Time Machine Backup not found - File extension is .backupbundle instead of .sparsebundle

TL:DR: mayall is correct, just change the extension name from backupbundle to sparsebundle and you will be able to access what's inside.

I was having issues with Catalina and decided to revert back to Mojave, could not restore or access backups, then went back to Catalina again thinking that would allow me to access the files but no deal, even in Catalina it can't find my backups, so after seeing this post, changed the extension name and was able to access the files inside. I'm still on Catalina at this point, so, will copy everything somewhere else, and go back to Mojave and see. This is probably the worst beta cycle I've ever seen so close to release.

Hello PhillipD,

Thanks for that info and for choosing the Apple Support Communities. If I understand correctly, you are unable to use your Time Machine backup as expected, as you're not seeing your backup as expected. To help with this, please follow the relevant steps in this Apple resource and then contact Apple if you need any further assistance.

If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine

Contact Apple Support 

Cheers!

If you want to restore from your backups (I didn't bother I just started afresh) try the rename trick posted above

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250624630?answerId=251246844022#251246844022

I did rename my files and could see the contents again (but failed to restore from them whilst in Catalina as mentioned above)

Not tried restoring from them in Mojave I just started a fresh

I'm having a similar problem, looked on my network drive (a USB drive connected to my Airport Extreme Router as a Time Capsule for Time Machine).

I can see my wife's computer backups is a .sparsebundle but for my computer all I see is a .backupbundle (~800GB)

Note. I'm running macOS Catalina (Beta 8) on my computer.

Not critical but I'm a bit concerned that my computer's past backups are all gone or not usable

Precisely the same issue and very concerned as the latest beta revision is not finishing booting... tried to revert back to the Time Machine Backup from yesterday and ran into precisely this issue. Dying for help on this as I do not want to start fresh on Mojave ... thanks!

Dying for help on this as I do not want to start fresh on Mojave ... thanks!

100% - I feel as though if I were to revert there would be no mojave backups to restore

Note. I'm not sure in my case if the backups changed got changed whilst updating to Catalina or before. Interestingly it says the last successful backiup was 6 July 2019 which does sound like around the time before I updated my machine to Catalina Beta.

Update:

I tried moving this file to newly formatted drive an dcontinuing backups from there. It warned me aboutthe disk identify changed and I proceeded but it didn't complete succesfully.

Worried about future backups and less about past one that may no longer work or be there I formatted again and asked Time Machin to backup to it as if it were a first backup

It failed again with the same error message: "Time Machine could not create a local snapshot to back up from"

I did some research and was able to delete all but one of those local snapshots via the tmutil command line interface.

I can't seem to restart my Catalina machine in Safe mode (I'll see if it's a bug on Catalina) to delete the last local snapshot.

For now I have not been able to use Time Machine on Catalina Beta - I use some cloud storage (not tried iCloud Desktop nad Documents) . I'll be doing manual backup of key files upgrade I can take my machine to Catalina GM when it's ready and no longer in beta. I'm with Catalina for the foreseeable unless something goes wrong in which case I'm downgrading but iwth no Time Machine Backups. I'd love to know if Time Machine works for other users on Catalina

I hope I dont have to downgrade mojave but considering next year not doing this on my one and only personal machien but instead getting a spare to do beta software installs (For my profession as a software developer)

Catalina appears to have changed the file extension for backup bundles from .sparsebundle to .backupbundle.

I certainly hope this does not make the backups I have unusable if I need to revert to a previous version of the OS. If the Mojave version of Time Machine does not recognize .backupbundle, that would seem to be the case.

Also, apps that deal with .sparsebundle do not seem to be able to recognize the .backupbundle file, for example Disk Warrior. That makes sense since it seems to be a new file extension.

I'm guessing that the file extension could simple be changed but that is just a guess.

Will Mayall

I haven’t tried the rename workaround above but wanted to share:

Catalina in recovery mode (not normal mode) can see and browse my time machine backups and identify mine as Mojave (10.14.4)

So I’m going to try restoring my Mojave backup (so glad to see it there finally) from Catalina recovery mode since it’s knows the new file name format.

After that if it works and I’m back on Mojave backup I’ll see about renaming the backup file to the Mojave compatible file extension name (else run a fresh backup from Mojave).

Thinking to disable backups of beta installs in future or get a dedicated machine or partition to install to

Hi Nicholas

Unfortunately no I was not able to restore from my Mojave backups whilst in Catalina beta 6 recovery mode - it failed part way through (not sure if that’s Catalina or my Mojave backup that’s damaged somehow)

I wiped and fresh installed everything using iCloud and dropbox to restore most things

I have more wisely created an APFS volume (partition) and installed Catalina GM there instead with no time machine backups for it

Tried renaming and restoring on both Mojave and Catalina. No luck. Get to half way and then it stops. Starting Mojave in recovery mode I could see the backup files with dates and all but still only half way.

This is how it looks on Mojave (and the earlier OS):

Hi Madhikarma, did it work for you? I have the same problem. Catalina changing .sparsebundle into .backupbundle. Now not able to restore Mojave backup from time machine. Grz. Nicolaas

Hi, Thnx for the quick reply. No luck so far. Mine also gets stuck half way. I'm missing out on some essential files now. Going to contact Apple support. Best regards Nicolaas.

the only way to recover is use Migration Assistant!