Q: Trouble recovering latest TM backup to new SSD
Mission: To change my old 500gb hdd to a 250gb ssd and use Time Machine to restore all data to the new drive.
Main problems I’ve encountered during this (seemingly simple) task:
1) TM not showing the latest backups as a choice when restoring
2) The ‘complete backup’ in my TM seems to differ in size and I’m very confused about it
3) My computer telling me that my new ssd drive doesn’t have enough space to restore from a TM copy although there should be plenty of space left.
So, this is my story:
Before removing my old hdd I performed a last TM backup. When I check to see how big an entire backup is, TM calculates an entire backup to be 152gb altogether. In ‘About this computer’ I can see that all my data on the hdd occupies about 182gb, which is strange since I’ve not excluded anything from the backup in TM. So, why the discrepancy here?
I removed my old hdd and installed my new ssd, booted my computer with the opt-key (or cmd+r as you also can do from what I’ve read). I choose ‘Restore from Time Machine’, BUT when I get the screen with the list of available TM backups to choose from (I’m using a Time Capsule by the way), the last backup I can choose is dated April 9 although I just performed a backup a minute ago on May 26. How come TM doesn’t present any backups made after April 9? Also, why is there a text on the screen that says ‘only complete backups of Mac OS X is shown in the list below’? What does that mean?
Another strange thing is when I click on the backup from April 9 just to see what the next step would be, I can choose my new ssd drive as a target drive, BUT I also get a message stating that I cannot use this drive since there is not enough storage left, which is not true. The ssd has 232gb storage left after formatting to OSX Extended (GUID), while a ‘complete backup’ from TM is between 152-182gb (depending on which number is actually correct here, which I’m really confused about). So, there should be more than enough space left on the ssd, right?
Another thing I tried was to make a complete TM backup to an external usb drive to try to restore from that instead. The backup started and TM stated that the complete backup would be 164gb, yet another number differing from the other numbers although I haven’t installed anything since I started all this. When the backup was completed I checked to see how big the actual backup was and it seemed to be 100gb instead of 164gb. I then checked to see how big the backup was on my Time Capsule and it also seemed to be 100gb. Now I’m more confused than ever.
Besides from the fact that the size of a complete TM backup seems to differ so much, I tried to restore from the USB drive, but when the screen with available backups came up it was empty. No backup to be found on the USB drive…!?
I would be very grateful for any help in this matter, since I don’t know what to do about all this?
Aperture 3, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
Posted on May 28, 2013 4:49 AM
Pondini wrote:
Yeah, another occasional recurring bug, seems worse in ML. See #C12 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Sometimes, I think, either a backup or use of the TM browser doesn't dismount the sparse bundle . . or not properly, anyhow.
Sigh . . . .
YES!
Everything seems to work like a charm now as far as I can tell!
I thought I had another 1h 52min to restoring the system, but all of a sudden it was done and the computer started up fast as a fired bullet
Haven't tried to make any backup yet, but I'm sure it will work from now on.
I'll have a look at the bug report shortly, first I just have to enjoy my new, fast drive
Thanks alot for all your help, I'm really grateful. I will check the green box 'solved my question' now to add to your points.
I'll get back to you if I run into any questions about the bug report, otherwise I'm hoping that everything will be ok as far as the TM & hard drive issue goes.
Posted on Jun 2, 2013 9:06 AM




