Migration Assistant can't find my hard drive - can you help?

OK! There is every indication that the full restore worked perfectly -- and, I think it's probably what I wanted anyway, so it's perhaps a bit of a blessing in disguise that the Assistants didn't for whatever reason work. ;)

Restore for the last full backup went smoothly, and I am now additionally restoring a few further data folders that had been backed up separately since the last full backup. I suppose I might encounter a few hiccups thereafter, but hopefully nothing too dramatic!

Ah, great! 🙂

It's really too bad that Apple doesn't make it more clear what to do in this sort of situation and how to do it (it's hidden away in the Help and some tech articles, but isn't exactly prominent). It would save a bunch of folks a lot of time & angst!

And still odd that the Assistants sometimes don't recognize the backups. 😟

Glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the feedback.

This happened to me after hard drive replacement under the Seagate Drive Recall at the local Apple Store. Here's what I learned from the process:

I Wagged the Mac home, fired it up (with naked OS installed at the Apple Store), and it wouldn't see my Time Machine drive with Setup Assistant - not on firewire 800 nor USB. Just a grey spinner that lasts forever. When I try just continuing anyway, it offers me something that looks plausible, but then puts up a dialog about duplicate user name, and no matter what I enter, it always says "that user already exists". So I think - maybe Migration Assistant. Complete the setup, create an account, watch the nice welcome movie. BAM - there's my Time Machine drive on the desktop. OK - it has to work . . . but no. Same behavior in Migration Assistant, plus the new OS offers to start making backups on my Time Machine disk - it's not recognizing it at all.

So - back to the Apple Store - let the genius figure it out. It turns out there are multiple problems. First, the "genius" who imaged my new machine picked 10.7.2 but my machine had 10.7.5 - turns out, it's not enough just to have right cat. Even a point release older OS may not recognize a newer Time Machine drive. The guy at the desk said "We have images of everything but the 10.7.2 has free iLife in it, so they like to use that one". What the heck? They don't image what you had originally as a matter of sane process?

Having figured that out, we re-image 10.7.5 at the store thinking we've fixed it. But no - Setup Assistant still won't see the Time Machine drive. Not on USB, not on Firewire. Not in a box, not with a fox.

So here's the second trick - newer machines have a recovery partion. see: http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/ Boot with the option key held down, pick that partition, then you'll get a "system restore" option, to restore your whole system from a Time Machine backup. My drive was recognized by the recovery partition restore process when neither Setup nor Migration Assistant would. Obviously, there's something broken in Setup/Migration Assistant.

Takeaway:

- if you're getting a drive replaced by Apple, make sure they image *exactly* the same OS

- if Setup Assistant fails, use the recovery partition for system restore

- Use Recovery Disk Assistant http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 NOW to make yourself a recovery thumb drive just in case. With Apple's new "no media" approach to the OS, you're hosed without it.

The solution from johnedale worked for me as well. The problem was my external time machine disk wasn't dedicated to time machine, it had a sparse disk image that time machine would use as a file at its root. The migration assistant and setup assistant must be looking only for mounted time machine specific volumes. Finding that disk image and mounting it myself allowed me to the run migration assistant and it saw the time machine image immediately. So instead of "looking for other computers" endlessly it just showed the disk. Then I could continue...

I consider this a UI problem somewhat too. It should have shown all mounted disks greyed out with a note that they are not time machine partitions instead of endlessly looking for "other computers" that might be sharing disks or in disk mode.

I consider this a UI problem somewhat too <= Right - the UI for that interaction is horrible.

I had this too, The apple solution is:

If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac

With your backup drive connected, start up your Mac from the Recovery system (Command-R at startup) or Mac OS X v10.6 installation disc. Then use the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" utility.

Note: If "You can't restore this backup because it was created by a different model of Mac" appears when restoring a backup that was made on a different Mac, follow the onscreen instructions.

Worked.

I bought a new iMac and was going to run Time Machine during setup assitant, but I didn't see the USB-attached drive present. I then went ahead and created a dummy account during setup and decided to deal with it during the migration assistant. However, I still had the same problem with migration assistant--the disk wasn't appearing in the migration assistant options (though it was appearing on the desktop).

I then quit migration asssitant and went back to the desktop. I double-clicked on the Time Machine disk and there were two files, one was a 'Sparse Disk Image Bundle' with the name of my machine, and the other was an alias for Backups.backupdb.

I double clicked on the Sparse Disk Image Bundle (which has a .dmg-like icon) and it looked like it was opening but nothing changed on the desktop.

I then re-ran Migration Assistant and ta-da: there was my Time Machine backup. A few hours later, all is well.

Not sure why--this just worked for me. Hope it helps others who found this thread as I did searching for an answer.

PenguinSix wrote:

. . .

I double-clicked on the Time Machine disk and there were two files, one was a 'Sparse Disk Image Bundle' with the name of my machine,

That sounds like the backups were made over a network -- with the drive connected to a Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, or other Mac, not directly to the Mac in question.

Backups made to an internal or directly-connected disk are not placed in a sparse bundle disk image, as they are for backups made over a network.

Sometimes when you connect such a drive directly, Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant won't expect to find the backups on a sparse bundle, unless the sparse bundle is manually mounted, as you did.

Thanks for the explanation.

My Time Machine was originally created on a USB connected to an Airport Express. I moved it over to a direct USB connection a weeks ago but I guess it kept the original formatting for the Time Machine (?) when it was on the Airport Express. I think after I validate everything on this new machine I'll probably wipe the TM and start fresh as a locally attached backup.

PenguinSix wrote:

Thanks for the explanation.

My Time Machine was originally created on a USB connected to an Airport Express.

Airport Extreme, not Express. It won't work on an Airport Express at all, and is often unreliable and not supported by Apple on an Airport Extreme.

I moved it over to a direct USB connection a weeks ago but I guess it kept the original formatting for the Time Machine (?) when it was on the Airport Express.

Yes, it continues to back up to the sparse bundle when you do that. It doesn't work that way in reverse --- if you start with local backups, then switch to network, it starts over with a sparse bundle.

I think after I validate everything on this new machine I'll probably wipe the TM and start fresh as a locally attached backup.

Yes, good plan. 🙂

johnedale thank you. Your solution worked for me. In finder I found my time machine drive, opened it and clicked on the "sparsebundle" file that was in that drive (the only file on that drive). It mounted a new copy on my desktop then I ran migration assistant again and it could see it and is working away right now restoring....

Pondini thank you too. My backup was made over a network and my Mac could not find it. I disconnected the time machind backup form its network location and plugged it in directly to my Mac and even then Migration Assistant could not see it. But then after I double clicked the "sparsebundle" file it did as you said and it mounted. Then Migration Assistant was able to see it and is now restoring.

Beware that you should set up a temporary user name in the initial set up becasue you cannot restore the settings of your original user name back over top of the same name. In the setup I made a user called temp, then in Migration Assistant I could choose my original user from my Time Machine back up.

This solution did work for me! Thanks

Guys,

I just bought a new Macbook Pro and I'm trying to restore my TM backup, made on an external HD. If I open Time Machine and select the disc, it shows me all the backups, but the "restore" function/button on the lower right of the screen is not available. When I use the migration assistant it just can't find the disk. Tryed to mount the file as suggested above, without success.

Additional information: trying to restore TM backup made over LG External HD from my previous Macbook Pro to a new Macbook Pro.

Please help!

😐

tchescow wrote:

Guys,

I just bought a new Macbook Pro and I'm trying to restore my TM backup, made on an external HD. If I open Time Machine and select the disc, it shows me all the backups, but the "restore" function/button on the lower right of the screen is not available. When I use the migration assistant it just can't find the disk. Tryed to mount the file as suggested above, without success.

Additional information: trying to restore TM backup made over LG External HD from my previous Macbook Pro to a new Macbook Pro.

Please help!

😐

If you still have both computers, why not migrate from one to the other directly without the TM middleman?

• If both have FireWire, get an appropriate cable, set the old one in Target Disk Mode and Setup Assistant (first run) or Migration Assistant can pull everything off it.
• If both have Thunderbolt, get an approprate cable (pricey) and do likewise.
• I once migrated between a pair using an ethernet cable! Let them self-assign IP addresses, run Migration Assistant in both: one sends, the other receives.
• Worse case, extract the HDD from the old one, put in an external enclosure and use that. That's how I got my stuff OFF my previous MBP with a fried logic board (but a still healthy HDD).

BTW, YOU'RE THREADJACKING! Start up your own thread!!

Hi Pondini & others –

Sorry if this comes across as threadjacking, but I am having many of the same issues as others in this thread and this thread seems like practically the hub of TM strangenesses, so please bear with me.

I upgraded (not a fresh install) to 10.8 from 10.6.8 in March. I was having issues with hardware and all kinds of weird things happening and our IT guy said I should try that first. (I know a fresh install is better but I wanted to keep it simple at first as I read horror stories of 10.8 not recognizing 10.6.x backups.) Everything was working great afterward. Then in early May my fans started going haywire and after trying to reset the SMC and zap the PRAM a few times I took it in to Genius Bar where they replaced the fans and reinstalled OS X, saying that was something they did every time. Fine, no worries, I have my Time Machine.

I get it back and all is good but issues when I try to restore my backup. I update OS X to match the OS X on the backups (newest version) but the assistants can't see the backup. I followed the steps in Pondini's FAQs to:

1. re-associate my TM with the Mac

2. "re-do" Setup Assistant

No luck. I can see it from the "Browse other Time Machine backups" menu, so that's good. I figure, fine, I'll try like carlaz did and go the recovery partition route. I can select it but when I do that WHOA it says the OS X version is 10.6.8 and the backup is from March 18. Now, that is possibly to be expected: that is the original date of the backup and that was the OS when the Time Machine was created. So this could be another UI annoyance with this process. I mean, I can see backups going all the way to May 18 on TM (the last day I backed it up before I gave it to the geniuses and went on vacation).

Essentially, I am looking for confirmation that yes, it will take all of the newest data, and that date and OS iteration merely represent the starting point of the TM backup.

Thanks very much for any help!

Micah