How to retain old backups while starting new one

Unfortunately, if this is the message that you saw......

I am afraid that it means exactly what it says. The backups have become corrupted and Disk Utility cannot repair them. I suppose that you could try copying the files to another disk...but whether Time Machine could even "see" them is open to question.

You can Start a New Backup, which will delete all previous backups......or.....Back Up Later, which will prevent the Time Capsule from making any new backups until you click Start New Backup. Unfortunately, it really is a Catch 22.

Forum guru Pondini has posted some additional information about this message if you want more details. See # C13 in Time Machine -- Troubleshooting

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time Machine looks at the unique ID of your Mac, so changing the name of your Mac, or changing the name of Macintosh HD will not fool Time Machine into thinking it should make a new backup and keep the old one.

The only way that I know to possibly work around this is move the Time Machine backups to another drive. I haven't tried this....so cannot say whether it might work or not....or even whether it is a good idea at all to try to store corrupted files.

I'll leave a message for Pondini in the moderators forum to see if we can get him to comment on this.

I also came across this page:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101

Trying to change the MAC Address is definitely not recommended.

I've tried moving the TM backups, but then I got the message that the disk wasn't in the right format.

The disk must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Please wait for Pondini to comment before you try this.

Interestingly, some time ago I archived the Time Capsule's hard drive (because I had a feeling something would go wrong one day), so theoretically that should also have 'backupped' the backups, shouldn't it? But I can't see them in the Finder when I mount this extra drive I used for the archiving. I can only see the 'regular' files from the TC hard drive. I wonder.. does this mean that the TM backups weren't archived, or should I do something else to find out whether I have a backup of the backups?...

This really should be posted as a new separate thread since we are drifting from the original question. Please wait to see if Pondini will comment first.

Onkelpazuzu wrote:

. . .

I keep looking for workarounds that will allow me to start a new backup without actually erasing the old ones.

There's no reliable way to do that "in place."

TM backups are intricately linked together, so damage in one place makes the entire set suspect and unreliable.

We don't know exactly what's wrong with your backups -- as you noted, you can see (and probably restore) some of them, with some degree of reliability, unless and until you hit the damage -- then there's no telling what will happen. Hopefully, the restore will fail, but you might restore damaged, scrambled, and/or incomplete stuff without knowing it. Things will only get worse from there.

And, you can't copy damaged backups successfully via the Finder; it copies files and folders, and fails if there's a directory problem. The single thing you may be able to do is, use the "archive" facility to do a "block copy" of the TC's entire internal HD to a USB drive. Assuming the TC's HD isn't failing (it is 3 years old, right?), the "archive" copy will be exactly like the original -- faults and all.

Then you can leave the drive connected to the TC, or connect it directly to your Mac, and should be able to browse and restore from them with the same lack of confidence as the originals, via the Browse... option. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #17 for details.

Then erase the TC's internal HD, per #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule. That will be much faster than letting Time Machine delete the old sparse bundle.

That's a lot of hassle for a very dubious outcome. Assuming these are your only backups, it might be more prudent to start making "secondary" backups. That's always a good idea, especially if your originals are on a network, and even more so if there's the slightest doubt about them or the hardware they're on. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for details and suggestions.

Once you've done that, erase the TC's internal HD and let Time Machine start fresh.

Onkelpazuzu wrote:

. . .

But what I did when archiving -and in retrospect that seems to have been a mistake- was archive to a folder on that drive, rather than to the root of the drive.

Ah, we're not talking about the same thing; the "archive" I'm talking about is this one: Time Capsule: Using AirPort Utility 5.3.1 or later to make a copy of the Time Capsule disk. Nothing else will work on corrupted backups.

That means that I can't simply direct Time Machine to the drive

What, exactly, did you do? Did you copy the sparse bundle? Did you copy the Backups.backupdb folder inside it? Or something else? Exactly what's now on the drive?

If you copied the sparse bundle to a folder, you may be able to simply move it to the top level of the drive, so you can access it via the Browse... option. But except in an emergency, I'd not recommend making more backups to it. There may well be hidden damage there already.

I guess the whole thing hings on those backup files having been archived (and being accessible) or not. If they are, I don't need to worry and can just clean my TC and start afresh. If they haven't, or aren't... well, I may still have to do the same thing actually. :-|

Again, I think you're worrying about the wrong thing, or at least in the wrong order. Your backups are damaged, and you have an old TC -- if it's beginning to fail, that could be the cause of the damaged backups.

If you have a problem with your Mac, you cannot restore your system from those backups. You may be able to recover some of your stuff, but it will be expensive, tedious, and error-prone.

If you value your data (your current data), please consider getting a backup of it elsewhere, such as on an external HD, either via Time Machine or one of the "cloning" apps mentioned in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question#27. Do this as soon as possible, as you do not have reliable backups at the moment.

Then if you really want to worry about 3-year old backups, do it at your leisure.

Onkelpazuzu wrote:

. . .

In fact, most of my important files are on the TC rather than on my Macbook.

Do you mean you had other files there, not in your backups? If so, that's even more dangerous -- you only have one copy of those files.

If you have important files you don't have room for on your internal HD, put them on an external HD, and let Time Machine back them up along with your internal.

having backups going a couple of years back can be quite useful, not to say important

If you really want to keep things that long, don't depend on either Time Machine or a single cloning app. Make regular archives somewhere else (separate external HD, DVDs, online).

The only thing that would be needed for complete peace of mind is if I knew I could get to those old backups when I need them.

Try moving the sparse bundle to the top level of the drive, manually mounting it, then trying the Browse... option. That's the only way you'll see those backups via the Time Machine interface.

Where it is, you can mount the sparse bundle, open the disk image inside it, and see the files & folders in the various backups. You may be able to copy from them, but may have permissions issues with the copied files. That's why accessing them via the Finder is not recommended, except as a last resort.

Onkelpazuzu wrote:

. . .

Moving the sparsebundle to the top level sounds like the best plan. The only problem is that I'm not sure (yet) how to actually do that - since I can't see the sparsebundle as a file in the Finder - I can only see it when it is mounted as a backup disk, and Time Machine won't do that because it is located in a folder

You should be able to see it via the Finder. What's shown for the contents of that folder? It should just be <computer name>.sparsebundle (unless it was created on Leopard, in which case it will have the MAC address after the computer name).

The one on your TC should be in the "Data" folder (unless you've renamed it), and look something like this, with the Finder in Column View (and have only one sparsebundle, of course):

The one on the USB drive should be similar.