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

Good afternoon,


Yesterday I was attempting to restore from a time machine backup. When I was logged in I saw that I could scroll through all the backups, then when I booted into recovery mode and tried to browse the time machine I only saw a time machine backup for a different machine.


I went browsing into to the folder where they are kept. The machine's backup that showed was computername.sparsebundle and mine was showing up as computername.backupbundle


Did it get saved in a weird way or somehow not closed out properly. Is there any way to use it still?


Thanks a lot!


Phill

Posted on Sep 11, 2019 4:22 PM

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Posted on Sep 21, 2019 11:15 AM

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.



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16 replies

Sep 22, 2019 12:08 PM in response to PhillipD

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

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

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