and start over.. See A4 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
I cannot promise this will fix it but should reduce the problem to now and then.. rather than every time TM needs to backup.

Wireless comm problem with time capsule or airport extreme using iMac G5

I did buy a Time Capsule and an iMac 20" G5 January 2009...Installed all the components and created a wireless network...MacBook, iPhone and iPod Touch connected perfectly...iMac connected but started to drop communications with Time Capsule...Safari, iTunes and other internet-access programs had problems to connect 100% with the web...After reviewing all the post here and "testing/trying" several parameters, I found out that you need to define a WPA/WPA2 password protection with more than 13 characters...FYI, Time capsule is configured using 802.11n (b/g compatible)...

Further to Bob's comments..
A Gen1 TC will be using marvel wireless chip and your 2008 and 2010 Macbook will use atheros and/or broadcom cards.. Just open your system profiler and look for info on the airport. We find the mixture of wireless chipsets especially older draft N and later N products can give very varied results.
The very fact you are linking at 270 and not 300mbps shows some reduction from theoretical max speed.. and really to get over 100mbps with any wireless you need perfect setup.. matched wireless chips etc.
Do a test uploading and downloading a file to the TC to see if the LAN speed is better than internet speed.
In reality I think you are doing especially well.. we see loads of people complaining about slow internet here who are getting less than 10% of the speed they get direct when routed through the TC. And on most occasions the limit in speed is not really going to affect what you do, as the real links to the internet are not that fast.

Time Machine: Full System Restore On New iMac...

I currently use Time Machine on my 24" iMac with a 500GB external hardrive. If something were to happen to my current iMac (i.e. My kid knocks it off the desk and it breaks), and I was forced to buy a new one, would I be able to use Time Machine to restore the new iMac to the last Back-Up of the old iMac? If so, would it automati ally transfer all of my pictures, movies, music, etc. to the new iMac as well? Thanks for any help y'all can give me on this subject.

J Double DuBB wrote:
I currently use Time Machine on my 24" iMac with a 500GB external hardrive. If something were to happen to my current iMac (i.e. My kid knocks it off the desk and it breaks), and I was forced to buy a new one, would I be able to use Time Machine to restore the new iMac to the last Back-Up of the old iMac?
not using full system restore utility on the leopard install DVD. your current system lacks hardware drivers that would be needed for a newer computer and if you do a full system restore of your current computer onto a newer computer using the restore utility on the leopard DVD it will most likely not even boot.
however, during the original computer setup you'll be given an option to transfer user data, settings and applications from a TM backup of your old computer. that option does not transfer system files but it does transfer everything else including your pictures, movies, music etc.
You can also do the same thing later using Migration Assistant (it's in /Applications/Utilities).

Suggestions, Observations and problem with Time Capsule shares

*Some Observations*
The Time Capsule can take a long time to become active. This is especially true if using an extended or WDS network. I would suspect this is due to the negotiation between devices that it needs to do. I have on occasion believed it to be hung, only to find that after walking away for a bit it comes up. This also impacts devices showing up in the Airport utility.
Using a time capsule with one Airport Express B/G will work, but adding a second creates problems.
Extending a network with an Airport Express N seems to work well.
Best bet is to set up separate B/G and N networks and run your N network as N only at 5Ghz.
WEP provides no real security, so think of it as you would an open network.
*My Issue*
I am having an issue where the time capsule shares become unavailable. It is an intermittent issue, and I have been unable to identify a test case. This happens for devices connected over ethernet as well as wireless. The Time Capsule shows in the Finder list, but the volumes are not available. Connecting to them fails.
The device also appears in the Airport Utility list, but when clicking on Manual Setup, or guided set up, it causes a hang.
This results in Time Machine hanging when trying to initiate a backup.
I have also noticed that when this happens, the signal does start to get a bit flaky with "Roam (Beacons Lost)" messages. Wireless connectivity still seems to be very useable though. I can connect to other network shares through the Time Machine, but not to the shares on the Time Machine. The only way to recover from this is to power cycle the Time Capsule.
One thing I want to investigate more tonight is whether there are any issues with my keychain and old passwords in case there are multiple failed attempts in the mix that are doing something. Although I know of no lockout feature on the device.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is the second Time Machine, so I have seen this on two different devices. I am also seeing this issue across 4 different computers simultaneously, some via ethernet and some wirelessly. Time Capsule is 7.3.2

Hi,
I have pretty much the same problem, 1TB Time Capsule that works fine most of the time as a wireless router. Up till recently Time Machine backups just worked (as one would expect them to) wired and wireless. I went away for a week came back and now every time Time Machine invokes a back up process all of a sudden my wireless network goes down, Time Machine can no longer see the Time Capsule and all other devices (iphone / apple TV other non apple devices) no longer have connections (they see wireless but no pass through to the internet or each other).
I have tried resetting all sorts of stuff, re-deployed my network, changed IP / LAN settings to make it less complex, Yasu'd my mac, connected only via wires, cleaned out my keychain etc etc and still get the same problems and as per Chris's point airport utility also hangs and the only solution is rebooting the time capsule.
I am fairly frustrated with this! any suggestions / help would be gratefully accepted.
thanks
alex

Problem with Time Capsule backup

My Time Capsule is a first gen (500 GB), and I recently upgraded to Lion on my iMac. It seems like right around the time I upgraded that I started having problems with Time Machine backups. They will complete, but then the disk does not eject from my desktop. I am running the Time Capsule buddy widget, and here's the log file:
Starting standard backup
Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/TimeCapsule
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/TimeCapsule/Stefano.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
100.0 MB required (including padding), 174.27 GB available
Copied 2353 files (2.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
100.0 MB required (including padding), 174.27 GB available
Copied 1656 files (718 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
Backup failed because the destination disk was ejected or disconnected unexpectedly!
You can see at the end where I ejected the disk manually.

I finally resolved this. However, I had to erase the entire backup on my 3tb and start with a new backup. I connected via hardwire to make it go faster. No problems now.

Problem with Time Capsule password

Hi everybody.
I have a Time Capsule and I'm trying to perform the backup of my system with Time Machine. I have replaced my old Airport Extreme base with Time Capsule and I've configured everything so that the solid green light is turned on. Now I have my Time Capsule as an Airport Base and Internet is working properly.
Once I'm opening Time Machine, it asks me what drive I want to use for backup. I choose Time Capsule and then it's asking me an username and a password.
Please, could anyone tell me what username and password I have to write? I'm trying with my administrator one but it doesn't work. I looked everywhere but I'm not able to find the right UN and PW!
Please, help!
Thanks
Matteo

Matteo, you might have chosen to secure your disk with accounts rather than a password. To check this, go into the Airport Utility and double click Time Capsule on the left to enter manual setup, then click the disks icon on the top. Choose the file sharing tab and make sure "enable file sharing" is checked, then see if you have it set to "secure shared disks..." with Time Capsule password, rather than with accounts.
Be warned: if you change this setting, you will lose access to any files already on Time Capsule.

Internet Problem with Time Capsule (Wi-Fi) and AT&T U-verse Motorola NVG589 (Bridge Mode)

I'm having a problem with my Internet connection. For some unknown reason it keeps cutting out every 5 min for about 5 seconds. The wi-fi signal doesn't drop or anything like that, just the internet connection stops working for a little bit and then its fine again (pages don't load, etc).
Here is my current set-up:
1. AT&T Motorola NVG589 - set to bridge mode as per instructions here http://www.dslreports.com/faq/17734 (followed instructions step by step)
2. Apple Time Capsule (latest model 2TB)
3. Motorola is connected to the Time Capsule through an ethernet cable.
I tried contacting AT&T and they just sent me a new Motorola router, I installed it, put it in bridge mode and still the same thing is happening.
I am thinking maybe there is some problem in settings or something. Airport Utility is showing everything in "green", no problems there.
Please let me know if anyone can help.

Ok, here is an update on how I decided to deal with the problem. I will include all of my troubleshooting step by step for easy reference.
1. At first I put the NVG589 into Bridge Mode and used the TC as the main wireless router. This didn't work as my connection kept dropping for no apparent reason.
2. Second, I tried to put the Time Capsule in Bridge Mode and connect it directly to NVG589. This didn't work as my connection would still lag out for 5 seconds about every 5 minutes.
3. Third, I bought an ASUS RT-AC87U Wireless AC2400 Dual-band Gigabit Router to try and substitute the TC in previous steps and see if it helps. Same problem persisted when I put the NVG589 into Bridge Mode and RT-AC87U as the main router as well as RT-AC87U into bridge mode and NVG589 as the main router. The problem was exactly the same as when I tried using TC initially so my conclusion was this is NVG589's fault of being not compatible with other wireless routers.
4. I looked around everywhere and came up with the only feasible solution possible (for me at least):
Currently I use NVG589 as my main wireless router. I works pretty well and even though it doesn't have the specs of TC or the ASUS router my WI-FI connection is pretty fast and stable. In order to have Time Machine wireless backups, I purchased a Western Digital My Cloud Drive that is connected directly to the NVG589. Everything seems to sync and work well together.
I know this is not the ideal solution most people are looking for. But it works for me. Patiently waiting for AT&T to start offering NVG599 (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28967809-NEW-U-verse-Gateway-Motorola-NVG599-WI RELESS-AC-AC1600) in my area. Once I get my hands on it will report back on how it will react to all the steps above and hopefully work well with Time Capsule.
Shoot me any questions you might have. Hope this was helpful for some of you.

Problem with Time Capsule recognizing three USB hub hard drives at one time

I attached three external drives to my Time Capsule using a USB hub, but it only wants to recognize one drive at a time. I know that all three work individually with Time Capsule and the USB hub, because when I turn off the two other drives the third appears. I can turn these on and off sequentially, and all are individually recognized, but only one at a time. Does anyone know what I would need to do to get Time Capsule to recognize all three drives running simultaneously on the network? I turned Time Capsule on and off, to see if it would then recognize the three drives, but it didn't help. Could the hub be the problem, that it is underpowered? I do have an AC adapter on it. Any help would be appreciated.

I have the same issue and would love to know if you resolved it with a powered USB hub. Otherwise, i may just return to one external hard drive--though I will miss the double-backup idea. Anyone try the hub change?

Migration assistant restore problem with time capsule

Hi People,
I have the weirdest of all problems. Let me explain what happend and you will be as amazed as I am now.
======
I have been using a 2TB time capsule for about a year and a half now. Every day for 18 months everything was being backupt. Everything smooth no problem.
My 27" iMac needed a fresh install at home because I have been upgrading from SL to Lion and thing got a bit odd. So this is what I did in a nut shell.
1. Bought a new 27" iMac Quad core with 12 Gb ram etc. (I bought it for my office)
2. At home started up the new iMac and the migration assisant asked me what I wanted.
3. Did a full restore from the TC and all my user data was restore to the new iMac!
=== Hurray so far, evrything worked liked it should.===
This was my test, now I was confident to erase my "old" iMac and do a full Lion reinstall and then use migration assisant to restore all files.
It worked with the new iMac so nothing to loose.
So I erased the new iMac, boxed it again and took it to the office.
Now It was time for my old iMac to be reinstalled.
=====
4. So I erased my "old" iMac.
5. Did a clean Lion install from DvD.
6. Did all software updates (as I had done with the new iMac).
7. started Migration Assistant
8. Pointed to the time capsule and did everything like the day before
9. Got an error message.
=====
***?? I tested this it should work. Now ALL my data is gone. All my movies, honeymoon, kids growing up, etc etc etc etc.
Everything gone gone gone!
So now I can browse to the TC and see the sparsebundle file. It is 1.5TB. I can show package contents and see the files, I can go into the "Bands" dir. and see a bunch of files. But I can not repair, mount, use disk utils with the sparsebundle.
The data must be in the 1.5 Tb file but I have no way of accessing it.
I need some good advice / help from someone because my whole family history is gone at this moment .

Woxxxxxx wrote:
My 27" iMac needed a fresh install at home because I have been upgrading from SL to Lion and thing got a bit odd.
That's usually the last thing to try. Depending on what was wrong, simply installing a fresh version of OSX would be likely to fix it. If not, finding and addressing the actual problem would probably be much better than starting with the "nuclear" option.
5. Did a clean Lion install from DvD.
6. Did all software updates (as I had done with the new iMac).
7. started Migration Assistant
It's much better to use Setup Assistant when your Mac first starts up after installing OSX, to prevent Problems after using Migration Assistant.
9. Got an error message.
Was that the "some backups cannot be opened" message? If so, try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

A series of problems with Time Capsule

I was an early adopter of Apple's "Time Capsule," which in theory sounds like a great idea but has been a disaster for me in practice. This is the story of my nightmare.
In theory, Time Capsule is supposed to enable wireless, automatic backups of my hard drive via wifi. I liked the idea because I thought it would save me time and make backups so convenient that they'd be sure to happen.
In practice, it's been slow, aggravating and buggy as ****.
After I bought the device, I brought it home and set it up to do the initial backup of my laptop computer. My first mistake, as I learned later, was to try to do the initial backup wirelessly. The Time Capsule has an Ethernet connection that works faster than the wireless connection. (It ought to have a USB or Firewire port, which would be far faster than Ethernet, but apparently the Apple gods decided to save a nickle at the expense of quality and convenience.) It would also have been nice if the manual that came with the thing recommended using Ethernet for the initial backup, but it didn't, so I didn't discover that this was even an option until I had already wasted several days.
Yes, days. Not hours, but days.
I started the initial backup on a Wednesday night. My laptop's hard drive had about 130 gigabytes of files on it, and after the initial backup had run for a couple of hours, I did a calculation based on megabytes/minute and figured that it should finish up sometime that weekend. This meant that I couldn't take my laptop away from the house or turn it off, but after I'd already invested a few hours in the process, I figured I'd just let it run until completed.
Unfortunately, the longer the backup proceeded, the slower the megabytes/minute rate became. By the following Monday morning, it was only 2/3 completed, and the copy rate had slowed to such a crawl that I had no idea when it would finish. I therefore reluctantly interrupted the process, since I had meetings to attend where I needed my computer.
By that time, I had done some further research online and learned that people were recommending doing the initial backup via Ethernet, so when I got home that Monday night, I decided to do it that way instead of via wifi. However, it was unable to resume the interrupted backup, so I had to start over from scratch. Over the course of several attempts to do this, I discovered moreover that the interrupted backup had corrupted the disk somehow, so eventually I had no choice but to erase the Time Capsule entirely before beginning a new backup. Each of these attempts took a half hour or an hour, so I wasted my Monday evening doing nothing but try and retry to start the backup. (Somewhere in the middle of this I also did a tech support call to Apple, which also meant time on the phone, sitting on hold, etc.)
Finally, sometime on Tuesday I got the backup started, and by late that evening I had my first incremental backup. Hooray! Or so I thought.
The thing ran OK for a month or so, and then for no apparent reason I discovered that backups were failing. Why? No idea. I called Apple tech support again. An hour or so on hold, then talking to an operator, then trying various things. Eventually the tech support guy told me I'd have to erase the hard drive again and do a new initial backup. Great. At least I knew by then that I'd need to do it via Ethernet, but of course it took the better part of a day for the backup to run, and starting over meant losing all of the history in my previous backups. But I did it.
After that, I had a good run for several months...maybe six months. Then, for no apparent reason, the backups started failing again. This time I managed to get the backups working again by unplugging the Time Capsule, plugging it back in, and doing some reset procedures.
A month later, the Ethernet connection started failing.
I have an old iMac upstairs that I plugged in to the Ethernet connection so it can access the internet and file-share with my laptop. One day I noticed that the iMac's internet connection was no longer working. After some testing, it turned out that neither the iMac nor my laptop is able to connect anymore through the Ethernet connection. I tried several cables, tried playing around with settings, to no avail. I had a trip to Hong Kong coming up, so I decided I'd worry about the Ethernet connection after I got home.
On the Saturday before my Monday morning flight to Hong Kong, my laptop died.
It was working fine on Friday evening. I went to bed, got up, and the screen was black. In a panic, I drove to the Apple store and, after much pleading, got them to look at the thing in a hurry. Their tests showed that the logic board was bad. Fortunately, they had a replacement in stock, so they were actually able to repair the laptop in only two hours.
Since then, however, I haven't been able to get backups to work at all on my Time Capsule.
When the laptop died, I figured I might need to restore files from the Time Capsule, so I unplugged it and took it with me on my frantic drive to the Apple Store. After I brought it home and plugged it back in, the laptop recognizes that it exists, but instead of doing an imcremental backup, Time Machine wants to start all over with a backup of more than 140 gigabytes.
No ******* way.
My plan at this point is to make an appointment at the Apple Store and take it in to someone at their Genius Bar. Maybe they can figure out why Ethernet isn't working and why the incremental backups aren't happening. In the meantime, I don't know if any of the backups that it has done to date are any good, so it's an uneasy feeling. And, of course, I've wasted more time than I care to think about just tweaking and nursing the thing.
It just isn't worth it.
If anyone has any suggestions for what I should be trying at this point, I'd love to hear advice.

I've got some time here as I wait on my computer (more on that in a moment), so in the meantime I re-read Smokerz's reply to my message. Upon re-reading, I thought I'd respond again.
Smokerz is saying basically that Time Capsule is great for purposes OTHER than backing up my computer's hard drive: "Make your primary TM backup using an external FW800 drive first. ... I don't do TM on TC but use TC as my internet file server for my family who all lives far from one another and stream movies to my ATV. Much better use of TC, eh?"
There might be a case for that use of Time Capsule, but the product is advertised and sold primarily as a wireless backup device. The main page for the product on apple.com describes it as "Automatic wireless backup for your Mac. ... Time Capsule is a revolutionary backup device that works wirelessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It automatically backs up everything, so you no longer have to worry about losing your digital life."
Smokerz is therefore arguing that I should be happy with a product that doesn't work for the purpose for which it is primarily advertised and for which I bought it. I don't have any use for it as an internet file server or to stream movies. To say I should be happy with it for those purposes makes no sense.
Here's a little update on my experience with this thing. I made an appointment and visited the Genius Bar at the Apple Store yesterday. My appointment was at 10:40. I spoke with *** ****, who by the way is "Lead Genius" at the West Towne story in Madison, WI. I've got no problems with him. Like every other Apple employee I've dealt with locally, he was competent, courteous and and helpful. He quickly fixed my Ethernet problem, but the more important problem -- the failure to connect to my existing backups -- left him stumped as it did me. The problem apparently is that when Time Machine uses the MAC address of your computer's logic board as part of its way of identifying your system. There is a file on the backup drive that stores this information. It's filename consists of a period followed by the old MAC address. There is a procedure for renaming that file and changing some other settings which is supposed to make the backup work again. The procedure is detailed here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6893237
The problem in my case is that the file was missing when I went looking for it. (I hadn't been mucking around on my Time Capsule, so I don't see any way that I could possibly have deleted it.)
After some scratching his head, *** asked me to leave my computer and Time Capsule with him at the Apple Store and come back at 2:30 that afternoon. When I returned, not much progress had been made. He had found a way to make Time Machine do another initial backup from scratch within the same sparsebundle as my older backups and thought that once that backup completed, there would be a way to connect up with the the older backups. By 2:30, however, the backup had only completed 4 GB out of the 130 gigs on my hard drive. The Apple Store closes at 9 p.m., so I would have had to leave it with them overnight just to get through that stage of the process. I think I mentioned previously that I live an hour's drive from the Apple Store, and since I had already burned another entire day trying to get this thing working, I had *** give it back to me so I could take it home and try to complete the procedure myself.
Once I got it home, I let the backup run overnight. It took about 12 hours to complete. Now I'm going through the procedure *** gave me, which is documented in a little more detail here on Sean Kelly's blog:
http://seankelly.tv/blog/blogentry.2008-08-25.8041499927
I just finished spending an hour waiting for the computer to open my sparsebundle (step three of Sean Kelly's procedure). Only six more steps to go!
<Edited by Moderator>

Problem with Time Capsule/Time Machine and MacBook Pro

I have run Time Machine against a Time Capsule for some time without problems. Suddenly I get an error message saing the disk in my Time Capsule is full. When entering Time Machine I can only see one "step" back in history despite the backup file using 650 GB on my Time Capsule.
My iMac that I havn't used much yet uses 46 GB and the disk in the Time Capsule is 1 TB so there should be plenty space... IF I undestand the file naming correctly...
Isn't Time Machine supposed to delete oldest backups when the disk is starting to get full? I hoped this system would be maintance free
As I can only see one step back in Time Machine I suspect some kind of error. Anyone have an idea what this could be?

Nick,
My first, suggestion is, mount the TCs hard disk and see how many disk images there are. There should only be one. If there are more than one, then at some point Time Machine lost track of its' previous backups and performed another Full Backup.
Alternatively, are you sure TM isn't backup up additional hard disks attached to your Mac?
Consider the following as it might give you some other ideas to explore.
*_Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!_*
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” [http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412]
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
If you have recently created a new disk image or burned a DVD, Time Machine will target these files for backup unless they are deleted or excluded from backup.
*Events-Based Backups*
Time Machine does not compare file for file to see if changes have been made. If it had to rescan every file on your drive before each backup, it would not be able to perform backups as often as it does. Rather, it looks for EVENTS (fseventsd) that take place involving your files and folders. Moving/copying/deleting/saving files and folders creates events that Time Machine looks for. [http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14]
Installing new software, upgrading existing software, or updating Mac OS X system software can create major changes in the structure of your directories. Every one of these changes is recorded by the OS as an event. Time Machine will backup every file that has an event associated with it since the installation.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer describes this behavior: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*TechTool Pro Directory Protection*
This disk utility feature creates backup copies of your system directories. Obviously these directories are changing all the time. So, depending on how it is configured, these backup files will be changing as well which is interpreted by Time Machine as new data to backup. Excluding the folder these backups are stored in will eliminate this effect.
*Backups WAY Too Large*
If an initial full backup or subsequent incremental backup is tens or hundreds of Gigs larger than expected, check to see that all unwanted external hard disks are still excluded from Time Machine backups.
This includes the Time Machine backup drive ITSELF. Normally, Time Machine is set to exclude itself by default. But on rare occasions it can forget. When your backup begins, Time Machine mounts the backup on your desktop. (For Time Capsule users it appears as a white drive icon labeled something like “Backup of (your computer)”.) If, while it is mounted, it does not show up in the Time Machine Prefs “Do not back up” list, then Time Machine will attempt to back ITSELF up. If it is not listed while the drive is mounted, then you need to add it to the list.
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder if you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.
Let us know if the above helped.
Cheers!

Problem with Time Capsule full system restore

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