Backup not inherited — and I need to access it

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Level 1

92 points

Backup not inherited — and I need to access it

I have an old external drive that, when upgrading my MacBook Air, I accidentally clicked "no" when it asked if I wanted to inherit the backups. Is there any way to undo that mistake? I have even been thinking of renting another Mac to inherit them and recover the most important items, though that seems rather silly. If I did that, I assume I would I have to use the same Apple ID. Isn't that the case? There must be a better way. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Posted on Sep 26, 2024 2:44 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ricardogargansolo

Level 2

274 points

Sep 27, 2024 12:56 AM in response to teri555

You don't need to rent another Mac! You can manually access the old backups by navigating to the "Backups.backupdb" folder on your external drive. If you want to inherit them again, you can use Terminal with the command sudo tmutil inheritbackup /path/to/backup. This should allow you to resume using the old backups.

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Answer 2

Rudegar

Level 10

184,616 points

Sep 26, 2024 4:46 AM in response to teri555

maybe

Restore your Mac from a backup - Apple Support

or Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple Support

more

new mac restore from time machine backup - Google-

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Answer 3

teri555 Author

Level 1

92 points

Sep 26, 2024 8:22 PM in response to Rudegar

Thanks, but this doesn't address the issue of not being inherited. There's no permission to access the backups. I went to chatgpt and got that I could attempt to reset mine and see if I can claim the backups that way. Not that chatgpt is always reliable, but does anyone know if this would work? Or are the backups linked to the hardware and not the software? Would I have to use a different Mac?

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