Time Machine doesn't recognize past backups anymore

My Macbook pro just came back from being repaired (issue with the video display).
I think they had to replace the logic board or graphics card or both - but I'm not sure.
Everything works fine now... except for Time Machine.
Before the Macbook Pro was shipped off I would backup regularly to an external hard drive.
While my Macbook was gone I had to use some of the backup files from within the Backups.backupdb file system. So on my Powerbook G4 with Tiger I had to go in manually and copy files over. No big deal... or so I thought.
Now Time Machine does not recognize the past backups from before I shipped the MacbookPro.
It just wants to start an entirely new backup again.
Is there a way I can get Time Machine to recognize my old backup again?
I'd hate to have to go in manually from now on. It's not exactly convenient.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OK, I didn't explain that well...
So here is what I'm typing in and what I'm getting back (the name of my computer being "Jason Argo's Computer":
Last login: Thu Jul 17 22:22:16 on ttys000
Macintosh:~ Jason$ cd /Volumes/Chubs/Backups.backupdb
Macintosh:Backups.backupdb Jason$ xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress Jason Taylor's Computer
I don't know why but I'm getting nothing back now. Before I was getting errors saying no such directory exists. I've typed in ls as well and get nothing.
Any ideas?

Similar Messages

Time Machine doesn't recognize old backup after logic board replacement

I recently had my logic board on my MacBook Pro replaced and when I tried to backup, Time Machine did not recognize the old backup on the drive and tries to create a new one. The drive is mounted fine.
Is there a way to continue using my old backup, or do I need to delete it and create a new one?

lissy-loo wrote:
Hi there I've just had this problem on my computer too but is there a possibly easier way to explain what is on this site...
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101
I read through but got lost about half way down when it says:
"The last bit of information needed is the old MAC address. Open Terminal and change directory to the root of the Time Machine backup database, then get the old MAC address:...."
I was in terminal but couldn't work it out. Is this not a good idea to stumble around in if i have no idea what I'm doing? Seems difficult but I really wanna work it out because my Time Machine hard drive is full so I can't just get to back up everything from scratch and don't wanna delete what is already on there. Any help would be much appreciated!!
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
If you're not comfortable with the procedure, I'd advise against it. Mucking about with Terminal can cause all manner of problems.
But you can find your Mac's Ethernet Address via the *System Profiler* app. Click the Apple logo in your menubar, then +About This Mac,+ then +More Info+ to start it.
Select Network in the sidebar, then Ethernet in the upper panel. Near the bottom of the lower panel, under Ethernet, you should see *Mac Address.* It's 6 hex numbers (12 characters), separated by colons. Omit the colons when you type it into Terminal.
As noted in the Troubleshooting Tip, it's easy to do this wrong, get no error message, and have it not work (been there, done that!).
If it doesn't work, your only choices are to erase the drive and start over, or get a larger one and transfer your backups to it (see item #18 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
How big is your TM drive, vs. how much it's backing up? TM usually needs 2-3 times the space of what it's backing-up (see item #1 of the FAQ Tip).
Are you so concerned about not losing your backups because you've been deleting things from your internal HD, relying on TM to keep it's copies? If so, post back -- that's a terrible idea.

Time machine doesn't show older backups anymore after restoring one

After restoring a backup, my older backups are not shown anymore in my Time Machine. Although it's said that the oldest one is from 2010.
how ca i get them back?
thank you for helping!

Try right-click on the Time Machine "clock" icon on the dock
Click Browse Other Time Machine Disks
See if your old backups are there

Time Machine doesn't recognize my backups now that I restored from it.

After installing Lion 7.1 from the app store overy my Snow Leopard, my mid-2009 2.8 GHz MBP (15") started acting wonky . . . Would freeze up randomly, need to be hard-reset, would open up windows on boot-up that I DID NOT have open before (even if I unchecked the option to "re-open windows when logging back in"), would not remember certain preferences, etc.
Called Apple tech, all he could suggest was format/reinstall using the fun, new recovery feature in Lion, if the 7.2 update didn't somehow magically fix my problems. It didn't, so I made sure my time machine back-up was complete, booted into recovery, wiped the Macintosh HD, and re-installed Lion from the web. Took forever, but no problems, so I get to the part where I want to recover from Time Machine, and say to restore everything expcept my settings (in case something from settings before was causing the issues). It does all of this, no problem, and I log into my Mac and everything looks the same as before.
NOW, Time Machine wants to back-up, as usual, and I think it will look at the system and say, "Oh, yeah, I've got all this . . . I mean, you just restored from me, so I'll just take a few snapshots or whatever and back up every hour (or whatever I do)." But Time Machine ain't saying that. Time Machine says," Oh, you have a bunch of crap on this hard drive already, but I need more room to back up your computer." And I'm saying, "No buddy, that's not a bunch of crap, that IS the back-up of this computer. Just reference that!"
Except, see, I'm SAYING that to my computer . . . But it can't hear me, obviously. How do I get my computer to understand that I don't need a new back-up from scracth, that the hard-drive I restored from IS the TM backup?
Sorry for not being able to explain this problem more efficiently. Thanks in advance.

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, now I CAN'T go back in time using my Time Machine back-up . . . It says I've never backed up now (I guess because this is a fresh install that's TECHNICALLY correct), but I restored from this Time Machine file . . . Surely I've done something wrong that can be fixed. Help, please?

Time Machine Doesn't Recognize Old Backups

1) Had a mid-2010 27" iMac with Snow Leopard on it.
2) Upgraded Snow Leopard to Lion. Lion recognized time machine disk like it should and backed up like it should. I was able to retain my backups I've had since 2008.
3) This iMac had a hardware issue that prompted the purchase of a new iMac. Plugged time machine into this new iMac today and recovered system like I expected it to.
4) Problem: I can't access my old backup sets. Time machine wants to start from scratch.
Is there a work-around? Do I WANT a work around. In other words, if I can fix this so that Time machine "picks up" where I left off, will it cause problems later?

I'll refer you to Pondini's site. See section B 5 & 6.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install

Time machine doesn't recognize my old backups after clean install of OSX Lion
I also tried using migration assistant with no success.
I just want to use TM to restore files and folders SELECTIVELY.
Does anyone also know how to fully restore my iTunes data? (purchaces, music, iphone backups, etc)
Thank you in advance

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, now I CAN'T go back in time using my Time Machine back-up . . . It says I've never backed up now (I guess because this is a fresh install that's TECHNICALLY correct), but I restored from this Time Machine file . . . Surely I've done something wrong that can be fixed. Help, please?

Time machine doesn't recognize external hard drive

Recently I went to the apple store to get help to switch from Mavericks to Mountain Lion (I had some problems with Mavericks). They used time machine to bring back my applications (from my external hard drive, LaCie) on the Mountain Liion software. They said my time machine/external hard drive should work the same when I got home. Now, when I go to back up my computer, time machine doesn't recognize that I've backed up my files before. In the past, when time machine was working, every time I plugged in my hard drive the icon for it would turn blue, time machine recognized it, and it would back up my files. Now, the icon for the hard drive shows up, but time machine doesn't recognize it.
Some other things:
- when I open my external hard drive on finder, it shows all of my previous back ups
- I used disk utility to check my hard drive and macintosh HD - both are OK
How can I use time machine to continue backing up files? Or am I going to have to partition or erase the hard drive and start a new back up?
Thank you in advance

nevermind! time machine suddenly recognized the disk after half an hour. sorry, I don't know how to delete this post!

Replaced internal hard drive, time machine doesn't recognize as same volume

Howdy,
The hard drive (call it drive "X") on my iMac (one of the 2005 models) was dying so I had it replaced. I rebuilt the new drive (drive "Y") from my most recent time machine backup (from external drive "A"). I am now having problems with one of my backup devices, in that time machine doesn't recognize that the new disk is conceptually the same thing that had been backed up before (same volume name).
More details... I rotate my backups monthly through three external drives (I store the most recent offsite). After the disk replacement and restore process, I continued to use that backup drive (drive "A") without noticing any problem. Then it came time to rotate my external drives, and time machine doesn't find enough space on the next backup drive (drive "B"). Presumably this is because it doesn't realize that the drive I am backing up ("Y") is a copy of the drive that had previously been backed up on "B" ("X").
Is there any way to convince it they are the same? Or am I in the same boat as this poster:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2770362&tstart=0
Basically I just want to verify that I am in that same boat before I remove old backup files on "B". If I do decide I need to remove those, are the instructions linked in thread 2770362 correct, or are there better ones?
Thanks for any help,
Bob H

Actually, the backup I deleted above was the backup for the new internal drive. Apparently TM had created the (incomplete) backup during the failed attempt that ran out of space on the backup device. Since the new internal drive had the same name as the old internal drive, I didn't initially realize that's what I was deleting. Not that deleting it causes any harm, but it didn't address the original problem of freeing up space on the backup device.
Not to worry though. I've figured out how to get at the backups for the old internal drive, and am in the process of deleting those. I was about to follow the instructions in your troubleshooting items E3 and E2, but upon attempting to enter time machine I stumbled into the right place. Since I had previously told TM to do no backups (because there was still not enough disk space), and since I'd left the backup device connected, when I pulled up the TM menu from the menu bar, the usual "Enter Time Machine" menu was replaced by "Browse Other Time Machine Disks" (or perhaps "Disks" was "Backups"). This then gave me a list of the machines that I'd backed up on this backup device (in my case machine names and internal drive names are the same). Of course one of those was for the old internal drive, and after choosing it I roughly followed the same course of action as I did a few days ago, to initiate deletion.
I also saw how I could delete each of those old backups individually, but decided against that as I did not expect it would free up enough space. My expectation is that nearly all the space is shared among all the backups for the same source drive, since relatively very little changes between backups.
Bob H

HT203177 Time machine doesn't recognize my hard drive archive

I have time machine archive on a hard drive (not time capsule). It recently stopped backing up. On checking, time machine recognizes the hard drive (in preferences it is listed as the back up drive.) The files appear to be present on looking into the drive, but Time Machine doesn't recognize that there are backup files there, it wants to complete another full backup. Meaning - it says for latest backup: "none".
I am afraid if I do another full backup, I will lose the ability to access the older backups.
When I try to access older files through time machine, it predictably cannot find them.
How do I tell Time Machine that the files on that hard drive are the backup files?

Update:
1) Right click on TM icon - Menu choice "Browse other TM disks" allows me to see the data - i.e. it is a valid TM archive, not corrupted.
2) Looking at TM preferences immediately after showed the proper disk was targeted, but still Latest backup: None.
3) Shut down, anomalous shut down -required power button hit. (AHH - the problem??)
4) restart using command - R works - i.e recognizes the disk and emergency recovery system software
5) Restart - Still shows latest backup: None
6) trying to access data through standard TM startup shows data now.
7) go back to preferences - still no backup shown.
Aside - I can't recall what the purple vs white dates on right side of the screen signify, and can't find it in the documentation right now. Anybody know?

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

Backing up to a thumb drive - time machine doesn't delete older backups when it's full. I will have to erase and re-do the drive. Why?

You are both right.
Time Machine can backup FROM:
It cannot back up a USB thumb drive.
Time Machine can backup TO:
•A USB thumb drive (but most aren't large enough, and are very, very slow)

Time machine doesn't recognize old time machine backups after new drive

After getting my original hard drive replaced on apple care. Time machine refuses to recognize time machine backups dating back to October when I first installed Leopard. The Records are there on an "off-board" Lacie drive. Any fixes for this? I have had so many problems with Time Machine I am afraid to turn it back on. Last time it took over 40 hours to do an initial back-up.

Yes I had been having multiple problems and once saved the entire system in archive and install and also time machine had been active since October when I first installed it. all of this was saved to an off-board Lacie drive I can find the old time machine files easily enough but time machine since the new drive, does not recognize them. Since I got the drive back with tiger installed, I first had to re-install Leopard so I don't know if that caused Time machine to start over . I did do an archive and install at that time but there was nothing really to archive since they had not recovered my old files. If this wasn't bad enough The Technician replaced my administrator password with his own and the was off for a few days and I couldn't do anything for awhile. You have been very helpful thank you for your time on my behalf.
Respectfully,
Thomas Carlisle

Time Machine Doesn't Recognize Drive

My Macbook Pro died the other night -- it wouldn't wake from sleep and couldn't be restarted -- and it now has a new logic board. Everything seems okay, but Time Machine no longer recognizes my time machine backups. The files are all there, on the same drive they were always on. But TM doesn't see them and won't back up, giving me an error that the time machine drive can't be found.
So I re-specified the drive in Time Machine preferences. And now TM now says that it doesn't have enough room for the backup on that drive -- presumably because it wants to start over and back up the whole drive again.
I've checked both the internal drive and the TM drive with Disk Utility. No problems found.
Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks very much,
Steve

Thanks for responding. Yes, I see. New logic board, new computer.
If I have to start over, I'd like to hold on to those old backups -- and put the new backup on the partition where the old one was. So I tried copying the whole TM backup to another partition, where I could keep it for protection.
But apparently you're not supposed to do this. The finder asks for your password twice in order to do it and it took about a half hour just to prepare to copy -- and it counted about 2 million files. Is there any way to back up the back up, or do I just blow it away?
In that FAQ they refer you to an article that allows you to use the terminal to point the Mac back at the original backup. But it seems pretty fragile and easy to make a mistake. (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101)
I also called Apple support and after escalating the call I got a guy who was willing to do much the same console thing. We started and immediately got an error from the console. If the Apple guy can screw this up, maybe I should stay away.
Suggestions? Do I just give up and start over?
Thanks again,
Steve

I just updated to Mountain Lion and now time machine won't recognize my backups from before the update.

I updated from Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.2 on my MacBook Pro
I used disk utility to restore my external hardrive because I read somewhere that that would fix the problem.
It did fix the problem but only temporarily. I was able to view my backups from Snow Leopard, but as soon as I tried to backup again, time machine was stuck
"preparing to backup" for 5 hours and when I quit the prepare I could no longer access my previous backups.

So what happens if you go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General? Are you able to go there at all? If you are able to go there, can you unlock the preferences using the lock in the lower left and your login name and password?
If you are able to do this, can you change the "Allow applications downloaded from:" to Anywhere?
Best of luck.

Time Machine doesn't acknowledge initial backup

I purchased a Time Capsule and quickly and happily built a new 802.11n home wireless network with it. Yay. Then I hooked up my iMac to the Time Capsule via ethernet to do my initial Time Machine backup, knowing that it would take a LONG time (~400GB). Well, it took about 3 days to complete (which seems suspiciously slow...), but anyway, it finished sometime in the middle of the night. In the morning I looked at the Time Capsule and sure enough, there was the big-*** "sparse bundle" backup. Time Machine seemed to be in the middle of doing a relatively small backup, about 140MB, which I figured were the changes since I began the initial backup a few days before. However, I wished to unplug the ethernet and let it continue wirelessly, so I did so. However, Time Machine seemed to just hang there with the backup no longer progressing. Since I could simply have it redo the backup a little later without any real data loss, I just stopped the backup mid-progress. I unplugged the ethernet cable and the world seemed well. Then I clicked in Time Machine to begin a new backup.
Of course, I expected this backup to be a rather small one, but I realized that Time Machine was about to begin another ~400GB backup! In fact, there was no information in the "Last Backup" field, so apparently Time Machine could not see the massive initial backup and was about to start all over again. Well, I am NOT about to wait another 3 days for it to do that, especially if the problem reoccurs, so I halted the backup and set Time Machine to "off."
Now, what to do? Why can't Time Machine see the initial backup? Why is it trying to do another full backup (very little data changed on my system in the 3 days)? Did my stopping the "hourly" backup somehow "break" things?
Advice? Thoughts?

I'm not sure how the sparsebundle is identified by the computer, but if it is uniquely identified by the network connection used (ethernet, airport, firewire networking, etc.) then it could very well not identify the previous sparsebundle you made via Ethernet as being the one for your computer via Airport. I dont remember this being the case for me when I had my PowerBook backing up to my PowerMac via both Airport and/or Firewire networking, but I could be wrong...it was a while ago. Even though you seem to want to lean away from this, I'd recommend remaking it and just letting it go. You can use your computer in the mean time and allow the process to run in the background. It will pause and resume as the backup disk is available until the process is complete.

Time Machine doesn't connect to backup volume

I am trying to 'Enter the Time Machine' and it simply hangs. It tries to connect to the server but gets stuck on 'Connecting with backup volume. Eventually, I get the error message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup - the backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Larry's iMac.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)."
I think everything I had in the Time Machine has been lost as it shows 998GB of 998gb free. Annoying but not disastrous as my iMac hard drive is working fine. I just want to be able to backup before upgrading to Yosemite.
I'm on OSX 10.8.5
Can anyone help?
Thanks!

See C-17 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine doesn't recognize past backups anymore

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