Time machine cant see old backups with New Macbook

Hello, I recently migrated from an iMac to a MacBookPro6. I plugged in my externals hard drive into my Macbook and was accessing old backups from my iMac without a problem. THEN I used the hard drive to backup with time machine and now I cannot access any of my iMac files. I no longer have permissions. I no longer have the iMac. Is there any way to access these old files or retrieve permissions with my new Macbook?
Thanks in advance

Thanks ClayG, thanks Rodrigo
I work at a university so will take Clay's suggestion to my IT guy (he suggested I post here). Im sure it will make more sense to him than me:)
To answer your querey, yes I can use the hard drive with my new computer, that wasnt the issue, it was only retreiving the old files.
Thanks again to both of you for taking the time
A

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Get time machine to see old backups

Hi all,
recently i had a problem that resulted in having to restore from a time machine backup. Since then i have been unable to see my previous backups within time machine
The sparse bundle is still intact, i have not allowed it to backup knowing that it will more than likely nuke my old backups.
So far i have tried:
- removing and reselecting the time capsule
- removing com.apple.timemachine.plist
- inheriting the existing sparsebundle.
any help on this would be much appreciated.
Cheers

While in Time Machine, 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 the files you want to restore.

The Time Machine in my old Mini and new Mini is different

In my earlier Mac Mini, I could use the internal drive for the backup, which was great. However, when I setup the Time Machine for the new Mini, it insists on me setting up an external drive. So I can't use the internal drive for backups any more?
Thanks
Steve

To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

Time Machine deleted my old backups and crapped out midstream

I had just gotten my failing hard drive replaced, and restored from Time Machine backup. So far so good.
So a week later, I wanted to upgrade to Mountain Lion, but figured I should be responsible and run Time Machine backup again before doing the upgrade just in case something goes wrong.
The Mac has a 4TB drive, which has 2TB free. The backup drive is a 4TB external drive, which has (or had) Time Machine backups going back two years or so. It still had over a TB of space left. I clicked on Backup Now and let it run overnight. I noticed it said "Deleting old backup to make room" or something like that, which I thought was normal.
I woke up in the morning to find that Time Machine had crapped out in the middle, and said that it couldn't complete. I realized that it had deleted all my old backups. It didn't need to do that, since the only files that had changed would have been less than a GB, and it had over a TB of space to work with.
It must have thought that everything on the drive had changed since the last backup, and it wanted to backup the entire drive. As such it tried deleting all my old backups! But it failed, and stopped in the middle.
Now I have a drive that still says there is only 1.2 TB of space on the drive, but I can't see the files! Even with Tinkertool, I can't see anything beyond the one most recent backup.
Can these files be recovered? I am totally ticked that there isn't some kind of confirmation like "Are you sure you want to delete X?"
I actually need to have some of these older backups, as they include files that had been deleted before the latest backup that I may need to retrieve. Any hard drive experts out there? Any terminal commands that can make these files accessible, even if I have to retrieve them manually?

To clarify, this all happened under Snow Leopard as I had said. My profile lists Tiger, since I haven't cared to update my personal profile since using that OS, and in fact I still use Tiger among other versions. I manage a lot of users. And I never got to upgrade to Mountain Lion on this system, as explained in the post above. So I don't see the confusion.
I don't think the model of Mac makes a difference for this type of problem, but in case it does, the incident was on a 2010 Intel iMac with a 4TB hard drive and 8GB of RAM. I would have mentioned that if this was a problem with hardware specific to the model of Mac. But this is more of a universal issue.
But to stay on topic, I'm guessing my old backups are toast. But if anybody has any experience with recovering from Time Machine deleting their old backups, I would be happy to hear from them. In the meantime, I am going to try to do some old fashioned file recovery, and see what I can salvage.

Hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

hi, ive been backing up my computer to an external hard drive (with time machine). When i buy a new macbook will that hard drive put all my info on to the new computer?

When you boot the new machine for the first time, you'll be prompted to import your data from a Time Machine backup.

If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space, I mean I have to delete mu hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using to with new information?

If I completely fill my hard drive 500Gb how time machine will keep working having 1Tb of total space [externak hard drive], I mean I have to delete my hard drive but how I keep my previous information on time machine and keep using it with new information?

Time Machine does not provide archival storage.
If you delete a file from your disk it will eventually be deleted from your TM backup without any notice to you.
You need a second external disk to use for archival storage.
You also need a third disk for backups of the second disk.

Time Machine is Deleting Old backups

Disconnected my MacBook Pro from its hard drives for two days. Re-connected, and ran Time Machine. It backuped up as normal. I walked away, seeing "49.8GB free of 499GB" on that external hard drive. I come back and Time Machine is "Deleting Old Backups ... " - and now 135GB free, and still deleting.
I realize that TM auto-deletes ... but does this sound "normal" to start its own deletions when there was 49GB remaining on a 500GB drive?
It's still deleting ...
Clint Bradford

If I said I connnected two disks, I apologize. One 500GB external hard drive is dedicated to just being a Time Machine backup for my 17" MacBook Pro.
Not sure what has happened ... but Time Machine cleared up space, and is now performing a 110GB backup ... kinda like it doesn't know it's the same computer attached to it.
This is NOT a critical problem ... I have full backup elsewhere. Just a little weirdness today ...
Clint Bradford

Time Machine will not properly backup to new 8TB glyph drive.

Time Machine will not properly backup to new 8TB glyph drive. Folder reads ".inProgress". Can't see any files.
How can I set it up to do proper, regular backups?

8TB? holy cow.
It's likely overwhelmed and doesn't know what it's looking at.
Try using Carbon Copy Cloner instead, at least it will be bootable to use the computer.
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Hallo. My time machine cant do the backup. It cant make the folder for the safety-backup. How do I solve this?

Hallo. My time machine cant do the backup. It cant make the folder for the safety-backup. How do I solve this?

Have a look at Pondini's Time Machine information pages: http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

I backed up my old macbook onto a hard drive through time machine. now need to restore to new macbook air. HOw??

I backed up my old macbook onto a hard drive through time machine. now need to restore to new macbook air. HOw??

If you've not started the new computer yet, after you've started it you'll answer a few questions and then be asked whether you want to restore the computer. If you answer yes you'll be asked the source. Choose hard drive - make sure the TimeMachine drive is plugged in. Choose the TM drive from the list and let it go. It will take a while.
If you've already started the computer look for Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder. You'll be asked the same question about the source. Follow the instructions above.

Time machine deletes old backups with new system drive

So I decided it was time to get a larger system drive. After I finished migrating to the new drive, I plugged in my Time Machine backup drive, and now it's deleting all my old backups! What gives? Shouldn't Time Machine keep doing incremental backups the way it always has? Nothing has changed except the drive -- the files are still the same. I had backups going back to 2011, so it's a bit unsettling to see this happen.

Digijohn wrote:
So I decided it was time to get a larger system drive. After I finished migrating to the new drive,
On Snow Leopard, that's what usually happens.
On Lion and later, depending on exactly how you put your data back, it usually doesn't -- TM changes the backups so they look like they were made from the new drive. And there's a way to do that manually.
But on Snow Leopard, there's nothing you can do. Note that you can still see and restore from the remaining old backups, via the procedure in #E3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time machine copied my old files over new ones.

Sometimes the Macbook Pro would't load the desktop. Other times it won't load the password window. The backup drive booted up. I ran Norton anti-virus but found nothing.
The disc utility found the disc OK. But repairing permissions won't run. DiskWarrior gave the dreaded error 9972, which means any I one of 10 things could be wrong.
I noticed the Chrome icon had changed to blue, the color when Chrome first came out. Time machine had "updated" my files and apps back to 2009. What the ****. Have I lost all my work since I last backed up my disc in 2009? I had DiskWarrior rebuild the directory. But the disc still won't boot.
What caused time machine to load the backup over the new files?

jquin6 wrote:
The backup drive booted up.
Huh? What do you mean? Time Machine backups are not bootable.
I ran Norton anti-virus but found nothing.
That's well-known to wreak havoc on OSX. It may well be the cause of your problems. Uninstall it immediately. You may need help to do that, as it's also notoriously hard to get rid of all the bits it leaves behind.
Search this forum for Norton and you'll see what I mean, and find a link to an uninstaller.
Also see Thomas Reed's [Mac Virus Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/macvirus].
Have I lost all my work since I last backed up my disc in 2009?
You haven't backed-up since 2009?
I had DiskWarrior rebuild the directory. But the disc still won't boot.
Do you mean your Mac won't boot from the internal HD?
What caused time machine to load the backup over the new files?
Exactly what did you do? Did you tell it to restore that 2009 backup? If that's what you told it to do, that's what it did.
Please clarify, with details.

Time Machine: Cannot access old backups after migrating to a new mac

Hello,
I have bought a new Mac (With Snow Leopard installed on it). I have used it for about half an hour to have fun with it.
Then, I have decided to use Time Machine & Migration Assistant to restore all my files from my old Mac (Leopard). The restoration was successful and I was very happy to see that all my files and settings were there.
However, when I try to access my old backups (the ones I have done prior to buying the new Mac), Time Machine says I do not have the permissions to access it.
Is there an way to fix this? I would like to be able to access these old files.

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

Time Machine stalls on first backup of new iMac with 3TB Fusion Drive

I've got a brand new 27" iMac with latest patches up to OS X 10.9.1. I've loaded about 500GB of data onto this machine and wanted to make an intial Time Machine backup, so I connected a brand new 4TB Seagate Backup Plus USB 3.0 external hard drive, formatted the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), pointed Time Machine at it, and let it go. It ran up to about 30GB before I walked away. When I came back maybe 8–10 hours later it was still stopped at about 30GB. I stopped it, and tried again. This time it just went a couple of GB before halting. I can hear the external drive stop spinning because it isn't being accessed.
I also have a new 2TB Western Digital My Passport USB 3.0 external drive, so I formatted that as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and tried setting it as the Time Machine drive instead. Again Time Machine gets a little way into the backup before stalling and proceeding no further. I think this rules out the drive, since both drives behave the same way.
I also have Super Duper installed on this machine, so I tried doing a full disk copy to the WD drive and this worked flawlessly. This suggests that nothing is wrong with the drives themselves, as does the successful check of all three disks with Disk Utility.
I've checked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" in Energy Saver. I've unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". I've checked "Enable Power Nap". I set Time Machine back to using the 4TB Seagate Drive and have been letting it run as long as it wants to. It got up to 13.32GB this morning before seeming to stall this morning. 10 hours later when I got from work it's still at 13.32 GB and it still says "About 7 hours remaining", just as it did at 8:30am.
I've read a bunch of discussions on here about issues like this, which is where I came up with some of the things I've tried. So far, nothing has worked. Can anyone suggest a working solution? It seems like the Time Machine software just isn't workin

Pondini's site is excellent, but didn't happen to cover this problem (or Mavericks in particular as of yet). But I did call AppleCare support as you suggested, rkaufman87, where I was quickly escalated since I'd already tried the things the first tier support people start with. After some investigation via screen sharing and inspection of my system log (which suggested the stall involved issues with the index) the main change we made was to clear out the Time Machine preference files and Spotlight's cache before rebooting and trying again. This time the backup completed without stalling, and has continued to work ever since. Thanks for encouraging me to call support!

Time capsule not seeing old backups, now its backing up my computer again

Hi:
I moved my TC today to a new apartment. Same computer and everything. I can mount the drive and see the macbook pro backup file but i cant connect to it with time machine. Now when I back up my computer again, it is starting a new backup of the entire system.
would maybe reinstalling leopard and using the other pro backup work? let me know thanks!

Well I called apple about this and they said i need to reinstall leopard from the latest backup.

Time machine cant see old backups with New Macbook

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