restore timemachine backup to new computer from NAS drive

You have about three different questions:

Normally, Time Machine only shows the backups for the Mac it's on -- the ones specified in the Time Machine Preferences window. To see other backups for the same Mac, or backups for other Macs, use the Browse... option, per Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question#17.

That only pertains to the "Star Wars" display, though. When you use either Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant to set up a new Mac from an old one's backups, they'll all appear so you can choose the one you want. A full system restore also shows them all, if you can connect. See below.

Each sparse bundle is indeed associated with a particular Mac. The name is just for us mere mortals; there are control files in the sparse bundle containing the Mac's Ethernet MAC address and/or Hardware UUID (depending on the version of OSX that created the sparse bundle). Right-click the sparse bundle in the Finder and select Show Package Contents. Obviously, do not touch them.

Finally (whew!), you may or may not be able to do a full system restore from a 3rd-party NAS. The main reason is, that's done while booted from the Recovery HD (Install disc on earlier versions of OSX), but there's often no way to enter the info the NAS needs to allow access without OSX running. That varies from NAS to NAS. Also, some NASs don't store things where the full restore Installer expects them, so you need to mount the sparse bundle first, which also isn't easy without OSX running. See what the WD folks have to say on the subject.

The workaround is to erase your internal HD, install OSX (probably via download for Lion), set up a temporary user account, contact the NAS, and use Migration Assistant to transfer your apps, user accounts and data. That results in an extra user account, and the ones transferred often lose access to the backups. There is a workaround for that, too. See the pink box in Problems after using Migration Assistant for an explanation, and #4 in the green box for the workaround.

Can you tell I'm not wild about 3rd-party NASs for Time Machine? 😉

allenfromnederland wrote:

Hi. Thanks for this info. Unfortunately with the WD drive, the sparsebundle isnt normally viewable until a backup is started or TM is entered. With ssh, the sparsebundles are on a drive thats not normally mounted using the devicename thats broadcast. However, mounting the drive with its ip address shows all of the volumes on the drive including the one named TimeMachine that automatically contains all of the sparsebundles.

That's very non-standard. I'll be astonished if either the full restore or Setup Assistant can see them. If you can figure out how to find and mount them via Terminal, then you'll be able to do a full system restore (to the original Mac, not a new one). Note that you can start that process non-destructively; nothing gets erased until the final confirmation.

Do you know how to decode the files in the package contents, I suspect that the info.* files are the critical ones?

No, the ones you want are the two shown here:

They're identical XML files with the Host UUID and/or Ethernet MAC address, and a couple of other things. You should be able to open them with TextEdit, or PrefSetter.

The Info files are also identical XML files, with info about the sparse bundle itself -- band size, type, a key (?), and dictionary version.

(At least, when created by Time Machine. If WD creates them, there's no telling).

WD support has been less than helpful and deferred to this being an apple support issue. I retorted that since the drive supports time machine backups, presumably they must have tested it for restoration of files if the computer crashes.

Doesn't seem like it. I've tried to help several folks with them (and other NASs), and they all say the same thing about WD support.

I haven't lookeed at Migration Assistant to see if it sees all the backups on the drive. I don't know how much control I'll have once I open it and I don't want to start a restore unless I have to.

Try it. As with the full restore, nothing will actually happen until the final confirmation (when you click Continue after the Select Items to Migrate window). See Using Migration Assistant on Lion.

I strongly suspect it won't see anything until you either open the folder containing the sparse bundles, or manually mount one or more of them.

Cool.

Any luck seeing whether a full restore or Migration Assistant will work? That could help other folks later on.

allenfromnederland wrote:

Entering Time Machine, I could see all the backups that had been made and I would suspect that a restore could be made from there. Migration Assistant was only able to see one of the 3 sparsebundles that exist on the drive, namely the one made by this machine.

That's odd (but then, the combination of a NAS and TM tends to be a bit odd 😟). If Migration Assistant can see one, it should see all of them (unlike the "Star Wars" display, that normally only shows the one selected as the backups for the Mac it's running on).

If I mounted the drive using its IP address and opened the volume "Backups", I could see all three spasebundles and could mount them with the DiskImageMounter app. This the Backups.backupdb directory was then visible and under it all the the backup folders by date were visible. In each, the directory "Macintosh HD" could be opened and all the directories under it could be viewed and I suppose copied.

You really don't want to copy from backups except as a very desperate last resort. The actual backups carry very restrictive ACLs to protect them from being altered in your backups. TM doesn't restore them, of course, but a copy will.

One question: in case of a crash and the need to restore to a new computer, can the UUID in the backup be changed to the UUID of the new computer for TM to work?

No. You should never do a full restore to a different Mac than the one that made the backups. That's what Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant are for. Whether that would work to make Migration Assistant see them, I don't know. Scary.