Time Machine Inherit back up issue - Migration assistant

Mac Book Pro running 10.7.5
Migrated to (using Migration assistant)
iMac running 10.7.5
(this iMac was already formatted as another unit, user name - not brand new)
Ethernet network - iMac is now cabled to the time machine - all other machines are turned off/disconnected from network and time machine is turned off on other machines (studio network of 5 machines)
- did not select inherit back-up when prompted.
Now I cannot inherit back-up from old mac - even though all data, settings, files transferred and users are the same - all is good with the transfer.
- when I open time machine it wants to do a completely new back-up and I cannot find a way to inherit back-ups.
Note: I have managed to follow many of Pondini's posts and recommendations regarding what to look for and how to do it - ie.make sure I have only one user (the original user from old macbook pro) in preferences - and the old user from the iMac computer was deleted - etc.
Is my only option to do the following? This seems a bit out of my skill set...
http://pondini.org/TM/B6.html
Thanks in advance,
Dean

Note - when I tried now - Pondini's suggestion in Terminal it gave me this error/prompt.
The image "Henry.sparsebundle" can't be inherited because it would conflict with "Valentino (2).sparsebundle".
I have multiple machine back-ups on this time capsule - could that also be an issue?

Similar Messages

Possible to restore iTunes safely to a new mac (from time machine backup) without using setup/migration assistant?

Hello all,
I have just acquired a new MacBook which I want to set up completely fresh. The only data I really need to restore/copy to it, besides a few document folders, is the iTunes library from my existing iMac. The iTunes library has been backed up using time machine on the iMac (using a portable drive). I’ve heard it might be possible for me to plug the time machine backup into the new MacBook and then option-click the time machine icon in order to 'browse other backup disks' and then restore iTunes. Would this work and would all my devices still sync with iTunes? I’m just a bit nervous because apple has migration assistant and setup assistant for doing this sort of thing - I just really don’t want to use them because the only thing I want on my new MacBook from the whole of the time machine backup is literally the iTunes library. I don’t want to start restoring user accounts which you must do with the assistants.
Thank you.

Thank you ever so much for the replies. Just one thing: the link you provided seems to discuss restoring individual items on the computer for which a backup has been made. On my macbook I can't click "enter time machine" which I'm guessing is because the time machine backup is for my old iMac (hence my comment about control clicking the menu bar).

Time machine freezes after restore using migration assistant

after an erase/install done in an Apple Store, I restored my Mac Book from the Time Machine using the migration agent.
To do this I created a temporary admin account and performed the Restore of all users and contents in the backup.
Now logged in as my old user ID the time machine backup starts and identifies that the entire MacBook content needs to be backed up.
TM Backup runs through the prepairing stage and reaches the "Baccking up 'xxx' MB from 'yyy' GB" message.
Then it gets stuck after 120 MB has been backed up. I did run the backup for 2 entire nights in the 2nd night it got stuck after 0 kB had been backed up.
What to I need to do to get TM running again?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Trying to restore after getting a new hard drive. I can see the backup on the Time Capsule and on the correct date but it is Greyed out. That is it wont let me open it and restore the machine. Have tried also Migration Assistant, no luck.

Trying to restore after getting a new hard drive. I can see the backup on the Time Capsule and on the correct date but it is Greyed out. That is it wont let me open it and restore the machine. Have tried also Migration Assistant, no luck.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5210788?tstart=0
At startup hold down the Command+Option/Alt+r keys until you see a globe on the screen. Then use disk utility to partition and format the drive HSF+ and then select Reinstall Mac OS X. whatever version of OS X that originally came on your system will be installed and then you can upgrade back to Mavericks.

HT201250 I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was?

I use Time Machine to back up my entire computer with my external hard drive. I am getting a brand new iMac this month and was wondering what is the process of using this back up to restore my new computer exactly how my old computer was? I want to make sure I will still have various important files on my new computer, like my songs in iTunes, my photos in iPhoto, etc, etc. Thanks so much in advance!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
When you turn on the new iMac for the first time, Setup Assistant will ask you to restore a backup, so connect the external disk and follow steps to restore all your files to your new iMac. Your new Mac will have the same settings and programs as your old computer.
In other cases, I would recommend to restore the whole backup without using Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant, but a Late 2012 iMac uses a special OS X build, so the OS X version that you're using on your old Mac won't work on the new one. For more information, see > http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Is information stored in Time Machine considered backed up?

Sorry for the newbie questions below - I scanned the threads but didn't find exactly what I was looking for.
1) As far as backing up contents of my computer, is Time Machine (and the external drive it's running on) considered safe? That is to say - if my only back up is Time Machine to feel that my pictures, videos, etc are safely backed up - am I crazy?
2) When the external drive Time Machine is currently running on fills up, do I buy another one and disconnect and store the first one?
3) Getting close to buying a HD camcorder - so - how best to manage the big volumes needed for storage? Can I rig up a big external drive specifically for large files such as high res photos and HD video? Will iMovie and iPhoto reference such an external drive?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers.

Time Machine is currently my only form of overall backup. There are two ways to do a restore.
If you start up from your Mac OS X installation disc, you can run a utility that restores the entire volume. I have actually tried it recently, to make myself feel comfortable with how it works, and it did work as expected. I did do a clone to another volume immediately before, in case the +restore complete volume from Time Machine backup+ process failed.
The other way is to go into the Time Machine archive directly. So if I want to start with a fresh system installation instead, I can go do a system installation onto an erased volume. Then run Migration Assistant and use my Time Machine backup as the data source. Or I can migrate the data manually using Finder (the way I would really do it), by going into the Time Machine archive directly. The folder structure is organized by date/time of the backup. By using something called multi-linked files when Time Machine created the backup, Finder will show a complete backup for any available date/time, even though a file that never changed is stored in the archive only one time. In other words, each date/time folder shows everything being backed up, even though 99% of it did not change from the backup one hour earlier. So I can manually copy the files I want from the archive to the new installation, just by picking which available date/time to use.
Since I have these two options, I feel comfortable with Time Machine being my only backup for most of my personal data. For data that is extremely valuable, I back that up separately to another hard drive. But I would do that second backup (for the most critical data) no matter what backup method I was using.
When Time Machine runs out of space on the drive, it tells you. If you let it continue, Time Machine starts deleting your oldest date/time backup states to make room for the newest date/time backup states. So how far back in time you can go starts moving forward. However, there is no need to get a new drive, if that automatic process is OK and you mostly want the recent backup states. It is a good idea to buy as large a drive as reasonable, so that Time Machine has plenty of space. From my experience, Time Machine starts to take a long time to perform each run once the free space on the drive starts to become low (or gets to a point where it is deleting the oldest backup states).
You can tell Time Machine to back up attached external drives, as long as the Time Machine volume is larger than the total size of the data being backed up. To operate effectively, the Time Machine volume really should be +at least+ twice the total size of the data being backed up. In System Preferences +Time Machine+ pane, the Options button shows a list of what NOT to back up. External drives are put on the list by default. If you want an external drive to be backed up, remove it from this list.
You can generally tell applications where to store data.

I would like to use time Machine to back up to a network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it

I currently have a mini server (OSX10.8.5, server 2.2.2) that I am using Time Machine to back up 4 external drives that are connected to the server via firewire 800. I would like to use Time Machine to back up to a windows network SMB drive. I can see the drive on my desktop but it will not show in the time machine window to be able to select it for use.
Can this be done
Thanks for any and all help

The supported targets for Time Machine backups are local (direct-connected) disks, and network targets include Time Capsule, a disk hanging off the current-generation AirPort (though not earlier AirPort devices), and OS X Server systems.
The Time Machine storage is based on the HFS+ file system, so I would not expect TM to work with SMB file services.
While there are hacks to allow Time Machine to access network drives, I would not consider those to be reliable. Skim the forum and the 'net for related details, and for previous discussions of setting this up and the related issues that can arise.
Remember to test the recovery with whatever you decide to use; whole point of backups is the ability to restore the data, after all.
If you want to learn more about Time Machine, Pondini is an excellent resource.

I can not get Time Machine to back up an external WD Passport 2 TB drive! Has anyone else had this problem? The drive is new and I was running Snow Leopard and upgraded to Lion and it still won't do it. Time Machine backs up the internal drive fine.

I bought 2 2TB WD Passport Drives with the intention of housing my iTunes/iPhoto libraries off my older MacBook. I have successfully transferred the Libraries to one and am using the other one for Time Machine. In Snow Leopard I could back up my computer to Time Machine no problem but when I did not exclude the iTunes/iPhoto drive the back up fails. Both drives have been reformatted, permissions repaired and checked in Disk Utility and one was replaced. I have been to the Genius Bar now 5 times. I have tried using USB drive and FireWire. Both drives are recognized and are working properly otherwise regardless how they are connected. Finally yesterday the Apple store installed Lion to see if that fixed the issue and it did not. Time Machine successfully backed up a USB Flash drive, and today I will try an older external drive. Any ideas on what else to try??? Do I have to resort to third party software like Carbon Copy Cloned to get this done? Any ideas why this wont work? I am using a FireWire converter but as I said, both drives are working normally otherwise (libraries working, time machine working for the computer's hard drive. Any ideas would be appreciated!!?

Thanks so much but none of that helped. It was driving me crazy because it would back up another external drive. I just changed the name of the drive from iPhoto/iTunes Library to Media Libraries and IT WORKED!! I guess for some reason it didn't like the drive being called iPhoto or iTunes ???? I don't understand but I have tried so many solutions and exchanging things out but the name change did it????!!!
Thank you for your help and replying to this. Guess I made my own issue!

Can we use Time Machine to back up data on Time Capsule from the outside of network?

I have Time Capsule at home. Can I use Time Machine to back up data of portable nootebook when I am working at office?

If you mean over the internet, you can but it will be so slow and more than likely so unreliable it is a poor method to use. Remember all internet is limited to upload speed.
Lion does a temporary backup onto local hard disk.. which is useless of course if the hard drive is damaged.. but helps if you delete an important file. Then when you go back home and it discovers the TC is available it will then backup again from where it left off.
I think it is only a major issue if you are away from home for major lengths of time, weeks or months.

Can't get Time Machine to back up server or attached drives

Tried to use the search on these new discussion forums and was told I'm not authorized to search the server forums so sorry if this has already been asked and answered.
I'm having a serious issue trying to back up my Mac Mini Server running 10.6.7. The setup is I've got the main server hard drive running the OS and storing user folders, the second drive is storing all server data (mail, ical, etc). I have an attached Drobo that is where all our company's job files are stored. I want to back up mainly the job files to an external USB drive via time machine. I wouldn't mind having the server and data backed up as well but it's not as essential as the customer files. I have not been able to get a successful Time Machine Backup of anything. Time Machine will start backing up and hang after what seems like a random amount of data has been backed up. This can range anywhere from a few hundred Gigabytes or a few Megabytes. The last attempt has stalled out at 17MB of 518GB.
The troubleshooting I've done so far is to try to back up only certain things, so:
Format the USB Drive then try to back up only the main server hard drive, excluding all else.
Format the USB Drive then try to back up only the server data hard drive, excluding all else.
Format the USB Drive then try to back up only our jobs folder on the Drobo, excluding all else.
The result has been the same every time. Seemingly random amount of data get's copied and then the backup hangs. I do not get an error message the Time Machine backup icon on the menu bar just keeps spinning and I have the Time Machine window up that says:
Time Machine Backup
Backing up 269,376 Items
17.3 MB of 518.7 GB
This current attempt was to backup just our jobs folder and was started yesterday morning so it has been over 24 hours. Disk Checks on the external USB drive come up with no errors every time I've scanned it.
Hoping someone has a solution. One of the main reason's the company owner decided to get a mac server was how well time machine worked on his mac at home and the idea of being able to go back to pervious versions of customer jobs if necessary.

I agree with Sven. I use TM to backup my server and have had EXCELLENT success. I work in a school with many teachers that love to delete files and empty the trash on their user accounts.
>>facepalm<<
They promptly come-a-runnin' crying about how they've lost that ever important document. Time machine to the rescue!
About the hanging problem... I've see it as well. I fixed it by finding the document that it was trying to back up. I copied it to a USB stick and deleted said file from the server.
I ran the time machine backup again, and it worked! I kindly asked the teacher to just remake the file in question. Luckily it wasn't anything important. I just chalked that one up to a corrupt or unreadable file.
Another thing to beware of. DO NOT expect time machine to be able to do a complete system restore on OS X server. It's great for getting those lost files while the system is up and running, but it will not work when trying to replace your Open Directory. It might get stuck on MySQL, and Mail as well. These databases are VERY finicky. If you need to back up your OD database, open up server admin and select "Open Directory."
Click the "Archive" button at the top.
To the far right hand side of the "Archive in" field, click choose.
Select the location that you want to save your archive to (the time machine drive will work) and click choose.
Click "Archive..." Type the name for your OD backup and type a password if desired. You don't need to have one.
Lastly... Smile on the inside knowing that your OD is nicely backed up and safe!

I installed Lion and now seem to have problems with Microsoft Silverlight and other plug ins and applications. I haven't ever used time machine to back up (my bad I know). Is there a way to go back to snow leopard with messing up all my files and my set

I installed Lion and now seem to have problems with Microsoft Silverlight and other plug ins and applications. I haven't ever used time machine to back up (my bad I know). Is there a way to go back to snow leopard with messing up all my files and my set?

Are you using the latest version of Silverkeeper? - v.2.0.2 is stated to be compatible with Snow Leopard.
http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/
If it's messing things up you could try asking LaCie Support for assistance.

When Time Machine is backing up, my computer is so slow that it is essentially useless. Backups occur irregularly, and take a long time.

When Time Machine is backing up, my computer is so slow that it is essentially useless. Backups occur irregularly, and take a long time. How do I get Time Machine to work properly?

Hello,
Have you verified both drives in Disk Utility?
See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?

Time Machine Not Backing Up New Files

Time Machine is NOT backing up my recent files.
I recently noticed that Time Machine was backing up really quickly instead of taking several minutes as usual. I checked previous backups and discovered that NONE of my recent files were backed up.
I have a very basic setup. An external usb 1 tb drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) being used as the time machine backup drive. A new i5 mac mini with OS X 10.8.4. About 200 gigs of data with one user on the internal drive.
I have followed all of the Pondini troubleshooting steps. I have restarted into safe mode to force a deep traversal. I have repaired permissions and verified all disks with Disk Utility. I have deleted time machine preferences and followed instructions as per Pondini #A4. The backup seems to run but then finishes quickly but DOES NOT BACK UP any recent files.
I have run TMUTIL COMPARE, it showed that many files needed to be backed up.
I have run TMUTIL ISEXCLUDED on some of the files that were not being backed up. It showed that they were not flagged for exclusion.
I have run a manual backup after starting up in Safe Mode, which forced a deep event scan, but then exhibited the same behaviour..
I have acquired a new external hard drive, backed up the complete main drive (using Time Machine which appeared to be successful on the first time full backup), then run a manual backup on that new drive after adding new files and had THE SAME PROBLEM.
Here's the latest console output, which is typical since I have noticed this issue. There appear to be many megabytes of new files to be backed up, but then the operation completes within seconds and no files are backed up at all.
6/23/13 7:15:16.422 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting manual backup
6/23/13 7:15:16.966 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Omnius/Backups.backupdb
6/23/13 7:15:17.916 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.277 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (375.1 MB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:20.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 845 files (375.1 MB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:20.311 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.91 GB required (including padding), 747.18 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:29.264 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 400 files (1.4 MB) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:29.298 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Using file event preflight for Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.299 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Will copy (Zero KB) from Olympus
6/23/13 7:15:29.300 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Found 5 files (Zero KB) needing backup
6/23/13 7:15:29.301 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: 1.46 GB required (including padding), 747.17 GB available
6/23/13 7:15:30.439 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Copied 140 files (33 bytes) from volume Olympus.
6/23/13 7:15:30.511 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Created new backup: 2013-06-23-071530
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Starting post-backup thinning
6/23/13 7:15:30.608 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
6/23/13 7:15:30.689 AM com.apple.backupd[643]: Backup completed successfully.
Please help. Time Machine is currently useless as a backup solution.

Results (username obfuscated in exclusionpaths):
   -=-=-=-=-=--
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>sourcePaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/</string>
          </array>
          <key>standardExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups</string>
                    <string>/MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.MobileBackups.trash</string>
                    <string>/.Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/.TemporaryItems</string>
                    <string>/.Trashes</string>
                    <string>/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist</string>
                    <string>/.fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/.hotfiles.btree</string>
                    <string>/Backups.backupdb</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DB</string>
                    <string>/Desktop DF</string>
                    <string>/Network/Servers</string>
                    <string>/Library/Updates</string>
                    <string>/Previous Systems</string>
                    <string>/Users/Shared/SC Info</string>
                    <string>/Users/Guest</string>
                    <string>/dev</string>
                    <string>/home</string>
                    <string>/net</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/com.apple.backupd.backupVerification</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/efw_cache</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/Spotlight-V100</string>
                    <string>/private/var/lib/postfix/greylist.db</string>
                    <string>/Volumes</string>
                    <string>/Network</string>
                    <string>/automount</string>
                    <string>/.vol</string>
                    <string>/tmp</string>
                    <string>/cores</string>
                    <string>/private/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/Network</string>
                    <string>/private/tftpboot</string>
                    <string>/private/var/automount</string>
                    <string>/private/var/folders</string>
                    <string>/private/var/run</string>
                    <string>/private/var/tmp</string>
                    <string>/private/var/vm</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/dhcpclient</string>
                    <string>/private/var/db/fseventsd</string>
                    <string>/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/Library/Logs</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Caches</string>
                    <string>/System/Library/Extensions/Caches</string>
                    <string>/private/var/log</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/cups</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/fax</string>
                    <string>/private/var/spool/uucp</string>
          </array>
          <key>systemFilesExcluded</key>
          <false/>
          <key>userExclusionPaths</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_in</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Epsilon</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Desktop</string>
                    <string>/Users/USERNAME/Pictures/cam_out</string>
          </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Time Machine not backing up iTunes folder

Hi.
I am having an issue with Time Machine on my MBP running 10.5.5. I currently have 2 TM backups on a 400gb external hard drive. Each backup is roughly 45gb. However, both times, my iTunes folder not been backed up. I checked the Time Machine options and nothing is being excluded.
Is there a way to make sure this folder is backed up?
Thanks,
markzegarelli

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I mean that Time Machine has backed up 2 times to this drive.
To expand a bit further, when I browse the disk in Finder, and navigate to where the back up of the music folder should be, (eg. backups.backupdb/<computer name>/2008-10-27-030029/<hd name>/Users/<user>/Music) all I see is an alias. Clicking the alias presents an error which says "The alias 'Music' could not be opened because the original item can not be found."
Thanks again.

Time machine not backing up with mavericks

purchased the new 3TB airport time capsule and cannot get the time machine to back up my data. for 3 weeks,have stopped and restarted TM, now it is still working on "first backup" that started Oct 30th. this is my 2nd device, first one died after one week, apple store exchanged it. never had any problems on my older TM, but for space issues.
running on 27" imac has a 1TB disc, 16GB ram, i7 processor

Mavericks changed animation for Time Machine. There is nothing to worry about there.
Allan

Time Machine Inherit back up issue - Migration assistant

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