Time machine won't recognize my old backup

I just bought a new MacBook Pro and am attempting to restore my old (stolen) laptop from my Time Machine backup. It recognizes my external hard drive, and I can browse all my files, but when I attempt to do a system restore it tells me that no valid Mac OS X backups are found. (Similarly, in Migration Assistant it just gives me a blank box in the "Select System to Transfer" dialogue.)
Does anyone know why my data is on my drive but not recognized by Mac OS X? I don't know if I set Time Machine to only backup my Applications / Personal Files and not the System, which is why it won't let me back it up. But it has everything else on there, and I really don't want to have to back up every file manually.
Thanks for your help in advance!

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Similar Messages

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 won't recognize my last backup after a power outage

Good Afternoon Everyone,
I just set up a Western Digital My Book Live on my network. Last week, I set up Time Machine to start a backup on my MacBook Pro (running 10.7.5). It took 2 days to finish, but all went well. For three days, all the backups worked perfectly. However, we had a power outage for an hour during the night and now that I turn on my MacBook Pro, Time Machine recognizes the disk, but doesn't have a record of any backup.
I have gone to the drive manually and seen that the files are still there, but how to I tell Time Maching on my MacBook that the full backup is already on that NAS drive, so that it won't do a full backup?
I would really appreciate the help.
Brett

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time Machine won't recognize new external hard drive

I recently had a problem with My Passport and had to buy a new one. I have plugged it in and reformatted it and now Time Machine won't recognize it even though it shows on my desktop and the disk utility doesn't see any problem. Any ideas?

Disable Time Machine from System Preferences.
Choose Select disk button, remove the old TM backup disk and add the new one.

Time machine won't recognize my WD MyBook Live as a backup drive

I am having an issue with Time Machine not recognizing my 1 TB MyBook Live External Hard drive. I recently changed internet providers and have a new modem and router (motorolla modem and medialink router) and since then I can't get Time Machine to consistently recognize the backup portion of this hard drive. Every now and then, not sure why, it will recognize the drive and back it up but won't stay connected all the time. Most of the time it acts as if there is no backup drive. I checked to see when the last backup was made and it said it was made a day ago but it was while I was asleep over night. Not sure why it connected then or how. To get even more odd, it does recognize the drive because I can access all the files on the server portion of the mybook live drive. For example I have all of my iTunes library on there and run it off the drive and that works fine and recognizes everything.
I have a macbook and I'm running Snow Leopard. Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

TM apparently identifies the machine's backup by the Computer Name stored in the Sharing preferences. Try opening Sharing preferences and changing the Computer Name to the one you used previously when your TM backup was created.
Also see:
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Here are several articles to help troubleshoot Time Machine Problems as well as assist in properly setting up Time Machine.
Mac 101- Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Is Time Machine all you need?
Some advice for those using Time Machine
TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X- Time Machine- The Good, the Bad, and the Missing Features
Mac OS X 10.5- Time Machine backups are not visible
OS X 10.5- Time Machine stops backing up to external disk
10.5- Disable the 'use this disk?' Time Machine dialog
Time Machine tips and troubleshooting
Mac OS X 10.5 Help- Restoring files backed up with Time Machine
OS X 10.5- Using Time Machine and troubleshooting Time Machine issues

Time Machine does not recognize my iMac backup. Reports: not enough space; can't back up. How do I get it to recognize the backup?

Time Machine does not recognize my 430 GB iMac backup on 1 terabyte Time Capsule. Reports: not enough space; can’t back up. How do I get it to recognize the old backup and continue backups?

Thanks for the Time Machine Troubleshooting link. Apparently things have changed since 10.7.0. Backups.backupdb doesn’t exist. Path now is: Time Capsule/Data/Daru’s iMac.sparsebundle. So I did Terminal (I usually avoid Terminal) using the instruction in B6. It does not appear to be working. It went through looking for backup, preparing backup, and is now stopping backup, and the TMBackup has disappeared from the sidebar.
Well, just now Time Machine progressed to preparing backup again; the Tiime Machine Backups appeared in sidebar, and with it Backups.backupdb/Daru’s iMac/2012-04-21-112939.inProgress. So it does exist... I’ll let it run, see what happens... But that is a strange date. Today is 28.
I’ll let you know the outcome.
Oops. Just ended! Real time report: “Backup too large for disk...“ So it is not recognizing the old backup. I’ll look at those instructions again, see if I can do the Terminal thing with the backup running. I doubt I can damage anything except the existing baackup which I'll lose anywy if I can’t achieve recognition.
Daru

HT3275 I need to use a Western Digital external drive on both my Mac and a PC. To do this I need to format the drive in FAT 32. However, Time Machine won't recognize this format. Is there a work-around?

I need to use my external drive on my Mac and a PC, so I formatted it in FAT 32. I found that Time Machine doesn't recognize this format and cannot back up to it. So, if I want to use Time Machine I need to go back to a Mac format. Is there any way to get Time Machine to save onto a FAT 32 formatted drive?

It's usually not a good idea to use a Time Machine drive for anything else. It's too easy to make mistakes, or not do regular backups, or run out of space. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions #1 and 3.
But you can create a second partition on the drive, for use with Windoze.
See #5 in the FAQ for formatting instructions. You'll need to select 2 partitions. It's usually best to put the Time Machine partition first, and it should have the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Format. Make the second one MS-DOS (FAT), although you might prefer ExFAT.
Be sure to specify the GUID Partition table.

Time Machine - strange behavior while deleting old backups

Not sure if this is the right place, because this is actually not on Time Capsule, but on a Time Machine on an external USB drive.
In any case, I searched the web for "time machine delete old backups" and found many discussions of various aspects of this task. My objective is to clean up a partition on a the external drive that I no longer use for active TM backups, but to retain a small set of backups in case I need to go back to them. The partition now has other uses and I need the space. My main TM backup is now on a separate Time Capsule.
So again my objective is not to remove all backups, but just most of them.
It appears that the well-discussed procedure is the following:
Go into Time Machine.
Select the Macintosh HD.
Go back to one of the oldest backups.
Click on the Gear > click Delete Backup.
This procedure will remove one Backup at a time, and it seems to take 5 - 10 minutes for each backup.
Here is what I noticed that was "strange":
You could delete a selected backup using the above procedure.
For the first selected backup so deleted, there is a confirmation dialog with a warning message that it is not undoable.
After clicking OK on the warning message, the display backs up to the "Present" backup, and the administrative password is requested.
After the administrative password is entered, the backup starts but control is passed back to the user interface, and another backup can be selected to be deleted.
However, after the second backup is selected and deleted, there is no warning dialog, and no request for the administrative password. At this point the user interface is busy and nothing more can be done until the backup delete is completed. Except that the Time Machine can be exited by first pressing Escape, then Cancel on the lower left of the screen.
If the time machine is exited, there is a Delete Backups progress dialog with a progress bar for each backup so far requested. If the second backup was requested, as in the steps above, there would be two backups.
I discovered by playing around that either you had to wait within Time Machine for the deletion to complete, or alternatively exit Time Machine. While I was not sure what was going on, I kept starting one backup, then exiting Time Machine and re-entering Time Machine and requesting another delete operation. Each time after entering Time Machine, the warning/admin password sequence occurred and I was able to exit. And then immediately re-enter Time Machine and request another backup. Only by exiting and re-entering could another delete request be made.
When out of Time Machine, I thus saw the Delete Backups dialog with any number of concurrent "Delete One Backup" progress bars.
Because of the nature of the hard links used to indicate backups, I was wondering if these multiple delete operations could possibly be hung in a deadly embrace, so I decided to only do one at a time. Some further study to see if the multiple delete operations were all able to complete would be needed to know if this would be a good way to "queue up" multiple delete requests.
Bottom line: seems like kind of an odd implementation. Would be really nice if you could select many (say 30) individual backups and delete them all at once, rather than taking 5 - 10 minutes each. Again, this is because I am trying to reclaim disk space, but not delete all the backups from a Time Machine backup set that is not in active use.
Also, the method of "queuing up" backup delete requests is kind of odd, but seems to work, with the proviso that I have not yet confirmed that doing more than one at a time actually works.

Heinz-G?uenter Arnold wrote:
since the upgrade to SL it seem that Time Machine has problems to completely remove old backups completely. The "removed" backups do not show up in Time Machine anymore, but the backup folders and part of their contents can still be seen in Finder.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
That happens occasionally, in both Leopard and Snow Leopard, sometimes after something was deleted from the Finder, but also after an abnormal shutdown or improper disconnection of the TM disk.
Run a +*Repair Disk+* on it via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder. If it finds errors, but can't fix them all, run it again (and again) until it either fixes them all, or can't fix any more.

Time Machine won't recognize back up after I move external drive to Airport

I have a new 640GB exteranl drive that I bought to back up my Mac using TIme Machine. I plugged in the drive via USB (USB powered drive), then set up Time Machine and did the first back up successfully. I then plugged my exteranl drive into Airport Extreme so I could back up wireless in the future. Airport recognies the drive, and I can see the back up folders on the drive. However, Time Machine doesn't recognize those back up folders as my Mac.
I went into Time Machine SEttings, and repointed it to the same disk, and it tries to back up everything again, wirelessly. Any ideas how to get Time Machine to recognize the back up files made while I was "hard wired" to the Mac?

Adam1076 wrote:
I have a new 640GB exteranl drive that I bought to back up my Mac using TIme Machine. I plugged in the drive via USB (USB powered drive), then set up Time Machine and did the first back up successfully. I then plugged my exteranl drive into Airport Extreme so I could back up wireless in the future. Airport recognies the drive, and I can see the back up folders on the drive. However, Time Machine doesn't recognize those back up folders as my Mac.
I went into Time Machine SEttings, and repointed it to the same disk, and it tries to back up everything again, wirelessly. Any ideas how to get Time Machine to recognize the back up files made while I was "hard wired" to the Mac?
that's not possible. remote backups are stored differently. directly attached backups are stored directly in a folder on the drive. remote ones are stored inside a sparse bundle. you'll have to start a new backup sequence if you want to do remote backups.

Had to reset TC, Time Machine won't recognize old backups

Two problems really. Firmware "update" was a disaster, forcing several resets of TC and creation, eventually, of a new name. First problem is that when I start up Time Machine, it won't recognize the backups that were already made of the drive on the TC. Second problem is that it says I only have about 1/2 of the capacity left in the TC drive. It seems that it is treating the old backup files as a large unrecognizable file that it will not delete. Optimum solution would be for TM to continue backing up my hard drive on the backups already created by TM on my newly named TC. If that can't be done, can I at least erase those old backups so that the TC has the maximum capacity to start backing up again from this point forward. Thanks for any help.

To Reformat the TC Hard Disk:
Go to Airport Utility --> Manual Setup --> Disks --> Highlight "Time Capsule Disk" on the left --> Select "Erase" on the right.

Time Machine won't recognize old backups

I have an external hard drive with about a dozen backups on it. I tried to backup today, and instead of looking at the last back up, from a few weeks ago, and updating from there, it insists on creating a new folder for my computer (My Computer 2) and doing a back-up of the entire thing.
I looked at the Troubleshooting guide, and tried a few things: turned TM off, trashed the prefs, and reselected the drive, but to no avail.
It still lists "Latest Backup -- " in the menu bar.
How can I get it to see my old backups and then backup from the last one?

hrishikesh wrote:
instead of looking at the last back up, from a few weeks ago, and updating from there, it insists on creating a new folder for my computer (My Computer 2) and doing a back-up of the entire
This is likely the cause of the problem. If you go several days (at least 10) without a backup, TM may do a new, full backup instead of an incremental one. Exactly how many days is not clear; some folks say it happened after two weeks, others say they've gone about a month without it happening. Some of us suspect it's a combination of being over about 10 days and the volume of changes, but none of us mere mortals really knows exactly.
So, once you've followed one of V.K.'s suggestions and have TM working again, try not to go so long without a backup. Not only does that mean you can lose many days of additions and changes when your internal HD dies (yes, when not if), but TM may do this again.

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 won't recognize backups

I have two external RAID 5 units. One for content, one for backup of said content. Both are 10TB. Content to be backed up is 5.27TB.
Time machine completes the first backup, but fails to do any subsequent backups, saying there isn't enough space. It says it needs 5.27TB to backup, but it's already completed one backup and should only be adding changes, correct? When I go into Time Machine, it doesn't give me an option to recover from any backups. It looks like there are multiple snapshots, but I cannot scroll through them and the RESTORE option is greyed out.
Checking the drives contents shows it has 5.27TB. If I navigate the backup folder, all my content seems to be there. So is it simply not seeing my previous backup?
The Backup drive (and content drive) do go into sleep mode, does that possibly break Time Machine's link?
Super frustrating.
I've read a few posts here but they are all trying to backup with drives that are too small. I'm using identical drives.
This is my console window from the failed backup event:
2015-01-14 9:21:05.232 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Backing up to /dev/disk1s2: /Volumes/BACKUP/Backups.backupdb
2015-01-14 9:21:06.123 AM sharingd[11320]: 09:21:06.123 : Starting Handoff advertising
2015-01-14 9:21:15.609 AM sharingd[11320]: 09:21:15.609 : Starting Handoff advertising
2015-01-14 9:21:24.580 AM sharingd[11320]: 09:21:24.579 : Starting Handoff advertising
2015-01-14 9:21:33.579 AM sharingd[11320]: 09:21:33.579 : Starting Handoff advertising
2015-01-14 9:21:40.497 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Will copy (Zero KB) from PromisePegasus
2015-01-14 9:21:40.497 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Found 351422 files (5.27 TB) needing backup
2015-01-14 9:21:40.499 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: 5.29 TB required (including padding), 4.72 TB available
2015-01-14 9:21:40.500 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Deleted backup /Volumes/BACKUP/Backups.backupdb/SeanMacPro/2015-01-14-092119.inProgress/A909D1 F1-2818-40E7-A24C-9E9A1A8C9B12 containing 16 KB; 4.72 TB now available, 5.29 TB required
2015-01-14 9:21:40.500 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Removed 1 expired backups so far, more space is needed - deleting oldest backups to make room
2015-01-14 9:21:40.501 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Deleted 1 backups containing 16 KB total; 4.72 TB now available, 5.29 TB required
2015-01-14 9:21:40.501 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Backup date range was shortened: oldest backup is now Jan 14, 2015
2015-01-14 9:21:40.505 AM com.apple.backupd[46640]: Backup failed with error 7: Not enough available disk space on the target volume.

Start with C4 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

Time machine won't delete its oldest backups?

Can anyone explain this to me... in all the time I've used TM (several years, many OSs, two iMacs), it always eventually fills the backup HD and then stops backing up telling me it has run out of space. TM is suppsoed to delete the oldest backups to constantly renew the space available for the newest back ups.
Why does it never do this? Does TM work as described for any one else?
Is there a know solution for this ussue?
Thanks,
Dave

plainhat wrote:
The error message simply said it could not create the folder. My assumption was that the disk was too full. Indeed, after wrestling with it all morning I've managed to clear some of the old backups and it is now (as I write) finally running a backup.
That can happen if the disk gets absolutely, positively, chock-full. Time Machine alone usually won't let that happen -- we see it when there's other data on the disk (in the same partition), that fills the last few MBs. Needless to say, that's not a good idea. Other data needs to be in a separate partition or different disk.
Here's what happens: When Time Machine starts a backup, the first thing it does is create a backup folder, and create and start writing to a (hidden) log file inside it. When that's done, it figures out how much needs to be backed-up, and how much space is available, so it can start deleting old backups. Obviously, if it doesn't have even a few MBs to create the folder and log, it fails.
However, I'm afraid this means as soon as the disk is full again, it will not automagically delete old backups and I'll need to fix it manually again.
Unlikely, unless you have other data there.
NOW... if I can figure out how to keep my Early 2008 MacPro from randomly shutting down, I'll be a happy camper LOL
Are you sure it's random? Could it be a certain number of minutes with no activity? If so, check System Preferences > Security > General. Make sure the Log out .... box isn't checked.
it kept finding files that were locked (from a Dreamweaver enabled web site) and I had to go in and remove those locks inside TM. Interesting adventure.
Indeed! Why in the world anything would be locking files in your backups is beyond me. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.

Time Machine does not automatically delete old backups when drive is full

I back up to a 1TB external drive with TM. It will not delete old back-ups and instead tells me that the drive is full. I thought TM was supposed to manage all of this on its own.

It will, if it can. But it will never delete your last remaining backup.
See #C4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting, probably the pink box there.
Basically, if Time Machine has to do a full or very large backup, and your Time Machine drive isn't well over twice the size of the data it's backing up, there won't be room for the last backup, plus the new one, plus some workspace.

Time machine won't recognize my old backup

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