Can;t access Time Machine backups before today

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Level 1

19 points

Can;t access Time Machine backups before today

I just upgraded to Big Sur from Mojave last night. When I looked at my Time Machine backups, all that is accessible are the backups that it did today. The dates of my old backups (3.7 T worth) are on the right hand side all the way back to a couple of years ago, but none of them can be selected. Does updating to Big Sur mean that none of my backups are able to be seen and recovered? That is a serious problem. If I do a get info on the drive, the 3.7 T is there. How do I access it? (I do plan to move the Time machine backups to a larger external drive, which I will format with APFS, but I would like to b able to get to my older files.).

Any help would be appreciated.

15" Nancy/John Howard’s MacBook Pro 15" (1473), MacBook Pro 15″

Posted on Dec 23, 2021 3:30 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

tbirdvet

Level 6

14,765 points

Dec 23, 2021 4:52 PM in response to malachite

Big Sur update does that. However, you can open TM then use shift-command-C and this may let you scroll back in time before Big Sur installation and you can then open your directories and find files as needed..

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

14,765 points

Dec 24, 2021 3:57 AM in response to malachite

It's not the formatting that keeps you from accessing TM backups. It is the OS. You can copy (but will be slow to do) the file to a new drive then when you connect the drive permit the system to "inherit" the old backup and then it may work. What I now do is start a new backup on another drive when I change the OS and keep the old one in case I need to access it later.

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Answer 3

RogierDG

Level 1

118 points

Dec 24, 2021 5:30 AM in response to tbirdvet

I do not understand why the OS (Big Sur) prevents accessing the old TM backup's. I run Big Sur and my TM backup's run back to 2017 with El capitan on the same external disk, and I can access every single file in every backup without any problem.

Please explain.

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Answer 4

malachite Author

Level 1

19 points

Dec 23, 2021 6:10 PM in response to tbirdvet

Thank you very much - that worked. f I format a larger external with ASFT, than copy my backups.bckupdb to the new drive and then start backing up from that time, will that still work?

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Can;t access Time Machine backups before today

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