The office re-built my M2 MacBook Air. Now I am unable to access my Time Machine backups. The backups show that I have no permissions, and I am unable to edit them. Terminal won't let me see inside the mounted drive either. Is there a way to fix this?
MacBook Air, macOS 15.3
You are supposed to access TM backups by using the TM app. If your employer re-did your laptop, then you probably need to "Inherit" the old TM backup. See this Apple article for details:
If your new Mac inherits your backup history - Apple Support
You are supposed to access TM backups by using the TM app. If your employer re-did your laptop, then you probably need to "Inherit" the old TM backup. See this Apple article for details:
If your new Mac inherits your backup history - Apple Support
SamuraiMark wrote:
Company owned device but I am the admin on the device
That does not matter. Any company MDM profile will trump any of your admin privileges. That is the whole point of the MDM to control what the user/employee/student can & cannot do with the device.
I think you need to follow @TheLittles' and @Zurarczurx's suggestion and have your employer's IT team fix what they broke, or have them clearly explain to you what you can & cannot do with this device now that the employer is controlling it with their MDM.
For those who may be interested, I was able to gain access to the data in my TM backups by:
➜ ~ sudo cp -av /Volumes/Backups\ of\ My\ MacBook\ Air/2025-01-30-001641.previous/Data/Users/mark/.zshrc ~/tmp/
/Volumes/Backups of My MacBook Air/2025-01-30-001641.previous/Data/Users/mark/.zshrc -> /Users/mark/tmp/.zshrc
➜ ~
➜ ~ ls -l ~/tmp/.zshrc
-rw-r--r--+ 1 1100783990 1395260051 4790 11 Jan 10:43 /Users/mark/tmp/.zshrc
➜ ~
Perhaps it was the mismatched UID and GID that were causing this to not work in TM or via Finder directly. With the reinstall of my Mac, my UID and GID changed.
“I have no permissions to read my own Time Machine backups: The office re-built my M2 MacBook Air. Now I am unable to access my Time Machine backups. The backups show that I have no permissions, and I am unable to edit them. Terminal won't let me see inside the mounted drive either. Is there a way to fix this?”
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Seeing Time Machine Backups:
Is this a company-owned device? If so, you need to speak to the person who administrates usage of company devices.
I agree with TheLittles. Give the machine back to whoever messed it up and ask them to fix the problem they've caused. Today it's TM but who knows what else they've borked. You won't find out until you need to do something desperately urgent on a Friday night when support has gone home and your next pay rise depends on it.
Thanks for the suggestion ... I had not considered trying to use Migration Assistant, but that makes perfect sense. I was trying to use Time Machine itself.
Unfortunately, Migration Assistant is not working for me. It sits in "Setting up" status for a long while and then the machine reboots, I log back in, and then ... nothing. I suspect this is somehow related to the rebuild of the machine using JAMF Connect. I have had lots of odd problems since the rebuild. E.g., every time I try using Migration Assistant, I eventually get a message that there's a problem with my iCloud account and I need to log back in to iCloud. This happens both when I start Migration Assistant and after the machine reboots.
The results are the same in the TM app ("no permissions"). I used Finder for these images because you can't take screenshots while in TM.
Company owned device but I am the admin on the device and the TM backups are my own, using my NAS (I work remote). My TM backups have always worked fine until my MacBook was rebuilt last week.
Thanks for coming back and telling us. Glad you got it sorted.
I have no permissions to read my own Time Machine backups
