Latest Time Machine backup not Showing

Question

Level 1

42 points

Latest Time Machine backup not Showing

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Swapping out 320 gb had on a 5,1 MacBook Pro to a 500gb hd. I DON'T have an external enclosure.

I ran another Time Machine backup last night (nov 20) before physically swapping out hard drives ( I do TM backups intermittently). My TM backups are to a FireWire attached external drive, btw, so I get the new drive in the computer, startup while holding Command-R (only works with USB connection I found out) and click on 'restore from the time machine backup'. Under Backups it shows the external drive (we'll call it 'external' )and Time Machine formatted disk image called ''Macbook Pro.tmp' on disk 'external'.

Selecting the 'MacbookPro.tmp' leads to a dialog box of "the backup cannot be opened: if this is a password-protected backup, you entered an incorrect...." in other words I go back and select the OTHER option of 'external'.

THIS gives me some time machine options but this is where my question comes in.

The only options available are from 'August 29' and 'August 23'! I JUST backed up to Time Machine on November 20! Why is the most recent backup NOT there?

If I went with the 'August 29' restore will it plug in the incremental backups I've done since then?

Please advise. I've looked on pondini.org but couldn't find an answer.

OS X Mountain Lion, 2.53 ghz, 4 gb of RAM, 320 GB hard drive

Posted on Nov 21, 2012 8:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Nov 22, 2012 3:10 PM in response to zamboknee

It sounds like you have two sets of backups on that drive.

Were some backups made over a network (ie, while the drive was connected to a Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, or other Mac)? That's the only way you get a disk image (unless you specifically created one).

The name "MacbookPro.tmp" sounds like the temporary name Time Machine first creates a disk image with, over a network. That would also explain why it can't be opened, as TM didn't finish creating it, but that doesn't tell us where the backup you ran on 11/20 went. Are you sure it completed normally? No error messages, etc.?

Also, did you format the new drive?

Reply