Help Incomplete Time Machine Backup and I can't set ownership options

Question

Help Incomplete Time Machine Backup and I can't set ownership options

Two days ago my iMac HD stopped working and I decided it was time to upgrade my machine so I purchased a new iMac with Mavericks installed. I seem to only have a partial Time Machine Backup located on my NAS drive, so I read various threads about how to manually retrieve files from the .inprogress file. I was able to browse the package contents and when I navigated to Macintosh HD the folder was greyed out and when I attempt to open the folder it looks empty. When I select get info the Macintosh HD folder shows almost 80GB and over 160,000 files inside. I tried copying the folder onto the desktop which failed and also onto an external drive formatted the same way as the NAS - Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Case Sensitive). Everytime I try it says something along the lines of me not having the ownership rights to copy the file over.

I tried going to the NAS drive and the mounted sparsefile and couldn't figure out how to get the ignore ownership on this volume option. When I go to Disk Utility it says Owners Enabled Yes, I can't figure out how to turn that off to let me copy the file over. I tried some recommendations about creating an Alias to Macintosh HD and also setting up Automator actions Get Selected Finder Items > Get Folder Contents > Open Finder Items > Copy Finder Items (to desktop or external drive) both of these failed.

I also don't understand why I can't view the files inside the greyed out Macintosh HD as get info shows many files inside. The sharing and permissions already says everyone can read. Is there anyway I can recover some of the files? It would be so great!

Thanks for helping me.

OS X Mavericks (10.9.1), Partial Time Machine Backup Recover

Posted on Dec 31, 2013 6:12 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

687,727 points

Jul 21, 2017 7:24 AM in response to Thorstenborsten

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved and is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

Delete what folder to the Trash?

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Answer 2

Jan 3, 2014 9:18 PM in response to rainrain_cheung

Any ideas on how I can view the files from the greyed out Macintosh HD folder? Thanks!

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Answer 3

Jan 5, 2014 8:30 PM in response to rainrain_cheung

I solved the problem and I hope this solution can help others with incomplete Time Machine Backups.

1. I made sure hidden files were shown by pasting the following line into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles-booleantrue;killall Finder

2. On NAS drive I have a folder called Time Machine Backup and inside that folder it lists the different users with Time Machine Backups. I double clicked the user with the incomplete time machine backup to mount it.

3. Once mounted there should be a folder called backups.backupdb > machine name > dateandtime.inprogress. I right click that .inprogress file and selected show package contents. This lead to another folder randomly named with numbers and text. Inside that folder you should see a greyed out Macintosh HD folder. The date of the greyed out Macintosh HD folder might read something like January 24th, 1984. This appears to be the date that the Macintosh 128k was first introduced. I read on another thread that the creation date of the folder is incorrectly set after a crash resulting in the greyed out folder.

4. Due to the NAS having ownership issues I was not able to drag either the greyed out Macintosh HD or the folder above it to an external drive or the desktop of my new computer. Automator didn't work either. Here is what did work: I trashed the folder with the greyed out Macintosh HD inside from the NAS and dragged it from the trash onto my desktop. The move took a few hours to complete and the files were now all successfully on the new computer.

5. Once on the desktop the Macintosh HD folder was still greyed out. The solution was to select in the finder: View > Show Path Bar, then search for any file you remember inside your backup. For example I searched the word download and files inside the greyed out Macintosh HD folder showed up. Left clicking the file confirmed the path, that it was from the greyed out Macintosh HD folder. Now you can simply right click one of the folders in the Path Bar and open in new tab if you have Mavericks. I still couldn't directly open the Macintosh HD folder in a new tab, but I could open any of the subfolders inside in a new tab, including the users which lets you access all the backup files. I tested in Mountain Lion that you can also choose Open in Enclosing Folder by right clicking the file that you searched for or right clicking the folder in the bottom of the Path Bar.

6. Once I was done organizing backup files, I turned off hidden files by pasting this line into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles-booleanfalse;killall Finder

This took me days to figure out how to make use of an .inprogress file and greyed out Macintosh HD folder.

Hope this helps!!!

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Answer 4

Jul 21, 2017 12:57 AM in response to rainrain_cheung

Can you tell me how to delete the folder to trash? My backup is on the synoligy NAS and if i delete it, it will lost forever. I think it dont copy it to the trash.

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