Time Machine Not Recognizing Old Backups after getting hard drive replaced

Hello! I have a 13' Black Macbook pro which had a faulty hard drive so I had it replaced. Ever since then, all my old backups in Time Machine have been grayed out. I have no idea how to fix this and have tried almost everything on the web.
The only folder that allows me to "go back in time" is my Macintosh HD folder which I know I can access everything but it's a huge nuisance to not be able to click on a folder and go back in time in the same folder.
I just want things the way they used to be! Thanks for the help!

Hi, and welcome to the forums.
The problem is, you have a different HD. Even if it has the same name and contents as the old one, it's still a different HD, and Time Machine treats it as a different one.
There's no way to fool it into thinking it's not.
Technically, it has a different UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier); that's what OSX uses to keep track of drives, not their names.
As you do new backups, you'll be able to access them just as you did with the old drive.

Similar Messages

Why does Time machine not delete old backups

I dont understand Why time machine is not deleting old backups. As it worked first time with the same size backup drive as the drive its backing up, I assumed it would just delete the old backup as needed. Do I need a bigger backup drive?

Roglee wrote:
I just want it to delete the old backup & replace it so i just have a copy. I guess i could just re format the drive each time but that just seems a waste of my time when TM should do this for me!
If this is all you want to do, turn off Time Machine, download SuperDuper! and use it for free. This will clone whatever drive you want and the free trial will erase your back up drive each time. I can't remember if it will let you choose what to back up or if it wants the entire drive. Also, I'm not sure if the Scheduler works with the free trial. Below are some verbiage for SuperDuper!. Looks like if you want Scheduling you will have to purchase a license.
Download Now!
You can download SuperDuper! v2.7.1 right now and back up and clone your drives for free— forever!
Buy Now!
Buy now to unlock scheduling, Smart Update (which saves a lot of time), Sandboxes, scripting and more!
Time Machine will keep making back ups and when it determines it needs space, it will delete older back ups. But it doesn't delete older ones each time it backs up.

Time machine not deleting oldest backup on full network drive

Hi All,
I backup my iMac over the network to a share on a mac Mini. After around three months, the share is full. I expected Time Machine to just start deleting old backups, but it is not.
Time Machine gives me the following error:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume".
This is correct, but i thought Time Machine should have just deleted the oldest backup in this instance? Or does this not work when backing up over the network?
Thanks in advance for help and advice.
Cheers,
mdavis75
Message was edited by: mdavis75

I have the exact same problem, but I am not using TM over a network... Only my local Mac Pro w/ a 600gb external drive. I recall back when I first got Leopard that time machine did in fact ask me if I wanted it to delete old backups after the drive filled up. Then one day it randomly decided to not delete old backups anymore... Instead displaying the same error message you get.
Can anyone help? (Besides telling me not to back up certain files, and to do it less often. Those are BS solutions! I want my entire HD backed up every time automatically erasing old backups when necessary. Is that too much to ask for?)

Time machine not deleting old backups of recovery partition

I have a Mac Mini running Lion Server. I have an external disk partitioned with a space for network backups and a smaller partition for backing up the server itself. The server has a 160GB disk, it is only using 29.27GB, the partition for backing up the server is 152GB (it's what was left over after creating the partition for the network backups). I figured since I'm only using about 30GB, 152GB should be plenty of space. However after 3 months of use I get the error "the backup is too large for the backup disk". In the past I have formatted the partition and restarted the backups, however it always fills up after 3 months. This time I decided to dig into it a bit more. I looked to see what was available in my backup, it only has one previous restore point. I browsed the disk and opened the backups.backupdb folder, checked the size of the folder with the computer name, it is only 9.44GB. I was wondering where all of the space went so I enabled hidden files, I found the .RecoverySets folder and found it was taking up 141.95GB. I looked at the recovery sets, there are 295 copies of com.apple.recovery.boot which all seem to contain the following files:
.disk_label                         749b
BaseSystem.chunklist       2KB
BaseSystem.dmg              454.6MB
boot.efi                              864KB
com.apple.Boot.plist          431b
kernelcache                       24.1MB
PlatformSupport.plist         2KB
SystemVersion.plist           478b
Of those files, the only file not dated Aug 11, Oct 6 or 12, 2011 is com.apple.Boot.plist which has a date that corresponds to when the backup was performed. These backups go all the way back to Jan 30, the last time I formatted the partition, but the user data backups only go back to the 27th and it hasn't been able to complete a backup since.
I thought Time Machine was supposed to only backup data that had changed since the last backup, and delete old revisions when space is running low, it seems that it is copying more than just the data that changed since the last backup and only deleting old revisions of user data, not system data. Is there a way to fix this permanently?

See C18 in the first linked article. Also, your backup drive should be 2-4 times your hard drive capacity.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Backup disk is full ... Time Machine not deleting old backups

In my Time Machine preferences it says "The older backups are deleted when your disk becomes full." Well ... my disk is full but Time Machine is not deleting its old backups to make more room.
So now TM is failing to backup.
Any suggestions for freeing up some disk space and getting back to getting backed up?
Thanks.
Ramone

ramonekalsaw wrote:
In my Time Machine preferences it says "The older backups are deleted when your disk becomes full." Well ... my disk is full but Time Machine is not deleting its old backups to make more room.
So now TM is failing to backup.
What message does it send? See #C2 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it. If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.
Any suggestions for freeing up some disk space and getting back to getting backed up?
Do you have other data on the disk, in the same partition? If so, that's not a good idea, and may be the source of the problem. See #3 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time machine not deleting old backups...

I am on Mavericks 10.9.1 and get the following error:
"The backup disk needs48.93 GB for the backup but only 30.99 are available. Select a larger backup disk or make the backup smalled by excluding files."
I recently had to unplug my external HD which I use for time machine back-ups, this error started when I plugged it back in just a few days ago. I have exlcuded some files from the back up and still get the error. My internal HD has 475.62GB of data on it, and I am trying to back up to a 500GB external HD, the total size of my backup is roughly 465GB.
Seems like I should have enough space for a back-up and TM should delete the old back-ups. I have been through a search of the forum and online and have not found a solution. Has anyone ran into this?
Thanks for the help!

I believe I was told that If you had older backups like ML and your disk is getting full it will not delete these because you are now backing up a new OS (Mavericks). It only deletes older backups of the same OS you are now using.

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

OS X 10.7 Time Machine not deleting old backups to make space

after upgrading to 10.7, Time Machine no longer deletes old (over a year old) backups to make space when needed. Drive now full. Cannot manually delete and Time Machine does not seem to have a function to perform a deletion.

See C18 in the first linked article. Also, your backup drive should be 2-4 times your hard drive capacity.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time Machine not finding old backups

I took my Macbook in for service last Thursday (12th) and i got it back yesterday (17th). Now, i have about 2 months worth of backups on a Western Digital MyBook but Time Machine can no longer find them (i'm guessing, they don't show up when i try to browse them), but they're still there on the backup disk. It's also trying to make a new "initial" backup.
Any help?
Thanks in advance

I'm having the same problem. I had Time Machine backing up to an external LaCie drive and after getting my Mac Book Pro back from the Apple Store it can't find the backups. The logic board was replaced, but other than that everything was as I left it.
I can see the backups on the drive and ran disk utility to check for problems with no issues. However, I can't continue my backups from where I left off.

My Time Machine stalls during initial backup on external hard drive even after several hours.

We have been using Time Machine and an external hard drive to back up our MacBook for almost a year now. Recently, the hard drive (using a USB) was removed without ejecting it properly. After that, the auto backups began stalling. We tried setting up Time Machine all over again but the initial back up stalls at different places (like 6MB of 87GB) even if it's left for several hours overnight. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? If not, can anyone suggest another inexpensive way of backing up our files from our MacBook?
Thanks!
Shane

It might have created a new user and loaded under that.. new user being the old user. But if you have issues do it again, only this time pick where the backup will go.
http://pondini.org/TM/16.html
The other questions might also be relevant as a new hard disk will make the Mac appear to the TM backup as a new computer.
See 14-18 for restore info.

Time Machine Not Backing Up to an External Hard Drive - Error 11

Hi!
I am unable to backup my MacBook with my external Hard Drive. My Mac is a fairly new machine (September 2009) and I have backed up since upgrading to Snow Leopard previously but I cannot backup at all at the moment.
I have run disk utility and repair completed without any issues, in fact it told me that the drive was running ok. I have also reformatted my drive (mac os extended (journaled) ) and made sure the partition is GUID. The following is the message that appears when the backup fails:
"The backup was not performed because an error occured while copying the files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use disk utility to repair your backup disk."
I have had a look at the log using the Time Machine Widget and the following is what has been generated:
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb
Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
Error parsing SystemMigration.log to determine source volume of system migration.
Backup content size: 100.2 GB excluded items size: 85.9 GB for volume Macintosh HD
No pre-backup thinning needed: 17.11 GB requested (including padding), 148.45 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz, /Volumes/MAC/Backups.backupdb/Eric O'Mahony’s MacBook/2010-05-02-210743.inProgress/E450C379-52F6-48A3-99D7-F45043074122/Macin tosh HD/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz
Aborting backup because indexing of file failed.
Stopping backup.
Copied 158300 files (12.5 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Copy stage failed with error:11
Backup failed with error: 11
The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font?? Can anyone help me? It is driving me crazy and I need to backup my files.
Thank you for your help!

ericomahony wrote:
Indexing a file failed. Returned 200 for: /usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/crox3tbo.pcf.gz,
The problems seems to be with indexing a file....a font??
Yes, indeed. Start by just excluding it, per the blue box in #C3 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
If the backup then runs ok, you'll need to figure out what's wrong with that file.
If you get another error, see the rest of #C3.

Time Machine not recognizing full space available on NAS.

I recently purchsed and set up an Iomega Storcenter ix4-200d NAS with Time Machine support. The NAS has 8 TB storage total, with ~4.6 TB available.
I have TIme Machine support turned on in the Storcenter, assigned to a folder called "Time-Machine." In my OSX Time Machine preferences, I select the "Time-Machine" folder on my NAS as the back-up disk, and my Mac connects to it just fine.
The challenge is Time Machine returns an error saying there isn't enough space on the backup disk to complete the backup.
For some reason, Time Machine is only recognizing 536.36 GB of space available on the backup disk, even though there are ~4.6 TB available. I tried manually moving my iTunes media folder (~700 GB) to the "Time-Machine" folder on my NAS to see if the Iomega NAS was arbitrarily setting a max size to a Time Machine folder. I was able to manually move just under 1 TB of data to the same "Time-Machine" folder that Time Machine says only has 536.36 GB of space.
I tried deleting the Time-Machine store on my NAS, turning Time Machine support off, then turning it back off and creating a new "Time-Machine" folder. I did this several times and still get the same behavior.
I even tried running Time Machine piecemeal, excluding larger folders at first and running a back-up, to see if maybe Time Machine wasn't liking that large of an initial backup. This worked, and then I gradually removed some exclusions and ran back-ups again, so each back-up size was never more than 200 GBs or so. However, after several back-ups, I received the same error message saying there wasn't enough space on the backup disk when the total sparsbundle size reached 536.36 GBs.
Since I can manually move more than 536.36 GB of data to the backup disk, I'm guessing it must be something with Time Machine not recognizing the full space available on the NAS.
Any ideas? Has anyone seen this before?

Hello,
not that it helps, but I see the same on the exact same configuration. My message is also about not having enough space, ip-to exactly the same amount of room being available (only 536.36 GB available)?
I tried everything, including a full reset of the StorCenter, but to no avail. The timemachine backup used to work, however I thought that this was just because it didn't exceed the limit of one physical disk in the StorCenter (I've got 4 x 1 TB).
What is strange is that the original author has 2TB disks and still has the same problem? So it likely isn't related to the physical disk size. It seems like the maximum backup can only be 536.36 GB ??

HT3275 Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

Time Machine not deleting oldest backups when the disk is full

Unfortunately, when this happens, Time Machine cannot erase enough space to create room for the new backup. Your options now are:
1) Add a new Time Capsule or a hard drive to the USB port on the existing Time Capsule and continue with backups
2) Manually delete backups from Time Machine....which is a long and tedious process. After a few hours, not much space will be reclaimed and it will not be long before the Time Capsule is full again
3) Erase the Time Capsule....if you really do not need all the old backups from months ago....and start over with a new Time Machine backup and move forward again

Time machine not recognizing free space even though it "knows" about it

Trying to back up to an external hard drive I'm getting this error from Time Machine when it tries to back up:
"This backup is too large for the backup volume. The backup requires 52.5 GB but only 495.8 GB are available..."
Clearly it KNOWS the space is there, but its math is wrong since it seem to think that 52.5 GB is greater than 495.8 GB.
Suggestions?

Sometimes, this error is legitimate. The user may not realize that they need to exclude additional hard disks that TM may be seeing. This is done in the “Options…” window of the Time Machine Preferences.
Nevertheless, many times this error just doesn’t make sense, stating that not enough free space exists for a backup that is clearly smaller. (“The backup requires 45.9 GB but only 182.6 GB are available”)
The answer and fix may have been discovered by a poster in the macosxhints forums: (http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-84284.html)
Essentially, while Time Machine DOES delete old backups from the sparsebundle, it DOES NOT free up the space occupied by those old backups. Eventually, "all previous backups were deleted and no space was gained. . . . What appears to be going on here is that the sparsebundle isn't self-shrinking - unused bands aren't being automagically discarded."
The solution is to compact the TM backup sparsebundle in Terminal using:
hdiutil compact yoursparsebundlefilename.
He concludes, "I gained 30+gb of space on the backup volume by compacting that sparsebundle. And now TM runs just fine, since it has plenty of space."
Obviously, this is a bug in TM. It does not appear to effect everyone, and only seems to appear under certain curcumstances.
Let us know if this works for you.

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

I am trying to use Time Machine to back-up to an external hard drive and I get the following message.Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder. Does anyone know what I should do?

Hello Drake, I suspect one or more of the Drives needs repairing, but...
Have you looked through Pondini's extensive TM help site?
http://Pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Can't imaging something not being covered there.

Time Machine Not Recognizing Old Backups after getting hard drive replaced

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