Time Machine "don't have permission" for old files – do NOT have old computer anymore

After hours working on this problem, I've found the answer:

1. Drag the locked folder from Time Machine to your desktop.

2. Do a "Get Info" on the folder and in "Sharing & Permissions" simply add "admin" with "Read & Write" to the list, and that'll do it!

Simple is good!

Ok Bella13, a couple more questions (in lieu of anyone else being able to suggest anything):

1. Is your OLD computer's Time Machine Backup on an external drive or did you copy the OLD computer's Time Machine Backups to the NEW computer?

2. Is your NEW computer backing up to an external drive? If so, is it the same drive as the OLD computer was using (if it was using an external drive, that is)?

There are still things we can try but I need the above info 🙂

Hi,

I had a similar problem and managed to get a decent solution that requires some caution. My situation is that I had an external HD that I was using to backup my old Mac. When my old Mac crashed, my hard disk was saved, but the backups on the external HD were locked. So, when I was trying to open them from the new Mac I was getting the message that I don't have permission.

The solution was:

1) For other files from my old Mac (not backups), I simply dragged them into desktop and they became accessible (as suggested in other posts).

2) For the backups, I had the External HD on, opened Time Machine, went to any back up folder in the external HD, right-click, restore to..., choose a folder. That copied that folder into the chosen folder but did not give permission. Then use the terminal, go to the directory using the cd command and do ls -la to see the permissions on the folder. If you do "chmod 777 file", it will say it's not permitted. But if you do "sudo chmod 777 file" then it will give you access to it. However, BE CAREFUL because this gives access to everyone as far as I understand. You can try with other chmod that give less permissions I suppose. Note that sudo chmod did not work on the external HD.

Or, when you "Browse other backup disks" you might see the two computers listed right there?

Hi Bella13, the first thing I would try is to recreate the original user by making a new user with the same name and preferably the same password as before. Then log in as Daisy and access the folders in Time Machine. I'm guessing the user you need to create is "Daisy" because your screenshot of the Get Info on the left shows the location of the "Desktop" folder as coming from within the Time Machine Backup, and the Finder screen shows it as being "Daisy"'s user folders.

I should have said first up that before you do anything, make sure you take a full Time Machine Backup that you can use to restore to the point you were at when you asked this question, sorry.

Anyway, If my first suggestion doesn't work, you could then try to log in as an administrator user (if there was only the one user you had on the new computer, it should be an administrator) and use Time Machine to restore the entire /Users structure. After that, you could then set ownership and permissions of the folders and files you need access to which we could deal with once you get to the point of having the folders and files restored to your new computer from the Time Machine backup.

Message was edited by: SilverSkyRat

Ok then, in Finder, from the menu, choose "Go", "Go to folder" and type "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups" in the box then return. Is only one "Backups.backupdb listed? If you go into that, do you see the names of both the old and new computers? If so...

1. Click on the Time Machine icon in the Mac menu bar (top of screen) - a small menu should fly out. Hold down "option" key and select Browse other backup disks...". There should be only one disk listed but when you go into it, do you see the two different computers?

You're welcome, I didn't do much lol but after trying to get TM to restore the old computer's files, permissions on the actual files themselves was to be my last thing to try and I'm glad it worked for you.

I have the same problem but with the same computer. I wiped my computer clean, upgraded to Mavericks and changed the name. Now I can't access my old files. I tried to unlock the files but my lock is shaded.. When I browse other backup disks from the time machine menu there's only 1 disk. I changed where it says no access to read & write, then restarted. It reverts back to no access though. Any ideas?

Well, it looks like the user account you are using is "Theresa", but the folder you are trying to access is the Desktop folder for a user called "Paul". Try:

1. Log in using whatever user account is the administrator

2. Create a user called "Paul"

3. Log in as "Paul" and go to the same place as in your screenshot and try the lock again. Give Paul read and write to all the folders you need and see if that change sticks.

4. If "Theresa" needs the files, make them available by, as "Paul", moving the files to a common area, say /Users/Shared and adding "Theresa" for read and write permissions

I think there is an easy solution to this, if this works for you reply and confirm as there seems to be much talk about a simple permission problem.

The problem I had was a different laptop+different username time machine backup was unreadable with a new laptop/username.

Launch a terminal and use CLI to browse to the folder you are having permission problems with.

chown -R <newusername> <folder>

Once done use Finder to browse to the same folder, right click 'get info'

Sharing and Permissions and I just selected 'Everyone' read+write access and access was restore using Finder and the foreign time machine backup

Thanks a lot Boidman2020, it works!! 🙂