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Times machine won't "inherit" old backups

Hi there, for some reason my Imac is struggling to reconnect with its old backups on time capsule. I've tried various suggestions using Ponderini's excellent time machine site (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html) but I'm now concerned that the problem may be a tricky one to solve. I've tried to 'inherit' backup by reattaching the backup sparsebundle through the Terminal but the following error message is returned:

[giles-imac:~] giles% sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Time\ Capsule/Giles\ Imac.sparsebundle

Attaching disk image...

2011-09-10 11:49:28.471 diskimages-helper[691:2703] Error loading /Library/Plug-ins/DiskImages/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Vir tualPCDiskImagePlugin: dlopen(/Library/Plug-ins/DiskImages/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin.bundle/Contents/Ma cOS/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:

/Library/Plug-ins/DiskImages/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin.bundle/Contents/MacO S/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin: mach-o, but wrong architecture

2011-09-10 11:49:28.472 diskimages-helper[691:2703] Cannot find function pointer MacDiskImagePluginFactory for factory 7F1FD83E-6684-11D8-968F-000A957703C0 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x7fc0f3d1e750 </Library/Plug-ins/DiskImages/VirtualPCDiskImagePlugin.bundle> (bundle, not loaded)

/Volumes/Time Capsule/Giles Imac.sparsebundle: Attach failed: Failed to attach disk image. (error 35)

[giles-imac:~] giles% sudo tmutil associatedisk -a /

Many thanks for any suggestions you might be able to offer!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Sep 10, 2011 4:24 AM

17 replies

d2102

Level 1

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Nov 14, 2012 9:29 AM in response to arflyarf

yeah..

i had a problem before with TM that i spent ages trying to fix and then ended up doign a fresh install of the mac to fix it. anyway - glad the problem is addressed 🙂

Mar 6, 2013 3:12 PM in response to gilesgold

Hope this helps someone. I got a new MBP and cloned the drive of my old machine instead of using Migration Assistant during the initial setup. This caused me to lose the connection to my Time Capsule, getting the "already in use (error 35)" message.

As others, I referenced the Pondini website and found the terminal command to reattach the Time Capsule sparseimage.

When I attempted this, I got an error ("failed to attach"). The problem was that on Pondini's page, he shows you dragging the Backups.backupdb directory into Terminal.

Here's the deal. Be careful which Backups.backupdb directory you drag into terminal. It must be the one with your <myMac.sparesebundle> image inside. When I looked for the Backups.backupdb directory in Finder, the one I found turned out to be empty. It was only by connecting to the TC disk (disconnecting in Time Machine prefs and then reconnecting) that a disk image icon called "Time Machine Backups" appeared on the desktop.

Opening this, I found the correct Backups.backupdb directory and dragged it into the Terminal window after typing in the following command:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup

Then it looked like this:

sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Time\Machine\ Bacups/Backups.backupdb/myMac.private\ ( \4\)

Ran this command, entered my admin password, and what do you know? Friggin' Time Machine good to go again.

Excellent. Hope this helps someone else out, also. Thanks to OP and everyone who posted here!

Times machine won't "inherit" old backups