Mountain Lion does not recognize my Time Machine backup

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Mountain Lion does not recognize my Time Machine backup

I cleaned up my hard drive, installed 10.8 and imported everything from my Time Machine backup (which sits in a FW800 drive).

My Time Machine came up as "not configured" (whereas I would expect it to be all set).

I was hoping that I would be able to then continue to use my Time Machine incrementally, but TM does not even see the drive as containing a backup.

(even "browse other backup disks" comes up with an empty list of options).

If I select this drive for TM, it accepts it, but it appears that it will want to start a full (not incremental) backup (I did not let it start, for fear it might ruining my existing backup).

What gives? Is not 10.8 supposed to recognize and incrementally use TM backups from earlier versions? I mean this would defeat the very purpose of TM.

I am not trying to go back to 10.7, but I may need to recover some old version of a document from a few months or year back...

Suggestions will be welcome

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, 17", Early 2010

Posted on Jul 25, 2012 10:53 AM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 25, 2012 11:18 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

. . .

and imported everything from my Time Machine backup (which sits in a FW800 drive).

How did you do that?

If you used either Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant, that should have left a "trail" so on the next backup, Time Machine will "associate'" the erased disk with the old backups. If not, it's treated as a different drive.

If it doesn't, you may be able to do that manually, per #B6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

My Time Machine came up as "not configured" (whereas I would expect it to be all set).

If you transferred your data as above, including Settings, yes.

(even "browse other backup disks" comes up with an empty list of options).

Yes, that's broken in Mountain Lion. 😟 Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

What gives? Is not 10.8 supposed to recognize and incrementally use TM backups from earlier versions? I mean this would defeat the very purpose of TM.

Again, it depends on how you put your stuff back on the erased disk.

Try a backup, but watch the Preferences Panel or messages (via Console or the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs).

If it says it's going to do a very large backup, cancel it before it starts deleting old backups, and try the "associatedisk" procedure as in #B6 above. Then try another backup.

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